The Merry Riana Show – featuring Dr. Leslie Tay (ieatishootipost.sg)

 Definition of ‘food’ in the dictionary tells you that it refers to simply any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, and so on. However, what does really good food mean? This kind of food not only gives you the nourishments, but at the same time, it triggers the sensation in your tongue and makes you want to go back for more. Now, food is an indispensible part of our lives especially for Singaporean.

However, we would often wonder, where to eat next? It is my pleasure to get to meet with the food ‘guru’ Dr Leslie Tay. He shared with us about his food blog and the tastiest thing that you can find in your vicinity!

He eats, he shoots, he posts, Dr Leslie Tay, is one of Singapore’s famous food blogger. His website, http://ieatishootipost.sg, is currently getting 11,000 hits everyday, and it was also voted as the Best Food Blog out of the 10,000 blogs that were nominated in the recent Asia Pacific Blog Awards. He first started out this food bog with a passion for food, and like he always says, “Never waste your calories on yucky food”. This is definitely true because when we’re eating yucky food, we’re actually putting on calories, making ourselves fat and unhealthy, but at the same time not enjoying ourselves, and that is definitely the most undesirable case that we would want. Therefore, instead of wasting your calories on that food, why not turn to those which are worth much more?

With the new fame garnered onto his food blog which started since 2006 August, Dr Leslie Tay is not only a blogger, but he also runs a full time 2-session clinic as well. During the afternoons when the clinic is not operating, Dr Leslie would go out to catch up with some rest and also meet up with his family or friends. His patients are always finding him very cheerful unlike other doctors, and his secret to it? “Because I had a rest in the afternoon! I had something good to eat, I met up with my friends, I went out with my kids, so I come back in very good mood most of the time” says the father-doctor.

As much as the blog takes up a lot of time, this food lover is simply enjoying this “part-time job” of his and disregards it as a form of work. Now, he’s updating his blog 3 to 4 times a week as a hobby, telling all makan kakis and food lovers where to go next for good food. Apart from that, Dr Leslie has his blog posts surrounding

Singapore life, our character, lifestyle, and also about the hawkers’ lives at times too. “I tend to look at food sometimes in the medical point of view, I try to analyze sometimes how you taste food, the physiology of taste, how we appreciate certain things, and then I also go into a little bit about people’s lives, lives of the hawkers” says Dr Leslie.

Although these contents are good read, Dr Leslie has also added on great photography to his entries. What is a food blog without a decent photo of the food itself isn’t it? He was a photographer even before he started the blog, and it has always been a hobby to him. Furthermore, he had found out that there are too many food blogs around that are not doing the good food justice. With the low quality photos that could turn people off no matter how hard you tried to describe it as heavenly as it may be, “so when I started the food blog, one of the main things is that I wanted the photos to look good. Because I found that at that time, there wasn’t a lot of nice food pictures especially in Singapore

Here are some photos that was taken from his blog.

The quality is simply amazing !

Talking about his success in his food blog, Dr Leslie put it as it is driven by sheer determination and content provision. The large traffic flow and popularity comes mainly with a great content and also a user friendly platform. He may not be earning much from his blog, but he’s definitely enjoying the eating, shooting, and posting. One of the main satisfactions comes from helping the stall or restaurant owners as well. After his post, many would go down to this recommended place which used to be ‘hidden’ at some obscure area of Singapore and now found. This could help the barely surviving food businesses to come to live. One of the favourite places that Dr Leslie would want to recommend to all now, is the Italian restaurant called Cugini at Club Street. This is one particular restaurant that kept him returning time and time again, not missing this year’s Christmas as well. The food was all prepared with sincerity by an Italian chef and you could trust Dr Leslie’s tongue to give you the best recommendation in town.

In celebration of 2009 success by winning the awards and also the anniversary of http://ieatishootipost.sg, Dr Leslie held an AGM – Annual General Makan, invited all who are keen to join them for a makan session. It was aimed to accommodate about 1000 people, and part of the cost will be donated to the charity like they had done for the previous years. This year, they have adopted Prison’s Ministry as their charity recipient, helping ex-convicts to gain a new job and also their families to gain a new life.  They have collected a total of $8150 from the Christmas AGM thanks to the generosity of the ieat community!

So, calling to all food lovers, you can visit the website and follow them on Facebook, or you could contact the food blogger doctor directly at leslie.tay@gmail.com.

Last but not least, here is the part of my audio interview with Dr. Leslie Tay. (Click on the picture)

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2. The Merry Riana Show – featuring Elim Chew
3. The Merry Riana Show – featuring Irene Ang
4. The Merry Riana Show – featuring Aaron Tan