BY
Claire Ng Min
Perspectives Section Editor
Hype Issue #54

Published on

February 5, 2022

The Chinese term “口味 (kǒu wèi)” refers to a person’s tastes in flavour. As a nation inundated with food options, local food bloggers help us run the gamut from brand new to old-school stores and sift through the saturated world of our local cuisine, showcasing Singapore’s best kou wei.

Just one look at his Instagram feed and your stomach will growl. Screenshot taken from Instagram.

Better recognised by his moniker @sgcafehopping, Wei Kai, 30, leads a delicious double life. His main hustle consists of his work in social media marketing, but he fulfils his passion for food as a blogger with an Instagram following of nearly 36,000 followers on the side. That’s a whole lot of appetite and our weekend brunch plans that he’s influencing! 

As one of Singapore’s pioneering food bloggers on Instagram, Wei Kai has built a strong reputation and following for himself with his regular and trendy food content.

How SGCafeHopping Started

When Instagram was newly launched in 2010, Wei Kai created his first Instagram account, which he eventually devoted to documenting his food experiences. He never anticipated that 12 years later, this hobby would become his side career.

Wei Kai’s mission is simple: loving good food. He started SGCafeHopping in 2015 while he was pursuing a Bachelor of Arts at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

“In my time, café-hopping was very trendy,” he says. “A lot of students loved to go café hopping, myself included, so my friends will ask me to go to cafés and tell them what is good. Back then, café pricing was quite expensive, so they wanted my reviews to know which places were conducive for studying and whatnot.”

Having joined the F&B industry before his time at NTU, Wei Kai worked part-time as a service staff, barista, bartender, and even did a part-time marketing and public relations stint for a restaurant. Photo taken from Instagram.

A disciplined and passionate man at heart, Wei Kai developed his food photography, copywriting and social media marketing skills over time through experience and self-learning. Now, with his proficiency in this expertise, you could even call him a self-made jack of all trades.

“With time, your eye adapts. For me, I had to study trends and photos. Photo quality and picture-taking styles have changed over the years; and I do social media marketing so my eye and sense of beauty has changed over time too. That was how I picked up these skills,” he commented.

Wei Kai’s collaborative post with Lixin Fishball frozen products. He recreated a classic food court favourite, fishball noodles at home and the results are scrumptious. Screenshot taken from Instagram.

Food binds us all and so naturally, we sat down for a chat and I asked him HYPE’s top 10 burning questions for food bloggers.

1.  Everyone believes that reviewing food for a living is the ultimate dream job. Is that really the case?

A lot of people have this misconception that reviewing food for a living is this really nice job; you go around eating food.

It’s not as glamorous as what other people expect, there are a lot more things to do than just eating free food. There is talking to the owners, learning about their brand, taking and editing the photos et cetera. It’s very much like a marketing job to be honest.

Behind the scenes for one of Wei Kai’s photoshoots. Photo courtesy of Wei Kai.

2. Singaporeans love food; but diabetes, high blood pressure and heart diseases are in the top 10 leading causes of death in Singapore. Could you share some of your thoughts on this issue?

Singaporeans love food. There’s nothing we can do on our end. Making healthier diet choices is really up to one’s personal discretion. If you know you have high-blood pressure, then you shouldn’t be consuming certain kinds of food.

However, there’s a shift in direction towards a more sustainable, healthy lifestyle. I guess, yes we do love food, but at the same time a lot of people are more particular about what they eat. So they are very conscious of the quality and the kind of food they are consuming.

In 2022, I can see more restaurants stepping up especially with COVID-19, there’s a shift towards a healthier lifestyle.

Wei Kai’s post featuring Sevens Café’s signature 7S Avod: a crispy sourdough slice topped with avocado, quail eggs, baby beets, hazelnut and fragrant micro herbs. Screenshot taken from Instagram.

3. As a food blogger, has there ever been a time that you felt tired of eating?

Of course. In everything you do, no matter the passion or interests you have, after some time, you’ll feel jaded.

A buffet dinner at PARKROYAL on Beach Road. The mouth-watering three-course meal includes dishes like chilli crab, sambal clams, golden oyster and popiah with Thai bamboo and ayam penyet crust. Photo taken from Instagram.

For me, I have to review so many restaurants. My schedule is extremely hectic; I might have five to six events in a day and I still have my own full-time job. Sometimes, these events are not just tastings or invites, I may go recce on my own for new food places to share.

So if I do not balance my workload and rest well, I’ll get jaded. It’s essentially like a vicious cycle, you’re repeating something every day. So I try to include daily exercises or hip-hop and breakdancing, as well as my hobby into my routine so that I don’t feel tired or jaded.

4. Do you finish all the food you review?

No, of course not. Or else I’ll be in the top 10 leading causes of death in Singapore, such as with high-blood pressure, if I don’t watch my diet.

