Seen & savoured: A chair affair

Buckie Friday has used his carving knives many times as a culinary student but the national serviceman never thought that one day he’d be using them to carve a champagne cork. Friday was one of the eight finalists in Moët & Chandon’s first Champagne Chair Competition 2010, which was held at eM by the River on 28 July.

The competition, which began on April 1, saw participants testing their creativity within a given set of rules: they had to purchase not more than two bottles of Moët & Chandon champagne from eM by the River or Que Pasa, turn the foils, cages and corks into a miniature chair (without using any glue) measuring not more than 11cm by 6cm by 6cm, and submit their entry before 30 June.

To determine the finalists during the preliminary round in July, 50 percent of the participants’ scores came from online voting via eM by the River’s Facebook page. A panel of judges—Shaine De Venny, director of Moët Hennessy Diageo; Justin Lee who represented Emerald Hill Group; Adrian Yeo, manager of eM by the River; and Ho Sum Kwong, epicure’s group publisher—were tasked with the challenge of grading the remaining 50 percent of the scores during the finals. The top three winners, who were picked from entries ranging from a rocking chair, a throne and a wheelchair, were awarded with a total of $1,500 in cash and $600 worth of dining vouchers from eM by the River. In the end, 22-year-old Vanessa Ng was the one who walked away with the first prize. Her submission? A quirky salon chair, complete with a dryer made of cork.