the great singapore food tour

27Jun09

I’m supposed to be in Bangkok right now relaxing with some iberry after a long day of ziplining in the rainforests of Chonburi. Instead, I’m chillin on the couch watching the first season of The OC with the brothers. What are the odds that my brother would develop a 101F fever, sore throat, and nausea 8 hours before our flight? Sigh. Grounded.

This does mean I have lots of time on my hands and thus have fewer excuses to drag my feet on the ol’ blog. In truth I’ve been feeling wishy washy about it. To blog or not to blog? I’ve been taking the camera out less and less, feeling less impressed and less intrigued by the yum yums to be had all over the island. Too lazy to document any culinary magic happening in my humble kitchen. In short my friends I’m feeling all blogged out. I’m trying to get revved up about it again so let’s begin by a post that needs, nay aches, to see the light of day.

Nags and I with the leadership of some of our favorite true blue Singaporeans, Melina and Isaac, put together an office food tour to visit 4 of the island’s tastiest hawker stalls. Please make way for the gluttony of 1 rainy Saturday in Singapore, 17 hungry tummies, and 4 hours of num nums in the tum tum.

The fun started in Tiong Bahru which I have to say has a pretty nice, modern hawker center. Very spacious, adequately clean, and lots of variety.

This chwee kueh blows my previous chwee kueh run in out of the water. Super soft rice cakes smothered with fried radish and garlic. A dash of spices a sprinkle of love and a side of chili and you have some rice cakes that are hard to beat. This stall (Jian Bo Shui Kueh) does steady business and has tons of awards hanging for good reason.

Most people were not quite adventurous enough for the pig organ soup but I tried a bit. Thumbs up for the meatball (porkball? fishball?) and the heart bits.

Steamy smooth delicious porridge with century egg and a surprise. Those brown bits? Not you tiao. Nuh uh. Those are fried pig intestine. A familiar crunch not unlike pork rinds (this is a good thing) with a meatier aftertaste. Slurp slurp.

A perfect little bun. So pretty to look at and brings plenty of the num nums too. These are char siew filled with a nice thin skin of dough. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again the dough to filling ratio in Singapore is ON POINT.

Cheng teng to wrap up our stay in Tiong Bahru. Similar to one of the flavors used in ice kacang – a flavor that tastes kinda like barley and kinda like wintermelon. Little beans and other goodies are under that ice mountain.

Stop number 2 on the world tour of overeating was Jalan Kayu. It is upsetting to see this place on the map and realize how freaking far and not convenient it is to get to. By far this is the stop that took us all from delicate nibbles to binge eating with a vengeance.

Do you see now why this stop was so epic? Seven types of prata? How is it even possible?

Let’s get the non-prata out of the way first. Overflowing bowls of orangey chicken goodness perfect for the dipping, dunking, and drowning of buttery, flaky prata.

Burn your fingers hot roti prata. Om to the nom nom. Heck yes.

Tissue roti. Ideal for picture taking due to it’s teepee like structure. Papery thin (hey, like tissue!), sometimes crispy and sometimes soft, but doesn’t quite hold up in the sea of curry. Try to resist the urge to wear it on your head like a hat.

Hey, let’s change your life a little bit. Take some roti, add about 5 cups of extra ghee, and then smash up some bananas up in there. Then, if you really want to throw a party, add just a wee bit of condensed milk. Bam. Life changing. Want to eat all day every day.

Melina’s initial suggestion of going to Jalan Kayu included an high pitched squeal of delight and hand clapping coupled with the words: fudge cake!

Love you fudge cake. Love you like a fat kid loves cake. Not everyone was a fan of this. But I like my cakes soft and moist like a delicate cloud of chocolately heaven so this was all good. If you like cakes with more texture and heft this is not for you which is fine by me because that means more for me. The frosting is less like frosting and a lot more like Bill Cosby Jello chocolate pudding. This means it was magically delicious and transported me back to 2nd grade. To grab your own: Jane’s Cake Station 265 Jalan Kayu.

