A Food Tour of Singapore

As we spent most of our time and money on food in Singapore, it seems only right that I dedicate a post to Singaporean cuisine. The city state is a melting pot of different cultures, religions and people, and this is reflected in the endlessly exciting and delicious local cooking.

First and foremost, chicken rice. If this is not the national dish then it should be. We made sure it was the first thing we ate in Singapore. It sounds so simple but it tastes so good. The rice is cooked in the chicken stock with herbs, the melt-in-your-mouth chicken is served in a sweet jus. I could eat it everyday.

A chicken rice feast with couchsurfing friends.

While in Singapore we met up with two old friends, Weizhao and Xiu Wen, who we first met in Arequipa, Peru, three and a half years ago. Weizhao and Xiu Wen, native Singaporeans of Chinese heritage, took us on an eating tour of some of the finest, cheapest and weirdest dishes around.

We started in Old Airport Road Hawker Centre. A hawker centre is essentially a food court, a sprawling, covered dining area with hundreds of stalls, selling thousands of dishes. We spent a lot of time in the Old Airport Road centre trying to eat as many local delicacies as possible but we barely scratched the surface. With over 200 different stalls each selling a minimum of 5 different dishes, it would take years to sample everything. But we did try.

As we sat drinking our morning coffees waiting for our friends, a local lady started talking to us and insisted we sample her lunch. Her husband joined the conversation and soon hurried off to buy more food to share with us. This was to be a continuing theme in Singapore; the locals love their food, talking about food, and encouraging willing tourists like us, to eat it. Our first course with these friendly strangers consisted of:

Cuttlefish, bean curd and veggies in hoi sin sauce

Cockles with vinegar-chilli sauce (not even Ric enjoyed this one)

Jellied pork knuckle

Not your typical breakfast.

Breakfast.

Weizhao and Xiu Wen joined us in the hawker centre and brought a seemingly endless supply of weird and wonderful Singaporean-Chinese dishes to our table. Just as most Chinese restaurants in England sell a hybrid of English-Chinese cooking, Singaporean-Chinese food has its own distinct style and flavours. Our second breakfast comprised:

Pig stomach, large intestine and small intestine in a sweet soy sauce

Hokkien Mee - Thin noodles with prawns in a creamy seafood sauce

Flat noodles with cockles in dark soy sauce

Wide noodle soup

The dreaded intestines course.

Admittedly I wasn’t too keen on most of the fishy dishes but Ric loved them. This was my second time eating pig intestine and although our friends assured us it was the best in Singapore, and the queue for the modest stall confirmed this, it still didn’t win me over. I’ll stick to pork chops from now on. Fortunately, next up was the dessert course:

Red rice pudding and coconut milk

Sea coconut and jelly over ice

Cendol noodles (which are sweet and green) with beans and coconut milk

Ric chosing dessert.

After a heavy and offaly breakfast we left the hawker centre in search of something more to my taste – gin! The Raffle’s Hotel, founded in 1887, is the birthplace of the famous cocktail, the Singapore Sling, invented in 1915. The hotel was once the epicentre of cosmopolitan life for wealthy British expats during Singapore’s 140 years as a British colony. Today it remains one of the most prestigious hotels in the city, although fortunately for us, the infamous Long Bar is open to the riffraff public.

At S$35 (£17.50) a cocktail, to say that the drinks are overpriced is an understatement. The mix of pineapple juice, cherry purée and gin was indeed delicious, and the bar, with its colonial mahogany interior and old mechanical fans, was an enjoyable place to spend a couple of hours rubbing our sweaty shoulders with the upper echelons of society. Nice, but far too expensive to repeat the experience. We made sure we upheld the bar’s centuries old tradition of throwing our discarded peanut shells straight onto its five star floor, much to the astonishment and discomfort of our friends, who proved far too Singaporean to concede to dropping litter.

Singapore Sling.

We moved on to Long Beach King Restaurant for our next feast, a Singapore speciality:

Chilli crab

And for non seafood lovers (me):

Beef and blackbean noodles

The enormous crab, which it turns out is from Sri Lanka rather than Singapore, is cooked in a sweet chilli, tomato and egg sauce, with hot bread buns for dipping. It was delicious, as were the noodles.

