Posted on 07/30/2013 8:14:10 PM PDT by TexGrill
There are two topics that you don’t discuss in Singapore: the weather and politics, because both generally remain the same.
Food, on the other hand, is a subject that unifies the people of this small island like nothing else can.
Eating out here can range from horrifically expensive - S$300 for a steak if you go to a celebrity chef restaurant - to terrific value, such as S$3 for a bowl of delicious noodles, eaten out of a plastic bowl while sitting under strip lighting.
Yet it is the traditional and inexpensive food sold at hawker centres that sparks an appetite for debate in most Singaporeans.
I’ve been to dinner parties that only really came alive when I asked the person next to me where I should go to eat a really good bowl of prawn noodles. The entire table erupted in a heated exchange of views, with people insisting their place was the very best. I now use it as my default line when I sit next to someone I can’t think of anything to say to.
There are two things that are wonderful about this type of food. Street food is generally delicious wherever you are in Asia, be it Thailand, Vietnam or Malaysia, but there are not many places where you would happily feed it to your child. In Singapore, it is hygiene graded.
Secondly, hawker food is inexpensive yet made with freshly sourced ingredients cooked on the spot to your liking. It is for this reason that it is a great leveller and is eaten and enjoyed by everyone from across the social spectrum from factory workers to CEOs.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Frog porridge hot. Frog porridge cold. Frog porridge in the pot, nine days old.
Singapore has the most trustworthy street food - everything is so highly government regulated that even they must pass regular checks - cheap, fresh and tasty too!
Food was fabulous.
I was amazed--a Chinese country/city that was clean. China was so filthy as are many, many Chinese places. We were in China in 1983, when it just opened to the world. I didn't know "filthy" until I went there.
I lived in Mexico two years and thought that Mexico was filthy.
Then we lived in Saudi Arabia and I thought THAT country was filthy.
While we were there we visited Egypt and Kenya, both not very clean.
Then we visited India--it had the award as the dirtiest.
Then we visited China. It won the award HANDS DOWN for the most appalling filth.
Those places made Mexico look downright SWISS!!
Lol. Pease, please; 86 the frog!
I have not been to Singapore for many years. It is one of my all time favorite places. Almost all of SE Asia has a mystique about it that I still enjoy very much.
Some of the best meals, best times and best times with new and old friends were at the food court on Orchard Road. Outdoor. Never got sick. Go to as many stalls as you want. Order what you want. Little or nothing written down. You pay your cash and everything comes to your table with a smile. No numbers nothing. They just remember who ordered what and find you! Absolutely astounding!
One of the steamiest hot places I have ever been other than one day in Hong Kong but just a fascinating place to be and work.
I have been to all those countries you listed, except Singapore where I am planning to visit next February. “Filth” depends on one’s definition of it. A lot of harmless and odor free debris flying around does not bother me as much as stink from open sewers and rotting material in standing pools of dirty water. In US one of dirtiest places are alleys behind Cottage Grove street in south side of Chicago. Not to mention one of the most dangerous places on earth to get mugged.
Well, filth IS in the eye of the beholder.
I don't go to Chinese restaurants anymore. I used to go but I would sit in the MIDDLE of the room, not next to the walls. In the past when I sat near the walls I would occasionally see a cockroach crawl up the wall.
One of our morning breakfast hangouts was a cafe owned and run by Chinese. We went there for years. One day, however, while I was sitting at the counter, a cockroach ran up from the service area up on to the counter, right at me. Yikes. That was my last visit there.
The Chinese, as a people/culture aren't personally dirty, but cleanliness costs MONEY and the Chinese don't want to spend money on clean. Singapore was the exception. Amazing, a clean Chinese country....city, really.
The Chinese believe in TWO things: luck and money.
When we went to Shanghai in the early 80's I was by the river and asked the guide was that stench was from the river.
He said, without pause or shame: "Madame, that is the smell of 12 million people going to the toilet twice a day."
Shanghai was the BEST of all the Chinese cities, the cleanest and most modern.
In one hotel (Xian) I slept with my clothes on, it was so filthy. There were so many cockroaches in the bathroom that my husband had to come in with me when I went to the toilet to keep the cockroaches away from me.
He took his video camera to China--it was one of the first video cameras made. The Chinese were agog with curiosity for that new BIG camera.
India, Mexico, Africa--all looked SWISS-clean compared to China.
Is anyone going to tell me: Oh, China has changed now?
Hah, I say, HAH!!! Some things don't change and China's view on paying for cleanliness has NOT changed. I doubt that it ever will.
No frog porridge for me, neither hot nor cold. I have been to Singapore and did enjoy the fab street food. Gourmet stuff, really. This was long ago, when stands were set up in city parking lots when commuters pulled out after work. AS I recall, they HAD to vacate their parking spots in time for the food vendors to set up or their cars would be impounded and the tickets cost as much as a new car. Almost.
The other fun feature was Bugis Street, where gorgeous, beautifully mannered, coifed, dressed transvestites sat with customers, like open-air geishas...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugis_Street
Gee, Bugis Street bit the dust in the mid-80s. Dating myself, but oh well. I brought back a color photo of the Bugis Street ladies and hung it on the wall. My husband’s business partner came for dinner with his wife and she admired the lovely ladies in the picture. When I told her they were men, she literally fainted on the floor. Oooops.
And so it goes, travel really is broadening.
Hong Kong was SO hot and muggy that my husband’s brand new VIDEO CAMERA (1983) shut down! It just turned itself off!
Hi again, cloudmountain. Good to see you on this thread.
I hate to break it to you, but I saw a MOUSE run up the wall in a French restaurant in San Francisco. A crepe place near the theatre district. Gross. Also saw a mouse in a Seattle restaurant, and another in Marina del Rey. The MdR restaurant was shiny and new. But close to water. Anyway, Singapore is clean and I had a really good visit back in the day.
You in HK at the wrong time of year if it was too hot and muggy.
Visit Hong Kong between about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Glorious weather.
It is actually a really beautiful city.
Frog porridge hot. Frog porridge cold. Frog porridge in the pot, nine days old.
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It would stay in the pot WAY more than nine days if I had any say...
At that point, it becomes some kind of a fermented critter-based sauce.
Perhaps tanning leather?
At that point, it becomes some kind of a fermented critter-based sauce
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Well that is certainly a thought. Compost Pile where are you??
One of the more fun aspects of my job is chance to travel internationally several times a year. Damn few of our destinations are third-world sh*t holes. So I’ve gotten to visit many interesting places. The place with the best food, hands-down, no doubt about it, has to be Singapore. I’d rather have dinner there than any other place on the planet I’ve dined and that includes Paris. I will make the disclaimer that Michelin-starred restaurants are usually outside of our corporate expense guidelines and perhaps a 4 or 5-star establishment in Paris might get me to alter my views.
Genuine Singaporean Chili crab might be the best damn food on the planet. I hope to be back there later this year after an absence of 3 years. I know exactly what I’m going to eat (Chili crab) and where (The Red House) on my first night. Maybe my second or third as well. Even if I only go once, I expect any other dinners to be pretty good as well. Singapore is a crossroads and the cuisines from most of the world are well represented in all of their variety and creativity.
If a visit to Singapore isn’t on your bucket list you can still get a pretty good sense of the dining possibilities by catching a rerun of the Singapore episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show The Layover on the Travel Channel.
No Balut?
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