As you can probably guess, we were stuffed after the JL stop. However. We had signed up for 4 stops and if it killed us or caused gastric ulcers it was gonna happen.

Our plans hit the proverbial bump in the road as Stop 3 (Chomp Chomp Food Center) was not open until dinner. Undeterred we soldiered on to Serangoon Gardens Food Center just a pork ribs throw down the street.

Finally a drink that any  hawker center would be proud of – fresh sugar cane juice. This takes some muscle to produce and some muscle to bring to the table. Them big glass mugs are heavy! Lovely and refreshing but methinks a semi-acquired taste as there was plenty of not-finished mugs at the tables.

No food tour would be complete without some carrot cake (we’ll get to the fried kway teow later obvs). As a review, carrot cake is neither carrot nor cake. It’s radish cake chopped up, fried up, and mixed up with some egg. I prefer the black carrot cake to the white but for a white carrot cake this was not bad at all. I paid special attention to the crispy bits because that’s the kind of girl I am.

Satay. Run of the mill for me with a so-so sauce. But wow look at that picture. It’s quite nearly professional.

And then finally stewed duck. I’m not a huge duck fan as the globs of fat and oft tasted essense of gaminess ruin the enjoyment for but apparently if you stew it up to within an inch of it’s life in some brown magic sauce then I will gobble it up no problem. This was moist and tender and melt in your mouth duck.

Hang in there homies we are nearing the end of the road. Our last stop took us round to Old Airport Road Hawker Center a mere stroll (ok more than a stroll) from my own crib. Feeling like we had missed two of Singapore’s most treasured dishes we started with some char kway teow.

This was probably delicious but the amount of food already making itself home in my stomach prevented the usual enjoyment that I usually get from flat noodles stir fried with a dash of pork lard in a very, very hot pan. I had just a few nibbles.

Rojak (not the rojak of Geylang Serai fatalities fame, mind you). No matter how you slice it explaining rojak to non-Singaporeans and non-Asian people is a tough sell. In this rojak: cucumbers, pineapples, fried bean curd, bean sprouts, peanuts, and some shrimp sauce. Lost ya with the shrimp sauce, huh? It’s fermented too. Just to give it that extra stank. I love shrimp and sauce and fermented things. The combo of savory and sweet appeals to me and my not very discerning palate. Me and Sylvia actually worked together to polish this bad boy off.

Ok keep your tears in check there. We are at the finale. Ice kacang! Singapore’s version of shaved ice with indiscernible flavors made of probably toxic food coloring. This version has creamed corn. If you know me you know I will eat almost any dessert that includes corn. Lovely way to wrap up a day of sheer and utter gluttony to the nth degree.

Except when noted I have no idea exactly which food stalls these are from. If luck is on our side, Isaac and/or Melina will perhaps include some tidbits in the comments although I suspect they find the stalls based on location-memory rather than stall number.

Thanks to everyone who came out to join us on the first ever food tour!

Filed under: chinese, dessert, drinks, hawker/street food, indian, singapore, singaporean   |  6 Comments

koko’s at siam square, bangkok

24May09

This meal is a bit of a blur in my head. It was the celebratory meal after my team worked super (super!) hard at our event in Bangkok. Working super hard means that most of us had missed lunch that day leaving us famished and ready to gorge on dinner. Since Siam Square is the funnest place ever and has plenty of eateries (and an iberry, ahem, see above) we trucked on overto find a suitable dinner joint. 

Now usually I wouldn’t go to vegeterian people for dinner recs (sorry, herbivores). I mean, I like tofu and all but I also need meat in my life and I’m not gonna go from famished to vegetables. That would be silly and then I would be grouchy. This restaurant is a favorite of Nop and Kwan (the vegetarians) due to its veggie friendly menu. For us meat eaters they have meat versions of most of their dishes. For tourists, the entire menu is in Thai so point and pick or drag along some Thai friends. 

