Singapore sells itself as a food paradise. But who gets to define and decide what counts as “Singapore food”? Which cuisines are elevated as national symbols, and which are left on the margins of our island story? We package our multicultural, culinary identity for local pride and global consumption. But what parts of our food traditions are being preserved, celebrated and claimed; and by whom? And just as importantly, what gets flattened, neglected or excluded? The familiar canon is well-established: bak chor mee, char kway teow, chilli crab, fishhead curry, Hainanese chicken rice, Hokkien prawn mee, laksa, mee siam, nasi lemak, roti prata…These dishes appear on every must-eat list, repeated by tourism campaigns, media round-ups and self-appointed food authorities alike. Do they truly reflect the tastes, traditions, and histories that shape Singapore’s culinary landscape? This cross-generational panel—moderated by Toffa, in conversation with speakers Min, Murni and Vasun—explores how Singapore’s gastronomic character is shaped: whether by markets and media; by state narratives and social aspiration; by chefs, hawkers, home cooks, diners and diasporas. Our panellists also examine the pressures bearing down on Singapore food today: trend cycles, homogenisation, the burden of expectation placed on “heritage foods”, and the tension between cultural and commercial value. They ask: what happens to memory, meaning and connection, as fewer people cook at home; as recipes get forgotten across generations, travelling further from the communities that created them; and as young Singaporeans inherit food traditions in increasingly fragmented, diluted forms? What do we lose when food becomes content, branding or lifestyle; yet what new forms of continuity might still emerge? This is a dialogue about change and evolution, distilled through the lenses of power, belonging, and inheritance. Food connects Singaporeans across race, generations and histories. It’s one of the clearest and loudest ways that our city-state imagines itself. Might it not then also reveal whose stories are amplified, whose labour is obscured, and whose flavours are treated as central—or peripheral—to the national imagination.