I gave you guys a peek a couple days ago at fantasia – or what was described as more than charlie’s chocolate factory – and kept it cursory on purpose.
I didn’t want to spoil it for you if you were going – or create too much pre-judgment – but I think enough time has passed, to tell you the truth: it totally wasn’t worth it.
this photo looks almost accusatory.
we went hungry, totally anticipating some kind of smorgasbord of chocolate and sweets – and let me tell you, I was doing complicated mathematics trying to figure out how big my trousers would have to be the next day.
but when we arrived, it was to CLOWNS OMG entertainers doing strange mime-type actions – though the guy at the welcome was friendly enough (the rest were just weird, and that callebaut dude looked somewhat macabre). and that first chocolate offering was a not-rich shot of chocolate that tasted like some cocoa mix than real, proper, chocolate.
and then you enter a room full of chocolate sculptures: a feline (with that lovely peacock bit on its rump), an elephant, multiple monkeys and a giraffe – and you’re kept too far away from them to determine if it’s really chocolate (or its flamboyant counterpart, fondant) or clay.
but really – since I couldn’t eat it (which I thought should have been the point of the exhibition, to chip at them and eat) – it doesn’t matter if it was clay. the more irritating bit was that the lighting in the room was essentially too horrid to take decent photos (and that’s really salt to injury).
less irritating and more weird was the show of woman rubbing herself down with whipped cream, lasvicious co-actor looking on (while I looked around thinking of the poor to-be-traumatized children). the entire show, just plain awkward.
but on to the food. if you were like us, you probably entered strategising your 12 stamps worth of food – we imagined there would be so many options we would run out early.
but we weren’t so lucky, with options few and not even good.
I know it all looks pretty and delectable (kudos to the photographer, eh?) – but it certainly lacked any taste prowess. and it was just a strange mix of food – plain croissants stuffed with tuna or iberico like any catering do, inconsistent bruleed custard eggs (beautiful, but our second was gummy like fake custard), and cold-like-frozen potato tortillas.
but the worst thing had to be the hot dog – generic bun, filled with this chocolate hot dog that had all the processed, gumminess of a meat-glue sausage without any taste or flavor to go with – I couldn’t even swallow my first, small mouthful.
I’ve never said this of food, but this was pretty disgusting.
slightly less offensive was the table of decorate-your-own biscuits, where you had slightly dry, stale-ish, flavorless biscuits to decorate with tubes of fake chocolate/ raspberry sauce (it looked and felt like fabric paint, and maybe only tasted a little better).
in a last resort to spend all the stickers, we bought ten strawberries and five bottles of fiji water – knocking the sugar off like the quarter-centurions we were to eat the fresh strawberries within, and bringing the water back like the aunties we were always meant to be.
as a dessertian (first coined here, thanks), I would/ might have gone to the event regardless of reviews – but I spent the entire night thinking about what my hundred-and-thirty dollars would have bought me at cut.
so – a no go, unfortunately.
Fantasia by Escriba
22, 23 and 24 Aug 14
Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre
$$$$$$$$$: much-too-much at hundred-and-thirty per person (unless you got the early bird discount)
andmorefood 
I actually agree; I wasn’t expecting to have much chocolate to eat, but I thought there should be more attention paid to the quality of food being served. Arguably, it’s more like a circus show than a chocolate or candy show, and that was a little disappointing because I wanted to be amazed by food (chocolate mostly) and not entertainers! I don’t think it’s feasible to allow us to chip away at the sculptures, because they have to display it for a couple of shows. The closest was probably the faux jamon. Nevertheless, the show can do better in so many ways.
it gratifies that I wasn’t the only one expecting such!
what I did think about the sculptures was that it would be pretty amazing to have had one per day, that was chipped down throughout the night so you got to see and taste the chocolate! I spent quite a lot of time being cynical about whether it made a difference if it were chocolate or not.
and you are absolutely right about the quality of food – I thought that was the biggest letdown of the night.
Wow. When you can’t get the chocolate right, nothing is right! I recently enjoyed a chocolate bread pudding a friend who was trained as a classical chef made. To die for. You’d think if she can make that in her humble kitchen this place could at least get the chocolate taste right:).
I started off thinking this place looked good, but got less and less impressed the more I read about it. I am struggling to know why MBS wants this in its convention centre. More suited to somewhere like Suntec IMO. The strawberries look nice though. Maybe that’s a saving grace.
Well, you have to admit it was interesting. Chocolate hot dog??
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