Alvin opens restaurant in cultural exchange

Celebrity chef and bodybuilder Alvin Koh has opened his new Singapore Heritage Restaurant at Surry Hills in Sydney in an exchange of culture, enterprise and goodwill between Australia and Singapore.

[ClickPress, Sun Apr 01 2007] Celebrity chef and bodybuilder Alvin Koh has opened his new Singapore Heritage Restaurant at Surry Hills in Sydney in an exchange of culture, enterprise and goodwill between Australia and Singapore.

International Enterprise of Singapore, an agency of the Singapore Government, is supporting the new restaurant as a venue for the exchange.

The plush and ornately decorated new restaurant occupies the whole two-storey Toggle building of the St Margarets complex at 417-445 Bourke Street. The restaurant seats 145 indoors and up to another 300 in its courtyard within the plaza of the complex.

This capacity will enable it to host special cultural and business events which are being planned.

It opens for dinner each Tuesday to Sunday from 6 pm to midnight and for lunch, with a special Yum Cha set menu called the "Seven Wonders", each Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 4 pm.

Alvin is the executive chef and a co-founder of the new restaurant where he employs a new team of Australian service and kitchen staff.

He is a celebrity chef in Singapore where he manages the original Singapore Heritage Restaurant which he founded in 2004 and which is also supported by the government.

He has become an internationally famous chef since he started his Porridge King Restaurant in Singapore in 2000 and became known as the bodybuilder chef.
He has been an internationally famous bodybuilder since he won the Mr Asia title twice, in 1992 and 1993.

Alvin says, "Food is a reflection of ones heritage and culture. Singapore Heritage Restaurant in Sydney will promote the cuisines and cultural heritage of Singapore in a deliciously eclectic manner that will help represent the diverse and unique culinary landscape of Singapore.

"We offer a menu of tasty, traditional and innovative meals featuring many of our own unique recipes; incorporating what is essentially the essence of Singaporean cooking. I call it neo-Asian fusion cuisines.

"Our restaurant is richly colored in deep red and is decorated with subtle but highly sensual ornaments and heritage artifacts.

"Sensuality is the motto behind our theme, as our slogan implies: renouncing immortality for a moment of sensuality," he says.

"We aim to provide excellent service and good food at reasonable prices," he says.

"It is sensually Asian and we hope to foster a wonderful exchange of culture and goodwill between Australia and Singapore."

Alvin lives in Sydney and Singapore as he manages his restaurants and trains and oversees his chefs.

As a chef he has been endorsed more than 100 times over the last six years by Asian newspapers and magazines and radio and television stations and by the Singapore Heritage Board and other government agencies.

Channel News Asia has produced two half-hour documentaries praising Alvin Koh as a successful young entrepreneur and "chef icon". The first documentary was telecast to 17 countries across Asia in 2003 and the second was telecast to 22 countries that same year.

Alvin, who is 1.5 metres (4 foot 9 inches) tall, is the shortest man in history to win the Asian bodybuilding championship. He won this title when he was 20. He says, "I'm the tallest man under five foot ever to win the Mr Asia championship."

After training with Olympic weight lifting medalist Tan How Leong, Alvin won the Singapore Junior National Bodybuilding Championship in 1990 at the age of 17.

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Photo captions:
Bodybuilder chef Alvin Koh
Singapore Heritage Restaurant in Sydney
Toggle building at the St Margarets complex
Singapore Heritage Restaurant in Singapore
Bodybuilder chef Alvin Koh poses at Lady Bay Beach in Sydney

Download photos at www.wbpublicity.com.au/ak/shr.htm .

Media contacts in Sydney: -
Alvin's personal artiste manager, Luke Mitchell - phone 0404340408;
publicist Wal Baker - phone 02 9416 7111 or email wal@wb-pr.com ;
Alvin Koh himself - phone 02 8354 0800, 02 9331 8196 or 0424542727 or email chefalvin@heritage-restaurant.com .

The Singapore Heritage Restaurant
Toggle Building, St Margarets, 423 Bourke Street, Surry Hills, NSW, 2010; phone 02 8354 0800.

No 46 Pagoda Street, The Chinatown Heritage Centre, Singapore 059205; phone 6562254024; restaurant's web site www.heritage-restaurant.com ; Alvin's personal site: www.chefalvin.com .

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