THE concept of taking our local soulful street favourites into a hotel's open kitchen buffet eatery is not even a topic mentioned in passing anymore.

RARE: Tapas-style Hainanese Curry Rice with crispy pork chops. PICTURE: MAKANSUTRA

This is even when folks talk about food, well, over makan, in a hotel's open kitchen buffet cafe.

The Straits Kitchen at the Grand Hyatt's been there, done that and so did the glassed kitchens at the Ellenborough Market Cafe at the Swissotel Merchant Court.

The folks at the Line buffet in Shangri-La hotel have one of the more stunning food temples set up for such eat-like-Armageddon mastication devotees.

You can see the warmed-up chefs shuffling about shovelling woks of pepper crayfish and chilli crabs just so you can practise, on home soil, a subculture of our national pastime - stacking the platter to stuff a tummy way bigger than they imagine it to be. Wasteful.

Actually, the best of such open kitchen eateries with no unnecessary frills with the most reasonable prices and specialised senior cooks, and where you pay only for what you eat, is well, the hawker centre.

Heck, they even let you doggie bag whatever you want.

How to beat hawker food?

So when the food soldiers at It's All About Taste, the local cafe in the recently opened Ibis Hotel at Bencoolen Street asked if I could contribute my two cents' worth of opinion to their menu and operations, I initially smiled and turned away.

'How could I come up with something to beat a foodcourt or a hawker centre for local makan here?' I mused to myself.

In the course of the exploratory discourse, they mentioned 'tapas, hawker food'.

Then, all my cynical notions about why there should not be another wannabe eatery touting complex local grub done by some fast-fading executive chef, quickly disintegrated.

In its wake, I pictured a platter, with a collection of die-hard local favourites served in small bite-sized portions, plated quaintly and prettily.

'Yes, that's what we're planning to do.', clarified the hotel's general manager, Mr Puneet Dhawan, as if reading my thoughts.

'And customers can choose whatever from the menu?' I asked.

'Yes' he reassured me.

'Expensive or not?' I asked, the next local-style piercing question.

'Very affordable, based on our research,' he said confidently.

And next, I was assisting them in crafting a die-hard truly Singaporean menu, so local that some items are not even commonly found in such eateries - like Hainanese curry rice with breadcrumbed pork chops and kangkong cuttlefish.

We finally worked on a top 20 local faves menu. For $15++, they let you have a choice of any three items, served in larger than tapas portions and plated on three fancy side plates.

You can choose the four or five dish sets if you like but they can fill up two diners.

How authentic, good or not? I thought I'll leave you the answer in some of Chef Casey's recipes (see below).

Better still, go down and experience this for yourself, because the presentation is very troublesome.