Chilli crab.

As the evening progressed Weizhao and Xiu Wen shared a conspiratory smile and lead us to eat the so-called “King of Fruit”:

The durian

With a smell of sulphurous rotting fruit mixed with sweaty socks it’s no wonder that most tourists steer well clear of these oversized beasts. You can smell them from 50m away and they are banned in hotels and on public transport across Asian. Yet all Asian people love them. With plastic gloves to protect our hands we gave it a try. The taste, unbelievably, is worse than the smell: an overpowering flavour of overripe onion, rotting fruit and feet, with a creamy, slimy texture. It was worse than the intestines. After our first and final taste we watched in fascinated horror as Weizhao and Xiu Wen polished it off, savouring every morsel. If I ever start to enjoy durian please instruct the embassy to have me evacuated out of Asia, it’s a sign I’ve been here too long.

The King of Fruits.

Finally, for a late supper and for something to rid us of the stale-fart durian taste, we went for dim sum:

Century old egg in rice porridge

Pissing beef ball soup

Fried pork and celery dumplings

Steamed bbq pork rolls

Fried prawn rolls

Chicken wings in hoi sin sauce

The black runny eggs in the rice porridge were fortunately not a century old but the real reason they’re black is surely worse: they’re dipped in ash and then soaked in horse urine, yummy! On the other hand, the pissing beef balls were urine-free.

Dim sum.

The next day Ric and I returned to Old Airport Road to continue our gluttonous food tour alone, valiantly ploughing through an obscene amount of food:

Lor Mee – noodles, chicken, pork and egg in a thick meaty gravy (a local favourite, the queue is ten people deep at all times)

Carrot cake (neither carrot, nor cake! An omelette made with white radish)

Kaya toast (coconut jam and a thick slab of salted butter on toast)

Beef on rice

Mango cheese mousse

Carrot cake omelette.

For lunch we went to Tekka Hawker Centre in Little India to sample some Indian-influenced Singapore specialities:

Curry puff (a curry pasty)

Tulang

Mutton masala

Aloo gobi (vegetable curry)

Naan breads

Burfy (Indian sweets made from milk and clarified butter)

In Little India we were once again surrounded by friendly locals who were happy to meet foreigners enjoying their local food. Everyone wanted to present their favourite dish to us, tell us what to eat, where to eat and how to eat it. The tulang is a special Singaporean-Indian dish of mutton bones in a bright red chilli sauce. To eat it you use a straw to suck the marrow from the bones. It’s a tasty, rich, high-cholesterol, messy affair that left us with stained orange fingers.

Messy tulang.

Tekka hawker centre, Little India.

To complete our eating extravaganza, our couchsurfing hosts prepared a meal for us the night before we left. Philippine host Charlene cooked a traditional meal from her country while Indian host PJ made lemon and ginger ade and rotis.

For us Singapore was a blow out of interesting new foods from many different origins. In a way, the diversity of the food, the kindness of the people and fun we had eating with the kind people pretty much sums up Singapore. 

Phillipine meal with our couchsurfing friends.

Sightseeing and Football in Singapore

I don’t know if it was the great company, the amazing food or just the impressive scale of the city that made me fall in love with Singapore, but I really did love it. It’s one of the best cities in the world.

We stayed with a great group of couchsurfing veterans who showed us around, made us feel right at home and gave us some great tips about the city and the food.

We’d travelled for almost 36 hours from Chiang Dao to Singapore by bus, hitch-hiked truck, train, plane and monorail. When we finally arrived we were tired and smelly, but our hosts rallied us to hit the town and I’m glad we did. Singapore really comes to life at night, when all the tight-laced office staff clock off for the day and descend from their skyscrapers into the trendy bars along Boat Quay.

We passed the evening drinking duty free rum from Thailand on a vibrant bridge in Clarke Quay. In a country where it is illegal to chew gum, litter or cross the road (jay walk), I was surprised to find that it’s legal to drink in public places in Singapore. Perhaps it has to be legal because the price of alcohol in the bars is so expensive; a small bottle of beer costs around £7! The bridge was crowded with an eclectic mix tourists, locals, Asians, Westerners, old, young, families, hen parties and groups of friends. There was singing, dancing and mingling, all the atmosphere of a great bar without the cost.

