Culinary (and other) Adventures in South East Asia - Part 1 - Singapore

After another world spanning adventure I am back to tell you a truth that I would not have believed before I went there: South East Asia eats better than we do here in the "First World", not only better but so cheaply that I was embarrassed paying the 50 Cents for my amazing meals.

The first stop on my voyage was the tiny City/State of Singapore.  Now Singapore has a reputation, rightly earned, for being a rule-bound and extraordinarily expensive city.  Totally true statement.  They didn't like my passport photo, and so kept me at immigration for more than 1 hour at 130 AM while checking with the US government and their supervisors.  Well, that is why it is so safe there apparently.

More painful for a drinker such as myself, the average price for a single beer in a bottle was about 10 US dollars.  Prohibitively expensive for a night out on the town.  In fact, if you were going out on the town, the places you were going were most likely charging $15 dollars or more per beer.  Don't even ask about Wine or Spirits.  I ordered a Manhattan at a popular nighttime destination area called Clarke Quay and not only was it $22 dollars, it was the size of a shot glass.  Of course, this area also looked like you had been transported to Las Vegas, so maybe they just incorporated the price of a plane ticket to make you feel like you had left Singapore.

However, I was fortunate enough to discover the National Sport of Singapore: Eating.  No joke.  At all times of the night and day, there were people eating everywhere.  Eating at restaurants seemed to be an after thought.  No, in Singapore, people eat at Hawker Stands.  Hawker Stands are what remained after the Government, in an apparent attempt to limit food-borne illness, created permanent Hawker Markets all over they city, where these food carts become food stalls.  What a great idea.  That way you can literally try 50 different dishes and only have to walk about 50 feet to get all of them.

If you go there, it is best to take at least one other person and have them stake out a table, as at prime eating times, the likelihood that you will be able to score a seat at a table is highly unlikely. There are also markets in which the table numbers enable you to tell the hawkers where you are sitting, and they will bring you your food restaurant style.

Since Singapore is such a multicultural city, the types of food that can be found literally spans all of Asia.  The dominant ethnic groups are the Malay, the Chinese, and the Indians, mostly from the Tamal ethnic minority.  This creates an amazing mixture of cultural and food tradition that is unique to Singapore.  Talking to residents that grew up in the city, this tradition is rapidly changing to become more "Pan-Asian" but for the moment, the traditions are still holding.

I visited the area of Singapore called Little India to the main Hawker Market to try what are among the most famous of Singaporean Dishes, the Roti Canai or Roti Paratha. 

The Roti is a ghee drenched bread that is folded in a really amazing way by people that have obviously been doing this for  most of they lives.  Basically, you need to take a small ball of dough, pound it into a small round shape and then flip it over and over, slowly stretching it out by rapidly flipping it onto a greased surface.  This makes for a really thin dough that is then folded on itself with, yes, more ghee, and then fried in Ghee on a very hot grill until it is lightly browned and blistered. 

This dish can be eaten at all times of the day, but is usually served with either sugar or with some type of curry.  I had it also with eggs and cheese as a sort of breakfast sandwich.  Basically, any way you can have this dish, it is amazing.  Greasy and bad for you?  Yes.  Delicious?  Absolutely.

The Chinese tradition is also very strong in Singapore, mostly found in the various versions of Chicken Rice, Long Coffee, Rice Porridge and the tea drinks that are ubiquitous in the city.  The Hainanese people from the smallest province in China were a majority of the original population of Singapore, and so brought their traditions and foods as a result.  In fact, according to the food people I spoke to in Singapore, Hainanese Chicken Rice is not only the Singaporean National Dish, but is more popular in Singapore than in Hainan.  This dish consists of a long boiled chicken, served cold and rice cooked in the stock, with a chili ginger or green onion-garlic-ginger dipping sauce and often with a hot cup of chicken broth on the side.  This dish is simple, but really satisfying.  The rice has an amazing amount of flavor.  The Tiger beer is also really nice with this dish, but like almost all SE Asian beer (with the major exception of Kingdom Beer in Cambodia) it is a light lager that is really more about thirst quenching cold than flavor.




I also had some amazing Chicken/Century Egg Rice Porridge that required standing in line for almost 45 minutes to get.  It was quite good, but I am not sure that I would stand in line for that long again! Rice porridge is an acquired taste for sure, but not as acquired as century egg.  The jelly texture would turn off many Americans not used to the Asian desire for conflicting textures.

I also found many fresh food markets through out the city that mostly focused on one type of cuisine.  I ventured into a large seafood market in Central Singapore that did not smell.  For someone that is allergic to fish such as myself, that is really saying something.  I am really sensitive to the smell of um...ripe fish..so I was pleasantly surprised at the freshness that was obvious there.


Over all, I really enjoyed Singapore for the food and mixture of cultures.  However, the expense and a distinct sense that the leaders of the city wished to wipe out their own traditions made Singapore feel fake in many ways.  I hope that they will be able to find a happy balance.

In upcoming posts, I will continue to tell about my trip, but I will also attempt to recreate the foods that I was able to experience there, starting in the same order in which I visited the countries.

Next up in Part 2 - Thailand