The JW Marriott Hotel Singapore South Beach is a jewel: From the upper floors of the building by Sir Norman Foster and Philippe Starck you can see as far as Sumatra, on the other side you look down on the venerable Raffles Hotel.
This is where President Donald Trump's baton descended when he met with North Korean dictator Kim in Singapore.
And some lucky people can do their two-week mandatory quarantine in the small, fine rooms during the Corona months.
Now the new house is making history: One of the Marriott's kitchens is the first restaurant in the world to put pulled chicken on the menu.
Christoph Hein
Business correspondent for South Asia / Pacific based in Singapore.
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Behind this is a revolution that the Southeast Asian city-state is driving forward with all its might: The island without its own mineral resources is positioning itself as a location for new food technology. With great government funding, it attracts founders and innovative companies that develop food. Among them is the North German Timo Recker, who produces and markets chicken leg meat from plants here under his Tindle brand.
From Thursday, Recker's start-up Next Gen wants to penetrate Singapore into the Asian capitals Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and Macau.
The American agro-giant Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) has just opened a large-scale plant-based food laboratory for Asia in Singapore.
The small, rich state wants to secure a leading position at least in the market of 3.4 billion Asians.
The country is turning itself into a test laboratory: by 2030, the island intends to cover 30 percent of its food needs from its own production with almost no land area.
So they grew vegetables upright on house walls early on.
First approval in the world
In the meantime, it is moving into high technology, into completely new forms of nutrition, which in particular should revolutionize the global meat market with a volume of around 2 trillion dollars.
The chicken market alone is around $ 193 billion.
Singapore was the first country in the world to allow Eat Just from San Francisco to grow and sell chicken breasts from animal cells in the laboratory with its Good Meat brand.
From Thursday, the Cantonese high-end restaurant Madame Fan in the Marriott Hotel will be offering dumplings and a chicken salad made from laboratory meat.
At the end of December, the first guests at Club 1880 in Singapore were allowed to try the chicken out of the test tube.
For weeks now, huge banners have been hanging in the city that are supposed to market the good meat.
The delivery service foodpanda also delivers it.
Eat Just received the world's first approval for the production and marketing of chicken breast fillet from the Singapore authorities last December after a two-year review.
The Californians grew up with egg substitutes based on plants.
Further capital secured
In Singapore, the Americans are now working with the investors from Proterra Investment Partners Asia to build a factory for plant-based proteins from which the artificial eggs for Asia are made.
"Just as electric cars will one day only be referred to as cars, cultured meat can become the standard if the industry receives sufficient public and private funding to expand," says Mirte Gosker, Asia director at the Good Food Institute.
Eat Just is well on its way: the company has just secured additional capital of $ 170 million for Good Meat. Eat Just received another $ 200 million in March. In the Eat-Just financing round, among others, O'Connor from investment management at the Swiss bank UBS, Graphene Ventures and K3 Ventures believe in the business model with meat from the laboratory. “This investment and the historic decision of the JW Marriott point to the future: Meat without killing animals will replace conventional meat at some point in our lifetime. The sooner we can do that, the healthier our planet will be, ”said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just.