Magpie Singapore, the Tiong Bahru restaurant helmed by New Zealand-born chef-owner Eliot Thomas, will this July host two distinct ticketed dinner events in honour of Mātariki, the Māori New Year, the occasion observed across New Zealand and the wider Pacific for remembering those who have passed, celebrating the living, and setting intentions for the year ahead.
The events, Block Party (10 & 11 July) and Hākari (28 July), together bring four chefs to a single address on Eng Hoon Street, each arriving from a different city and a different chapter of their lives, to cook food that maps migration, memory and what it means to be from somewhere. Both dinners are ticketed and bookings for both are open now at www.sevenrooms.com/experiences/magpie
Sponsored by Lumina, Garage Project, TINY, Orca and Ao Cacao, the two events are separate in character and menu, one a convivial, nostalgia-driven Kiwi reunion across two nights; the other an intimate four-hands exploration of Fijian and Pacific heritage across one, but are united by a common thread – the belief, shared by every chef involved, that food is the most direct route back to where you began.
Block Party – 10 & 11 July 2026
Three Kiwi Chefs. Two Nights. One Neighbourhood Reunion.
On the evenings of 10 & 11 July, Magpie will host Block Party priced at $128++ per person, bringing together Eliot Thomas of Magpie Singapore, Dane Andersen of Burnt Ends Singapore, and Caleb Carter of Emmelyn Restaurant in Guangzhou, three New Zealand-born chefs who each left Aotearoa to build careers across four continents, and who return here, for two nights, to cook the food they grew up with.
The menu is a love letter to Kiwi culinary nostalgia, rendered through the skills of three world-trained chefs: Moewai Road (rewana tandoori bread with onion dip), After School (Kiwi pie mochi), Nesian Mystic (ika mata with Dane’s fry bread), Chur – Feels Like Sunday! (Lumina lamb shoulder), salt-baked salmon with puha and trout roe, and Underarm Bowl (black forest pavlova). The knowing dish names instantly legible to any New Zealander, signal the evening’s tone: warmth, wit and genuine homecoming.
“Mātariki has always been about coming home and not necessarily to a place, but to the people and the food that made you,” said Chef Eliot Thomas. “Dane, Caleb and I have all been away for a long time, building our careers in kitchens far from Aotearoa. Bringing us together in Tiong Bahru for two nights, cooking the food we grew up with, feels like exactly what this time of year calls for.”
“Growing up in Wellington, food was always tied to the landscape, to the land and the sea around you,” said Chef Dane Andersen of Burnt Ends Singapore. “What I love about this menu is that it’s honest. It’s not trying to be anything other than what it is, Kiwi food, cooked with the skills and perspective we’ve each picked up along the way.”
“My cooking has always been a conversation between memory and place,” said Chef Caleb Carter of Emmelyn Restaurant. “When Eliot reached out, it felt like an opportunity to revisit where it all started to honour those roots in a way that feels genuinely meaningful rather than just nostalgic for its own sake.”
Block Party runs across two sittings on 10 & 11 July 2026 at Magpie Singapore for $128++ per person, available at www.sevenrooms.com/experiences/magpie
Hākari — 28 July 2026
Two Chefs, Two Oceans, One Table
On the evening of 28 July, Magpie will host Hākari, the Māori word for feasting, a four-hands dinner priced at $98++ per person, pairing chef-owner Eliot Thomas with guest chef Kevin Lee of Poon’s Supper Club. Where Block Party looks outward at a shared national identity, Hākari turns inward: it is a dinner built on the uncanny discovery that two chefs, both New Zealand-born, both carrying Fijian roots, both having spent decades cooking across continents, had been living parallel lives before crossing paths in Singapore in 2025.
The menu draws directly from both chefs’ personal histories: Kokoda Ceviche, Smoked Banana Leaf Seabass, Palusami, Tapioca Leaf Fried Rice, Cassava Mash Curry and Kueh Bingka, dishes that chart the Fijian, Pacific and Southeast Asian currents running through both their lives. Lee’s father ran Poon’s Restaurant in Nadi Town at the height of its influence in the eighties and nineties; Thomas inherited his Fijian roots through his maternal grandparents and traces them through what he calls “borderless soul food.”
“Mātariki is about honouring where you come from and who made you,” said Chef Eliot Thomas. “Kevin and I have both spent our lives moving – across oceans, kitchens, cultures – and this dinner is our way of standing still for one evening and saying: this is us, this is our story, and this is the food that tells it.”
“Food has always been how I process things,” said Chef Kevin Lee of Poon’s Supper Club. “My father’s restaurant in Nadi was everything, it was how we understood who we were. When he passed in 2018, I went back to the kitchen because I didn’t know where else to go. This dinner is a way of continuing that conversation.”
Hākari takes place on the evening of 28 July 2026 at Magpie Singapore for $98++ per person, available at www.sevenrooms.com/experiences/magpie