Now on to the picture parade. 

First up chili rice and salted egg. Okay not that exciting but isn’t this a nice picture? Also, man I love salted egg.

Mushrooms and kailan with pork (yay, meat!). Standard ingredients but nice execution – crunchy veggies, juicy pork. 

Big gigantic dried chilis atop a veggie omelet. This was a bit fishy/oily for me. 

A cousin of soon kueh littered with dried shrimp and bamboo shoots. This would have been delicious if I didn’t kind of dislike bamboo shoots. Anyone else think they taste kinda dirty?

Pat says this is a cousin of tom yum. Tasted okay at first bite but had a very, very bitter aftertaste. Only Kwan liked this one. The rest of us poured it outta our bowls. I think the bitterness might have been due to overboiled galanggal but that’s just a guess. 

Alrighty we’re finally getting to the good stuff. Looks like… fried meat?

Not meat! These are shitake mushroom stems. No clue how they make them this way – dried and fried maybe? These were addictive and extra good dipped in the sweet sauce they came with. Slightly chewy but not in the jaw fatigue kinda way. Lots of crispiness along the edges too. 

Here they are sauteed with some greens. Yum.

Another cousin of tom yum this one extra sour and not as spicy (and not as red). In other deliciousness, this lacks the bitter aftertaste of the other cousin.

Fried fish with five spice nestled under a heaping pile of fried basil. Do I really need to explain how plate-licking good this is? 

Another fish dish, this one with the addition of fried ginger strips and with smaller chunks of saucier fish. If I had to pick, I’d go with the first. 

All washed down with a chilly glass of the palest Thai tea I’ve ever had. Apparently the taste is not a function of the color. 

Nice work herbivores.

Koko’s: 262/2 Siam Square Soi 3 Rama 1 Rd, Pathum Wan , Pathum Wan, Bangkok, 10330

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brought back to life by iberry

24May09

I’m spending a lazy weekend at home in ultimate relaxation mode. No appts, no have-to-dos, no must-meets, etc. I have a bunch of those types of things (some of which are fun) on the horizon so I’m spending this weekend loading up on the me-time. 

Let it be known that my month long hiatus is not the product of a lack of food adventures. There was lots of eating going on but there was also lots of burnt out-status going on too. That’s all behind us now since my recent trip to Bangkok has gotten me all riled up to share my latest favorite find.

I first learned of iberry via the loveliest of lovely food blogs, Eating Asia. They reran an old post about their love for iberry which coincided with my business trip to Bangkok so I jumped at the chance to try something they had featured. My first trip to iberry was the dessert end of dinner at Central World the pictures of which died an unexpected death due to user error (read: I accidentally deleted them). How amateur of me. Didn’t matter though because after my first visit I KNEW I would be back the next day.

The iberry cafes are all really cute with varying decor. The Siam Square branch can best be described as shabby chic. Unfinished concrete walls with pastel paintings, chandeliers made with glass teacups, mismatched chairs and tables. It’s bright, cute, and a perfect entrance to ice cream happiness.

Now the hard part. Which flavor to try? The special thing about iberry are the local sorbet flavors – pineapple, green sour mango, lychee, santol, custard apple, spicy tamarind, mangosteen – you get the point. The two iberrys we visited had different flavors available with the one at Siam Square  having the bigger spread.

Anyway, back to our problem. Limited tummy space plus the extreme urge to plunge into each flavor. 

Rescued by the baby cones.

How cute are these!? I tried to order this the first night but they ran out of the cones. Enter uber disappointment on my part combined with intense conviction to have baby cones the next night. You get 5 cones for around THB60. Pricey when compared to the street stall pad thai you can get for THB20 but worth every penny for the cuteness factor and ensuing sorbet deliciousness.