Wei Kai’s review of The Feather Blade x RAPPU. He recommends trying The Feather Blade’s sides including the grilled portobello mushrooms, creamed spinach and wagyu beef fat potatoes with ikura and dill cream. From RAPPU, he adored Chatsworth Cookies’s mochi matcha cookie. Photo taken from Instagram.

A lot of people will retort that we’re wasting food but we usually go food tasting. We will let the restaurant owners know that we’re just trying food so they can prepare a smaller portion for us to try. And when I attend these events, I’ll usually bring my friends, family or sometimes even my food blogger friends along.

Wei Kai reviewing Oaks Coffee Co. with his food blogger friends. Photo taken from Instagram. 

5. The pandemic has changed the food & beverage (F&B) industry drastically in the past two years. How has the pandemic affected your career?

Actually in the pandemic, I was busier than ever because a lot of F&B outlets needed help. It was such a huge change for these businesses, as some of them don’t even have delivery. The worst thing was that there are a lot of small and mid-enterprises that don’t even use social media, so this is the part where I come in.

Wei Kai promoting home-based brownie business, With Every Bite. Screenshot taken from Instagram.

During the COVID-19 period, I helped quite a bunch of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to go digital, by adapting their business to an online platform for free.

This industry is extremely important to me because this was where I started from. So I wanted to help as many F&Bs as I could. There were businesses that helped me 10 years ago when I was a nobody, so this is my time to give back to them.

Wei Kai raved about Idaten Udon at Nex Singapore, a udon specialty chain where customers can mix and match ingredients to create their own udon meal and pair them with tempura. Photo taken from Instagram.

6. When you visit a new food establishment, is there any food you will not eat? Why?

I don’t really eat durians. A lot of people requested for me to review durian dessert cafés, but I won’t because I can’t tolerate the smell. I’ve also stopped eating beef and lamb for sustainable reasons, and I don’t really fancy raw foods as well. I can taste them but I will try to avoid them.

Usually when I visit an establishment that serves beef, I will usually have someone with me so that person can describe the taste for me. But of course, a lot of beef and lamb places serve other alternative dishes, so I will usually focus more on those alternatives.

Wei Kai reviewing the Charcoal Steak dish with his food blogger friend, Vince, at BURN Woodfired restaurant. Screenshot taken from Instagram.

7. Do the food establishments usually know that you’re coming? 

No. Unless they recognise me, then they’ll know. I’m not sure how other food bloggers work, but for me personally, I’d rather not let anyone know I’m going down.

Some bloggers will write in but I’ll enter as a paying customer. If they decide to drop me some complimentary dishes, I’ll take it but I usually pay for my food.

Dewgather’s Korean-inspired fried chicken and buttery waffles served with their in-house kimchi and pickles. Photo taken from Instagram.

8. When will you, if ever, give a bad food review and why?

I don’t think I’ll ever give a bad food review. Otherwise, I won’t post it. If the food is horrible, I think it’s best if you inform the restaurant, rather than write a bad food review.

This is a very trying period for a lot of F&B staff. I mean you can write a bad review and the owner’s reputation gets damaged, but he or she has many other staff working under the restaurant, so I don’t think it’s a nice thing.

Wei Kai’s review for Indulgence by Roxey, showcasing their dish The Orient (top left), which consists of Asian pork based delicacies. Screenshot taken from Instagram.

9. Okay, we are bored of cheeseburgers and fries, what do you think is next for Singapore’s food industry in the new year?

We are all pivoting towards a more sustainable lifestyle now. You can see a lot of people opting for vegan options or impossible options, so I think that’s next for the F&B industry.

This glorious cheese pull is from Oriole Coffee + Bar’s truffle mushroom pizza, a festive special. Photo taken from Instagram.

With the pandemic, there are a lot of food shipments that are experiencing delays, so there would be more focus on local produce in the new year as well.

There weren’t a lot of coffee specialty cafés in the past few years, but now I see them popping up a lot more in the food scene. Cocktail bars are also increasingly popular too.

Wei Kai’s post for a new specialty coffee house, Bloom Coffee. Photo taken from Instagram.

10. What advice do you have for food enthusiasts hoping to turn their interest in food into a potential career as a food blogger/critic?

To be honest, I wouldn’t advise anyone to pursue a full-time career as a food blogger.

I have met other full-time food critics. It is not easy to pursue this role in the current climate, I mean when you do it full-time, your goal is to drive profit. Even when you say you’re not profit-driven, that mentality is still stuck there because you have to make ends meet.

Wei Kai reviewing the Hello Kitty x Kumoya Mini Shabu Shabu Pop-Up Café. The Hello Kitty themed restaurant serves a variety of food and drinks inspired by the iconic Sanrio character. Photo taken from Instagram.

I think you’ll get jaded even faster, because it is really your job now; so after a while it will not spark much joy, passion or interest in you anymore. It’s better to leave it as a passion, so at least it won’t die out.

Follow Wei Kai on Instagram here!