Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

In one interview for Singapore Dreaming, I was asked what I was dreaming of, now that the film was completed.

I replied, “I’m dreaming of this film making enough money so I can finally walk into a Japanese restaurant and order sushi a la carte, instead of having to settle for ‘nigiri set A’ all the time.”

Well, we don’t know just yet whether this film can make money, even though we’re the indie Singaporean film with the best box office for the past 8 years, and even though we did better at the Singapore box office than Oscar darling ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. Such are the vagaries of the film market at the moment. Only once our international and ancillary sales are tallied will we know.

But we did receive some thrilling news - Singapore Dreaming has been nominated for several more awards: the Camera Novo and Amoukourou Jury Prizes at the Belgium Camera Novo Festival, and also the Most Promising New Director Award at the Vilnius International Film Festival. So feeling chuffed, we decided to put the Nigiri Set A behind us and order our very first omakase! (That’s a shot of it up there - pardon the poor pic. The lighting wasn’t very conducive and we had to use the flash.) Not quite a la carte, but at least it’s progress!

Omakase, as most foodies know, is when you leave it up to the chef to choose what to serve you. “Omakase” (お任せ) is the Japanese word for “entrust” or “protect”.
Anyway, our friends Lucas and Jennifer had alerted us to Ki Sushi, a new sushi place on Smith Street in Brooklyn, which had an extremely reasonable omakase: a mere US$35 for sushi air-flown from Tsukiji! So in a celebratory mood, we decided to splurge.

Well, it was worth it. It was my first real taste of toro, and I was surprised to discover it was like really good foie gras. Who needs to force feed a goose? We also had superbly-sliced pieces of arctic char, red snapper, scallops with sea salt, toro two-ways, premium yellowtail and oh, I can’t remember the rest.
Sadly, this is probably the last time we’ll be able to order an omakase for a loooooong time. Great though it was, it’s way too pricey for us struggling filmmakers.

One surprise at the end of the meal: our waiter greeted us in Hokkien and Malay! From Indonesia, his name was ‘Neo’ (which led to some cheap thrill Matrix jokes, e.g. “Choose Neo… do you want to eat the red snapper or the bluefin tuna?”), and he recognised our accent.

Hmmm… now got lobang, maybe can ask for discount on the omakase, man! Amacam, Bang?

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