Strawberry Rocky Road (top left, pink with brown and white splotches): The best of both worlds. Sweet strawberry (the only artificial tasting of the bunch) specked with the classic chocolate bits and marshmallow pieces. Very creamy ice cream, the marshmallow bits should have been a bit stickier, and where’d the nuts go? How can the road be rocky without the nuts?

Pineapple Sorbet (center, light yellow): Tart and equal parts icy and smooth. Not too sweet with just a few fresh pineapple bits. 

Santol Sorbet (top right, slightly pink): The santol is kinda like the mangosteen with a similar sweet/sour flesh. I was so surprised at how santol-y this tasted. Unless you’ve tasted fresh santol before you probably won’t be as excited as I was but WOW. I had this on both nights, thats how much I liked it. 

Paradise Tea Ice Cream aka Thai Tea (bottom right, light brown): Just as awesome as milk tea ice cream. Maybe even a little bit awesomer. 

Custard Apple (bottom left, white): I looooove custard apple (aka atis) so I was beyond excited for this. Just like the santol sorbet it tasted JUST LIKE IT. Sweet and tart, sour and citrusy with actual custard apple thrown in. Such a nice treat.

I also tasted the spicy tamarind which surprised me at first bite. It was like eating really cold tamarind candies – complete with the usual spicy kick at the end. I would have gotten this again the second night but the Siam Square branch didn’t have it. 

Trips to Bangkok now have an extra bonus on top. Me + iberry = best friends

iberry: Siam Square, Sol 2 Bankok, Thailand

Filed under: dessert, thailand, travels   |  3 Comments

some seaweed with your pretzel?

17Apr09

I like seeing how big food chains try to localize their food for each market. Auntie Anne’s in Singapore has a few local flavors – one of them being seaweed. 

It was alright. Tastes just like you would think. Like seaweed on a pretzel. Who knew.

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ichiban boshi, suntec city

16Apr09

I pass this restaurant nearly every Saturday since it’s en route from my bus stop to the gym that I go to. After class I’m usually in a hurry to get somewhere or do something or blah blah blah that I end up eating a granola bar instead of having a real meal. This time I stopped to smell the sushi and had a lazy, late Saturday afternoon lunch.

I was halfway through the meal before I realized that this place is a chain and I’ve been to the same restaurant’s Esplanade location. This time around I opted to change up my usual unagi-negitoro-spicy tuna trifecta that is my go-to sushi meal. 

May I present to you… tuna and cucumber with chicken floss. 

I love floss. Chicken, beef, pork whateva. It’s fun to eat and goes great with everything including sushi.

Since I was post-gym I had to get a salad even if just to make me feel better psychologically. I saw them making this and hoped that it wasn’t mine because it was so monumentally huge. I figured at SGD5.90 it couldn’t be too big. I was very very wrong.

For a salad my guess is that this is not *that* healthy – what with the fried noodles and the fried flat thingies. It also had huge leaves of lettuce and an entire tomato and probably enough tofu to feed a small family. The dressing is peanut based and leans just a wee bit more on the sweet side than the salty.

I have to say service wise this place was off. My dishes came out one by one and with long breaks in between making for a fragmented dining experience. This is called the Golden Catch and it’s fried dory fish and tartar sauce on the inside with rice and fried potato shavings on the outside. This was more Long John’s Silver than Japanese sushi but still I liked it and finished the whole plate off.

Okay, fine. I did still get negitoro. 

A girl’s always gotta have a back up.

Full meal with hot tea: SGD17.

Ichiban Boshi: 3 Temasek Blvd #B1-062 Suntec City Singapore

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ji de chi – remember to eat!

15Apr09

Cute name for a shop, huh? As you can see I had Hong Kong style dessert two nights in a row. Oink oink to you too. This one was after Yum Cha with Kwan and Pui. Kwan said her favorite dessert place was nearby so after some wandering we rolled ourselves into Ji De Chi, which according to the wall decorations, is a favorite of local celebs and has garnered itself a few awards.

