Kita Food Festival 2025: Future of Food

Kita Food Festival (KFF) was created to put Southeast Asia on the gastro-tourism map by spotlighting chefs, producers, flavours and food innovators through a series of curated dinners, collaborative cook-ups, symposiums and mentorship programmes. The festival aims to provide yearly events in Malaysia and Singapore that bring like-minded people together, allowing them to expand their palate and knowledge of food and drinks.

Following its successful debut in 2023, which hosted 11 curated dinners and lunches featuring 18 world-class chefs, and 14 expert speakers during Kita Conversations, Kita Food Festival has since established itself as the platform for celebrating and advancing Southeast Asia’s culinary scene. 

For 2025, Kita Food Festival and data consultancy Synthesis will launch a series of experiential pop-up food events and talks exploring the Future of Food. The series will start with three evening seminars, open to the public, on 20 January, 10 February and 24 February, culminating in a symposium on 17 March 2025, alongside the Singapore Weekender. The Future of Food will mark the beginning of Kita Food Festival’s most extensive programme yet, signifying a new chapter for the festival as it establishes Singapore as its hub, with support from the Singapore Tourism Board.

The Future of Food series draws from Synthesis’ Menu 2034 research that explores what we will be eating in 10-20 years from now given the current climate trajectory and strains on traditional resources.

Singapore’s progressive approach to food security and innovation and proactive stance towards alternative proteins and other future foods, which includes its “30 by 30” goal to meet 30 per cent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030, makes it a fitting launch point for the Future of Food seminars and symposium under Kita Food Festival.

To complement the experience and invite public participation, each seminar and the symposium will also feature food and cocktails featuring future-food ingredients, including cultivated meats, protein grown from the air, insect powder and beanless coffee and chocolate. These menus will be available at several venues around New Bahru from 12 - 17 March, during the Singapore Weekender.

The central theme of ‘Future of Food’ stems from Menu 2034 – a cutting-edge research project, by Synthesis, that explores how the impact of climate and population change will affect what we’ll be eating in the future. The research looks at two likely scenarios for the future: Humans will look to the past to feed the future, using regenerative agriculture, reducing waste and adopting a diet of abundant and native ingredients. Or, more likely, that we will adapt with technology and science to create novel foods and replicate the flavours of lost ingredients.

"Synthesis simulated 100,000 versions of the future, to learn what the world will look like a decade from now if we continue on today’s climate and population trajectory. We all know the challenges ahead. For this series, we’re focusing on solutions. Putting future food solutions in the hands of chefs and industry leaders to better prepare the F&B industry for the future and to give the public a glimpse of what’s coming,” shares Lee Fordham, founder of Synthesis.

The full schedule of the ‘Future of Food’ seminars and symposium is as follows:

• Seminar 1 - How We Source Food: 20 January 2025
• Seminar 2 - How We Stretch Food: 10 February 2025
• Seminar 3 - How We Increase Sustenance: 24 February 2025
• The Future of Food Symposium: 17 March 2025

The series will bring together an unparalleled group of chefs, food innovators, and thought leaders from around the globe, each with unique perspectives and expertise:

• Australian restaurant critic- turned farmer, chef, TV host and food writer- Matthew Evans, is known for his TV programme The Gourmet Farmer, as well as books SOIL, On Eating Meat and The Real Food Companion.
• Eelke Plasmeijer, Dutch co-founder of Bali’s award-winning restaurant Locavore and now Locavore NXT, a groundbreaking restaurant that includes a distillery, farm and research lab.
• George Peppou, co-founder and CEO of VOW, who is revolutionising the food industry with Australia’s first cell-based meat company.
• Culinary anthropologist Nithiya Laila, best known for championing Asia’s indigenous plant life through her TV show, Edible Wild, and co-founder of SG Seed Exchange, a community platform dedicated to the exchange of native seeds.
• Enzo Acerbi, the co-founder of Vertical Oceans, known for pioneering sustainable, urban aquaculture in Singapore, with a focus on producing high-quality shrimp.

Kita Food Festival’s Singapore Weekender will also make its return from 13 to 17 March 2025, offering a lineup of both upmarket and casual four-hand dinners and kitchen takeovers with international guest chefs. Other events include the festival’s iconic Big Barbecue, a Southeast Asian food/ music/ market mashup, plus pop-up menus at New Bahru offering consumers an opportunity to sample foods from the future. The Singapore Weekender will play host to some of the region’s best culinary talents coming together to celebrate diversity and innovation.

Tickets for the first seminar in the Future of Food Series, How Will We Source Food in the Future? will be available from early December 2025. The full lineup for Kita Food Festival’s Singapore Weekender will be available in early January 2025.