Eating our way through Singapore
Three days, so much food!
Through the miracles of air and time travel (the international dateline still blows my mind), we find ourselves in Singapore, Asia’s premier ultra-modern ultra-cosmopolitan city-state at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula.
Famed for its clean streets, pan-Asian cuisine and English-speaking locals, there are many reasons to go to Singapore: see the super-green (literally and figuratively) architecture! Experience all the cultures of Asia in one 50-kilometer radius! Eat all the food!
While appreciating Singapore for all its aspects, we really focused on the food. So not to get all early-2010s-food-journal-bloggery on you, but here’s a delightful tour of our eating highlights!
Ok so our first meal (lunch) was actually kinda a lowlight, but still worth mentioning. Singapore is famous for its chicken and rice, and also famous for the first hawker to be awarded a Michelin star. Hawker Chan has really capitalized on this fame, opening shops around the world. BUT he lost the star in 2021 and honestly the chicken was fine but significantly below expectations. I’m sorry to say that if you go to Singapore, give this one a miss.
Singapore’s population is 76% ethnic Chinese (followed by 15% Malaysian and 7% Indian), so our first dinner was at a Chinese hot pot restaurant. The hot pots themselves were out of our price range, but the non-potted food was excellent! (Restaurant food in Singapore is around America-priced.)
Alright day two was a big one. We started with traditional kaya toast — toast with a lots of butter and coconut jam served with soft boiled eggs and strong coffee. We added a thick salty-sweet soy sauce to the eggs and dipped the toast. I liked it, but be warned that the soft-boiled eggs are VERY soft. I think you may be able to ask for a more-boiled egg if you prefer…
For lunch we hit up the Amoy Street Food Hall — selected for its high concentration of highly-rated hawkers — two floors of stalls on stalls on stalls. I saw a long line, got in said line, and was rewarded for my patience with an absolutely divine fish and prawn soup. If you go to Singapore it is important to look up which food halls (every neighborhood has one) are open during the day versus at night — as far as we can tell most close around 2pm (and do not sell beer if that’s your vision). Even when the halls were open, many of the stalls were closed, which I suspect is due to the pandemic.
Our third day we wanted to check out Little India and Arab Street. It’s amazing how in the span of a few blocks you can transition from saris and shalwar kamize to kilims and carpets, from kulfi and biryani to kebabs and baba ganoush. Though the food looked amazing in both neighborhoods, and with more time I’m sure we’d have sampled it all, we are currently very jazzed about all things southeast Asian so we went for more noodles. Somewhere between the two neighborhoods lies a tiny unassuming food hall — really just one row of stalls in a semi-enclosed space. There you can find the most amazing Chinese-Malay laksa: rice noodles in spicy coconut milk broth with barely-cooked cockles, bean curd puff, fish cakes, and bean sprouts. Sungei Road Laksa has been in business for 60 years and what they’re doing is working.
For our final dinner, we went all out at the Newton Food Center (of crazy rich Asians fame). This nighttime spectacular is open-air and uniquely nice because you can put in your orders at a variety of stalls and they’ll all deliver to your table when the food is ready (Chris and I did a lot of eating in sequence rather than together at other food halls because timing lines is hard).
First: Satay chicken and pork at Satay Popiah. The skewers were just the right amount of blackened. The peanut dipping sauce was excellent.
Second: Fried oyster omelet at Hup Kee. This was one of my favorite dishes. The oysters were barely cooked and their salty sea-brine flavor went so well with the pillowy eggy omelet!
Third: Singapore’s famous “carrot cake,” which is neither carrot nor cake (also from Hup Kee)! It’s radish cake stir-fried with egg and dark sweet soy sauce. Imagine a good tofu stir-fry but more substantial and less spongy.
Fourth: Duck noodles from Kwee Heng. This unassuming-looking styrofoam tray contains my favorite dish of Singapore. The duck was tender, the greens nicely crunchy, and the sauce was just so rich and ducky. *Chef’s kiss* I’m in love.
Fifth: We’d read about this hot-cold dessert stall, so I tried the mango ice (Chris went for durian). It’s nice — basically a snow cone with mango sauce on top. But also surprise! The bottom is filled with some kind of jelly (I think it might be grass jelly, which we’ve seen advertised a lot in drinks), small sweet-ish red beans, and really big white beans (which I later learned are jackfruit seeds). How weird! How Asian! I enjoyed it but in general prefer ice cream.
Conclusion: Go to Singapore! Bring your appetite!