Kwan’s choice: pureed durian with fresh durian and pomelo. She almost didn’t get this since she knows I’m not a durian fan but I promised to give the ol’ queen of fruits another go. I tried it and while I didn’t gag, I didn’t particularly enjoy it. So far it’s Durian 2, Joann 0 (unless you count the fried durian which pretty much doesn’t taste like durian at all). How do I describe this. You know bathroom cleaner? It tastes kinda like that.

Pui’s pick: almond milk creme and black glutinous rice. This was heavenly. A thick but creamy almond milk with a little mountain of rice. This type of rice can sometimes taste earthy (aka like dirt) but this was nicely lacking in that arena.

My dish: glutinous rice balls in sweet ginger syrup and crushed peanuts. Sticky and aromatic with the ginger syrup and the added crunch of the peanuts. Rice flour, how I love thee.

To share: Vietnamese chendol. This is one of the nicest chendols I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. Shaved ice covered in milk with sweet red beans and threads of green chendol. If you ask me, halo halo is tastier (and has more random bits to enjoy) but chendol is still an ok alternative should you find yourself halo halo-less.

The four desserts were an easy SGD16.

Ji De Chi: 46 Upper Cross Street #01-02 Singapore

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aw chew desserts

14Apr09

This place is always, always busy. I’ve even seen it in a few guide books as *the* place for Chinese/Hong Kong style desserts. We saw this place before dinner so we made sure to leave some room in our bellies for a visit.

The verdict: good but not life changing. The most popular stuff on the menu is the mango sago which I wasn’t in the mood for due to my scratchy throat. I picked the sweet potato with sago while Steph got the milk custard. We were lucky enough to grab a table outside which gave us some breathing room from the durian specials of the day. 

Like I said, it was good but not super special. Fellow dessert-goers had other envy inducing dishes so perhaps we ordered wrong. The sweet potato, by the way, is none other than taro which is soft and slightly sweet and lives at the bottom of my milky bowl.

Aw Chew Desserts: 1 Liang Seah Street #01-11 Singapore 189022

Filed under: chinese, dessert, singapore   |  1 Comment

arirang, liang seah street

13Apr09

Friday night started off questionably since neither myself nor Steph had any good ideas of what to eat. I was slaving away at work while Steph was drying herself off after having lost a battle with one of Singapore’s rainstorms (that of the sideways rain variety). Undaunted by or indecisiveness, I suggested Liang Seah Street which Steph had never been to and has tons of places to choose from. 

After one quick promenade up and down to survey the scene, we decided on Korean food and had two choices: Arirang or Mario’s. We choose Arirang. Why? Do you know a Korean person named Mario? I don’t. Also, Mario’s was pretty empty while Arirang was bustling with people.  We set our sights on the bbq buffet which costs about SGD23 per person. Not a bad deal if you ask me. 

We started off with the requisited banchan parade which I forget how much I miss. These banchan paled in comparison to that of the Korean restos (or even groceries) in the Bay Area but they were not half bad. My faves were the kimchi and the bean sprouts. The squash (foreground) and the radish (towards the front right) were lacking in the heat department and that mound of green stuff was steamed but lacked any real flavor. 

Bring on the meats! You get to ask for as many plates as you want but there’s a warning on the menu that if you waste food you have to pay ala carte prices for it. We paced ourselves and ordered the beef, the pork, and the spicy chicken filet (above).

This was so fun for some reason. All the meats were seasoned nicely with the chicken packing a little more spice than the rest. The beef was my favorite and Steph liked the chicken. 

You get 4 dipping sauces to plunk the meat into post-grill action. From the top: bean paste, vinegar/soy sauce, chili sauce (Korean style not Singaporean style), vinegar/soy sauce/peppers (I think). 

