My Perfect Weekend with Nuholt Huisamen, Levi’s managing director

Who: Mr Nuholt Huisamen, managing director of Levi Strauss & Co for East Asia Pacific, overseeing North Asia, Japan, South Korea, South-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

The 50-year-old South African native has been living in Singapore for the past six years with his wife and three children – two sons and a daughter aged between 14 and 18. He has been with clothing company Levi’s for over 20 years and was based in Cape Town, South Africa, prior to Singapore.

“I’m a family man and a sporty guy, so on my weekends, I try to get to the gym, stay healthy and have various sporting activities with my kids. Sometimes, it’s the rugby field with my sons or the gymnastics gym with my daughter. 

On Sunday mornings, we like to take long walks as a family to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, where we would have some coconut water. We pull one another along, but we do manage to cover about 10km usually. It’s very beautiful and it’s good to slip away into nature from time to time.

We’re South African, so having outdoor barbecues by the pool, making food and grilling meat for the children on weekends is a very big part of our lifestyle. According to my kids, I make the best steak in the world and I tend to believe them. I’m a very particular person in general, which means I’m also very particular about my barbecue, so I have moved through a few butchers in my time here. 

Currently, I buy my meat from Huber’s Butchery in Dempsey Road. I used to buy beef sourced from Australia, then I bought Argentinian, but now I’ve cycled back to the roots of my company – grain-fed beef from the United States. Recently, I deviated from my normal signature by trying some ribeye steaks, but where I get the big thumbs-up from the kids are the tenderloin fillet steaks. I’ll make some veggies, have some good red wine on hand and it’s a great meal.

Aside from family time, I have alone time with my wife too. We live in the Bukit Timah area and there are quite a few eateries in the area where we grab a bite, like Greenwood Fish Market. 

For her birthday this year, I took her out to one of my new favourite restaurants – the Grand Shanghai Restaurant at King’s Centre in Havelock Road. I took my team for lunch there as well. There’s live music, the food is fantastic and its old Shanghai ambience really struck a chord with me.

When I’m out, I’m always people-watching. Even when I’m relaxed, I tend to take note of what people are wearing, and I check out if they are wearing jeans. Personally, outside of exercise gear, my wardrobe is completely consumed by Levi’s. My current favourite pair of jeans are the 501 Slim Taper jeans. The 501 are our original blue jeans, which will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year and I enjoy the sentiment and legacy around them.”