The quays were once lined with warehouses where the city’s main trade took place. Now, the old warehouses have been renovated into funky bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as a clean, modern riverfront. There was a great energy about the area, so much so that we managed to stay out until 2am despite being really tired!

Clarke Quay.

In Singapore we met up with old friends, Weizhao and Xiu Wen, who took us on an eating tour of the city and joined us to watch Singapore vs. Thailand compete in the Suzuki Cup at the national stadium. Ric’s face was lit up like a kid’s at Christmas after a full day of nothing but food and football, he was in his element.

The football match was entertaining as Singapore proved excellent at missing really easy shots, much to the disappointment of the home team. Thailand won 2-1 and I happened to miss Singapore’s one and only goal when I nipped out to the bathroom! The state city’s national team played worse than Huddersfield, but who can blame them as they only formed a decade or so ago. Every seat in the 55,000 capacity stadium has air conditioning basting out from under it, a welcome relief in the steamy humidity but not really an environmentally friendly feature.

Gooooooo Footbaaaalll!

All the locals told us that the 165m high Singapore Flyer, an observation wheel similar to yet bigger than the London Eye, would be boring, but we loved it. Perhaps the novelty of seeing Singapore’s incredible skyline in a 360 degree panoramic view isn’t appealing for the local residents who see it everyday; we on the other hand, were enthralled. The skyscrapers of the CBD (Central Business District), the lush Gardens By The Bay, the ocean crowded with container ships and the marina; there is so much going on in this city. It was an expensive attraction at S$30 (£15) each but well worth it. 

View of Singapore.

Gardens By The Bay.

When we weren’t busy gorging on rich Singaporean food, we spent some time walking around the five star hotels pretending to be rich and important. We thought about checking into the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, with it’s iconic ship shaped viewing platform and infinity pool, but for $400 per night we considered it a bit too common and we decided to stay with our couchsurfing friends instead! However, we did stop by to watch the evening light and sound show, which was a bit strange: the life cycle of man projected onto two fountains, with lasers and dramatic music. A brief reminder that Singapore is very much an Asian country.

Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore Flyer on the right.

Strange sound and light show in front of the CBD.

With so much to see and do in Singapore, it would have been lovely to stay for longer, but we were afraid we might blow all of our remaining travel budget there in just a few short days. 

What I loved most was perhaps the diversity within the city, it is the most multicultural place I have ever visited. Little India, with it’s colourful archways, bright clothing shops and endless gold jewellery; the CBD with it’s towering glass skyscrapers, Lamborghinis and designer shopping malls; the colonial district where old prestigious buildings and churches nestle between blocks of luxury condos. It was simply a wonderful place to walk around, with endless fascinating buildings to admire. 

Little India, complete with little Indian man barely taller than the rubbish bin.

What’s more, the people were wonderfully friendly, extremely polite and very helpful, more so than anywhere else. I found it hard to believe that English is the first language spoken my most of the population of Singapore, certainly by the younger generations. It was so unexpected to have an old Chinese lady turn to me and address me in perfect English after many months trying to bridge various language barriers. In addition to speaking the Queen’s, there is a particular dialect spoken in the region, known as Singlish, which has emerged as an interesting by-product of this multicultural society. It’s essentially English with words or speech patterns borrowed from Chinese and Malay, just to confuse us!

'Supertrees' at Gardens By The Bar.

And finally… Singapore is know as Fine City due to the strict rules and regulations that carry hefty fines. These include: no chewing gum, no being naked inside the house, no jay walking, and no smoking. The funniest rules were related to the country’s football league, which only has six professional teams. Each team may only have two players aged over 30 and the team which looses the competition must pay a S$50,000 fine at the end of the season. I was amused by the amount of polite-yet-firm signs that cover the city, reminding the residents to be good, law abiding citizens. From patronising cartoons on the underground reminding passengers not to block the aisle with luggage, to a drawing of a police man with the caption “no stealing please”, spotted on a construction site. For me the excessive signage was overbearing and patronising, yet the city has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, so maybe the Singaporeans are onto a good thing.