I’ve been obsessed with pancakes lately so we had to get a round of kimchi pancakes. I was expecting the bready/fluffy style Korean pancakes but these were a lot flatter and oily-er. Still, they tasted pretty good especially when paired with the vinegar-based sauces. 

Samgaetang or chicken ginseng soup. I’ve never had this before but have always wanted to taste it. Odds are this tastes nothing like actual samgaetang. It was a simple, clean tasting broth with tender chicken and a little rice but the ginseng flavor was no where to be found.

Ddoekbokki – spicy rice cakes. Can you tell I was ordering things that I remembered seeing in kdramas? I like rice cakes so this had the potential to be quite nice. I thought though that it just simply wasn’t spicy enough. It needed to be served piping hot with about 3x the level of gochuchang.

I haven’t found a go-to Korean restaurant in Singapore yet and Arirang definitely isn’t *the one* but it’ll do for now. The nice thing about it is that the buffet gives you a chance to order most of their menu so you can taste all kinds of things with little to no commitment. My main issues with things are that everything needs to be way spicier. For the love of kimchi I want my tongue to tingle and my lips to burn. Otherwise, it’s just not Korean enough. 

Arirang Restaurant: 1 Liang Seah Street #01-07/08 Singapore 189022

Filed under: korean, singapore   |  1 Comment

oh yes i did

12Apr09

I had bought a bag of flour to deal with my pancake cravings and had also sprung for some scallions for the cha soba dish that I made. So here we are. Bag of flour. Bunch of scallions. Can you guess what happens next?

Scallion pancakes that’s what. I looked far and wide for an easy how-to and found one here. After a brief pep talk to ready myself for the task, I got down to business and ended up with these.

Pretty nice right? I was feeling good and smug about it. Not bad for my first attempt. I used sesame oil to give them an extra kinda kick. They were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside with lots of scallions peppered throughout. I have big hopes that I can make them even flakier for my next try.

Did I mention that I fried up an egg to eat with it? So good.

Filed under: chinese, experiments   |  2 Comments

yummy yum cha

12Apr09

My post titles are always so boring. 

We took advantage of the office’s walking distance proximity to Chinatown on Thursday night on a mission to get some hot pot. Alas, when we got to the place it was no longer in business. Undeterred we opted for yum cha aka dim sum at the aptly named Yum Cha Restaurant. The dim sum menu here is shorter at night but still has a decent selection of twenty or so choices that you have to order from the kitchen (no trollies on the night shift).

The food was good but I think we ordered things that were too similar to each other so there wasn’t enough of a variety in the flavors.

The all too familiar bamboo steamers. In the front are the dim sum staple, siu mai. These were porkier than I would have liked but very juicy and topped with a little roe. 

A zoom in of the dish in the background above, these were scallop dumplings. Decorated very nicely and in a green tinged wrapper. These tasted more of shrimp than of scallops. 

Similar in filling to the siu mai but with more shrimp flavor these were wrapped in bean curd and then fried up. You know how I’m a sucker for fried deliciousness.

These were a lot prettier in person. Chive dumplings in perfect little spheres wraped in a translucent skin so you could see the supreme greenery of the chives inside.

We also got a very thick hot and sour soup with abalone. It had bits of tofu and a few veggies. It’s the type of the soup that gets all over your chin while you’re slurping it up. No need for extra black vinegar in this one, it is plenty sour.

We ordered one sweet dim sum in the form of lightly battered bananas with red bean paste. This looks uber sweet but it’s actually just right. Would have been peeerfect with some ice cream on the side. Order this one when you’re done eating so that it’s still warm when you eat it. 

All the dim sum comes in threes and we had 3 people so everything worked out nicely. The entire shebang was about SGD51. Overall, I think pretty good dim sum but will need to visit again during the day to get the full spectrum of bite sized eats to sample.

Yum Cha Restaurant (near Chinatown Food Street): 20 Trengannu Street #02-01

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