Day 9 – boom boom boom as she strides down the street in search of more food

First day of work in Singapore today, and I have a host (Jeff) who seems to love food as much as I do. We met and immediately went off for a coffee. I hadn’t had breakfast (£30 in the hotel for a bowl of cereal?! I think not) so Jeff got me some Kaya toast, which is a brilliant, brilliant thing, and an experience I repeated for the next few days! It is two thin crispy slices of white toast sandwiched together with lumps of butter and thick Kaya paste in between, which is essentially coconut jam. I’ve brought some of the paste back to relive the experience! The coffee (actually kopi) or tea that usually comes with it is the sweet kind with condensed milk – something I’d never go for in England but it seemed to fit pretty well here.

Couple of hours later, we went for lunch. I declared myself to be “up for local experiences” so we (me, Jeff and a couple of others) went off to “Banquet” which is an indoor version of the big outdoor hawker markets. What it actually is is a food court in a mall, but I can’t emphasise enough the difference between this and our pathetic food courts in shopping centres here in the UK. The choice of Asian foods on offer here was amazing, and all of it incredibly good quality. I put myself in Jeff’s hands (“I’ll have whatever you’re having” was my standard ploy in Singapore since I hadn’t got a clue what most of it was) and we went for kway teow noodles with cockles (another brave moment, but hey, let’s just go for it!).

Kway Teow stall

I have never actually had cockles before, and I have to say, they are slightly evil little fishy things. Luckily there weren’t millions of them in there, and the noodles were fantastically tasty again. We also got some otak-otak, which is spicy fish paste in banana leaf.

Cockles kway teow

Here we hit a snag – for the first time in the whole trip, I spent the afternoon feeling really sick. No idea what it was but it did mean I was in danger of missing out on one of my meal opportunities in the evening – not happy about that! I decided to head to Chinatown and see if I could possibly work up an appetite along the way. I had “so much food, so little time” going round my head so I was hoping something would catch my fancy. I managed to walk all through a big hawker market and then all along the street food road in Chinatown without a single thing appealing to me.

I headed back to my hotel and thought I’d give Gluttons Bay one more try, for maybe something light. Ah ha – roti prata; I’d heard of this and it was supposed to be light Indian bread with some sort of dip – perfect. So, it turned out the dip was actually a full-on chicken curry, so not such a light meal after all! The bread was the lightest imaginable, and the curry incredibly full-flavoured. I struggled on for a few minutes trying to debone a chicken leg with a fork and a spoon, until the stall guy came over and dumped a pile of napkins in front of me. So… I continued by hand, and got covered in curry – a lot of fun! I then attempted to stroll back nonchalantly into my fancy-pants hotel with curry all over my face, but I’m not sure I quite managed it.

Roti Prata

Day 10 – Japanese lunch and a View

Not much to write home about today. We had lunch in a Japanese place (one of the many many options on offer in the mall) which was nice – some sort of beef rice pot, gyu don I think, which came with miso etc.

Gyu Don

Then really nothing to report in the evening other than some bar snacks in KPO (I can confirm that nights out in Singapore are Fun), but here’s the lovely view from the top of the Swissotel:

Singapore River

Day 11 – an amazing lunch and a brave Little India dinner

So, today I got taken “local” for lunch. There was a proper hawker market just across the road from the office (Harbourfront, the food place was called Seah Im) which I am so jealous of – if only we had such a thing in Canary Wharf! Although I would probably get very large if we did… There was so much choice again, but I went for (or rather I was given) nasi ayam penyet. This was probably the best meal of my whole trip. It was coconut rice, sambal, spicy chicken which had been smashed (I’m not totally sure what that means), and more sambal. Very spicy but so unbelievably good. The rice was the most surprising – it looked like a plate of standard steamed rice but it had been cooked in coconut cream, and the flavour! Just incredible. I think sambal may be somewhat addictive too. There are variations on the picture below – mine was the nearest one plus the chicken plate in the middle. The furthest plate was nasi goreng which was also fantastic.

Nasi Ayam Penyet

We also had a side order of carrot cake, which is not at all what I expected – it’s a savoury thing here with lots of soy sauce. They also got me a rose syrup drink to undo the chilli heat from the sambal!

Carrot cake and rose syrup

The evening was a little different. I headed into Little India for a wander and for the first time on the trip, felt a little out of my comfort zone. Part of that was to do with the fact I had my work stuff on and my laptop in my bag, which probably wasn’t very clever! The place recommended by Jeff looked very intimidating and in the end I ended up at Tekka Market, a major hawker stall centre. It was brave but I could have been braver as I think the more authentic Little India food is to be had in the restaurants rather than in the hawker market (apparently the market food is “singapore indian food” rather than the real thing!).

Tekka Market

But, a large beer and a chicken biryani went down very well and I was just about the only Westerner to be seen in the place so good street food points there!

Chicken Biryani

Day 12 – Two lunches and Bah Kut Teh

Very exciting day, as today was Bah Kut Teh day. But more of that later. First, the two lunches! Now this was Jeff’s fault. We went to the food court for some Hainanese chicken rice, which is a major local speciality. But Jeff decided that I also needed to try something else that for the life of me I can’t remember the name of. It was a collection of things – dough sticks, Taiwanese sausage, squid toast, century egg, fish goujons etc. All very nice and interesting. Hainanese chicken rice – again super tasty rice, and so I have brought back some ingredients to try and recreate back here. The only thing I didn’t get on with was the century egg. It was black and jelly-like, and just about edible, but seriously unpleasant.

Here is all the food – this was for two people! We ate it all.

Two lunches

Now – Bah Kut Teh. I’d never heard of this before; it means Pork Rib Tea, and is pork ribs stewed in a soup of tea and spices. It’s a Malay / Singaporean speciality and it was spectacularly good. About ten of us went, and we just ordered the standard Bah Kut Teh all round. It came with some sides of chill, dough sticks, peanuts, rice etc. And the soup/tea was so tasty! They keep coming round to top up your dish with the soup, as long as you have some rib left, and then you eat the ribs as you go along. Easier than you’d think eating ribs with chopsticks! This is another thing I’ve brought the spice mix back for – I imagine mine will look nothing like the below when I attempt to make it…

Bah Kut Teh

Day 13 – Singapore Sling!

Last day in Asia, and the thought of depressing lunches in Canary Wharf looms large in my mind! By now, Jeff refers to me as a “local”, and there is apparently one thing left that I still need to experience, which is nasi lemak for breakfast. Similar to the fish ball soup in Hong Kong, this is something that would seem pretty alien to most of us Dorset cereal regulars. It consists of coconut rice wrapped in a banana leaf, with a whole deep-fried fish that I had to dismember, a load of dried mini anchovies (ikan bilis), peanuts, and a pile of spicy sambal. Well I just had to go with it, and it was very tasty!

Nasi Lemak for breakfast

Couple of hours later and it was lunch time. We went Indonesian today, and had beef rendang, prawn and bean something or other, a chicken curry, a vegetable curry and some potato cakey things. My lovely Singaporean friends also got a couple of dessert drinks for me to try which were seriously (too) sweet!

That’s pretty much it, my Asian food adventures are over for the time being, but a trip to Singapore wouldn’t be complete without a “Cheers!” from the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel…

Singapore Sling!