I was invited to attend a creative sushi art workshop, jointly hosted by Foodpanda and Maki-san.
I showed up at Maki-san with my friend Dred in tow, and after registering, we had a fab time taking pictures with the cute Foodpanda mascot.
We were then ushered into Maki-san, which had been closed off exclusively for the event.
It was my first time in Maki-san, actually, and I was pleasantly surprised to see their “3d menu” on the wall. Maki-san is a design your own sushi and salad restaurant, and it’s something that I had never heard of before. How innovative!
There was a spot for each blogger guest, with a name card to let us know where we were to sit.
Then we had each had a set of ingredients, utensils, and an instruction leaflet to make ourselves some panda sushis.
Here is a closer look at that leaflet, so you can do it yourself too!
But before we started, the founders of both Foodpanda and Maki-san gave their respective speeches, which was very interesting to hear. While Maki-san is the sushi restaurant we were in, Foodpanda is the online ordering website or app where you can order food from Maki-san and a bunch of other restaurants for delivery. I am a fan of both companies now, and I feel so honoured that I got to meet their founders in the flesh.
Then finally, Maki-san’s chef demonstrated how to make panda sushi.
Yes, that is what a media event looks like behind the scenes haha! Cameras everywhere!
I discovered that making sushi is a lot harder than it looks! I suddenly have a lot more respect for the sushi chefs out there!
Luckily Dred was around to help, so while I rolled the panda face, she worked on the ears.
And the end result? Tada!
Not bad, right? I was actually surprised that they did look like pandas!
Or kinda like ewoks, too.
Dred was just frustrated that the panda wasn’t smiling. So she tried to make it smile, to no avail. LOL.
Oh well, we’ll just smile ourselves!
Yay, a pic with fellow bloggers and Foodpanda CEO |
But that wasn’t the end of it!
After that, we were divided into small groups and given the chance to step behind Maki-san’s counter
We designed our own sushi! This was not as difficult as the panda one. First of all, there was a machine that just required pushing a couple of buttons to make an entire sheet of sushi rice in one go! How amazing is that? I chose brown rice because I had never had brown rice sushi before. How wonderful to have healthy options, right?
And then the hard part was deciding what to put inside our sushi. There were just so many ingredients to choose from! I ended up putting in avocado, broccoli, japanese egg, cheddar cheese, sashimi salmon, salmon roe, carrot strips, smoked turkey, and I forgot which sauce I used, there was also a lot of different sauce options. I know, it sounds like a very weird combination. I just took whatever appealed to me individually with little regard to how they would taste together. LOL.
After I was done putting ingredients and sauces, one of the chefs helped me roll my sushi, then it was put into this machine where it was cut into pieces in one go (again, so efficient!), before it was put into a pretty box whose design I chose. I love the packaging so much! What a brilliant idea! 😀
And the sushi itself was very delicious too! Yes, despite the weird combination of ingredients LOL.
I’m so grateful to Publicis PR Consultants for inviting me! They were so nice too, they even took pictures of me using my camera! 😀
But I’m not the only one who gets a freebie, you do too!
You can use that special offer at Foodpanda for the whole year! They have an app too, which you can download for iPhone here or Android here.
They have a lot of restaurants and the really great thing is, you just key in your postal code and it shows you the restaurants that delivers to your location! So no more wondering if a particular restaurant would deliver to your far flung location or not.
Also, Foodpanda is running the “Meals that Heal” charity campaign to aid children with cancer. From 1st to 31st March 2015, foodpanda will be pledging $1 for every order placed via their app or website.
When ordering food online, all customers need to do to participate in the campaign, is to enter the code “MEALSHEAL15” upon checkout on foodpanda.sg or the mobile application. All proceeds will go to the Children’s Cancer Foundation. The Children’s Cancer Foundation is a non-profit organization with the mission to improve the quality of life of children with cancer and their families through enhancing their emotional, social and medical well-being.
So there you go, one more reason to order!
And one last reason? The fact that the CEO is a funny guy who does this:
So cute, right? 😛
MAKI-SAN
2 Handy Road, Former Cathay Building, Singapore 229233
Tel. No. 6737 8772
Opening hours: 11:30 am – 9:30 pm