Archive for September 2008
a map for the beaten path
I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile but never quite got around to it. I’ve started a custom Google map of all of the places featured on this blog. A link to the Singapore one is over yonder on the right. I’ll put up a Bay Area one as soon as I get around to it.
Blame it on WordPress that you can’t embed a real Google Map into your sidebar. I suppose that’s what I get for not using Blogger. Anyway, some of the Singapore locations aren’t so easy with the addresses so I hope this helps you track down those places.
Happy Eating!
die die must try satay?
Slow goin’ on the blog these days. I’m still eatin’ but lately have been feeling uninspired. After a Saturday of wasting lots of money on things I don’t need, I had planned on spending a lazy Sunday cooped up inside, sleepin’ in, and enjoying my new kdrama. Around 2pm I started feeling a little too sloth-like and changed my plans to include house cleaning and a visit to a Makansutra-touted eatery.
I decided on tracking down some satay or popiah – two Singaporean eats that I hadn’t had yet. (Shameful, I know.) I wanted to get a good walk in too so I decided on getting satay at the hawker center on Old Airport Road. The popiah would have to wait for another Sunday.
Chuan Kee Satay is just one chopstick away from the ‘Die Die Must Try’ level on the Makansutra guide. The menu is straightforward: pork, chicken, or mutton for 40c a stick – minimum 10 stick order. It’s a-ok to mix and match. You can buy a bundle of rice for 50c to complement your meal. For SGD4.50 I got 5 pork sticks, 5 chicken sticks, and a thing of rice.
YUM. I love me some chargrilled meats. I had big expectations for this meal – one chopstick away from DDMT! is kind of a big deal. Let’s start with the rice. This was not what I was expecting. It was cold and mushy. It’s served cut up into 4 pieces so you can spear them and stick ‘em in your mouth sans utensil. To enjoy them however, you would need to be a fan of cold, super mushy rice. Weird. I still finished half of it but still. Weird.
Lil’ zoom in on the meat here. It’s pretty good. Fatty but not disturbingly so. Appropriately chargrilled in the right spots. The right amount of tenderness. Now the bad. Whatever glaze they use is too sweet. So sweet that I couldn’t really tell the difference between the pork or chicken sticks. If they eased up on it a bit I think this would taste better.
I wasn’t immediately in love with the satay sauce (see first picture) when I first tasted it but after giving it a good mix I started to get more of the peanut flavor I was looking for. Would have been a nice pairing if the meat wasn’t already so so sweet.
I’m going to need to try other satay stands to see how this one really rates. I walked away full (the giant cup of lime juice helped), nowhere near hungry enough to try anything else at the hawker center, but lacking in the protein fill up I was hoping for.
Even though Makansutra failed me on this run, I think I really need to make more use of this book. I’m going to try to hit up at least 1 MS suggestion a week. Who’s with me?
ps cafe, dempsey hill
Admittedly, I was not impressed when Thiena mentioned PS Cafe to me. I mean, seriously, S$17 pancakes? Not so appealing. After mulling their site over a bit and hearing everyone else’s raving I figured it was time to give it a shot. When Therese asked if I would be down to check out the area around Dempsey and grab brunch at PS Cafe, I was up for the trek.
And wow what a trek. It took me 3 taxis before I found a driver that had any idea where this place was. Then when we got to Dempsey Hill we went round and round trying to find the cafe. The driver even asked some passerbys with no luck. I ended up getting out and wandering around myself.
Finally…
Therese was already there (trying to get me some assistance via the helpful waitstaff) enjoying some white wine. I ordered myself a lovely peach iced tea to calm the nerves post the wandering in the equatorial sun.
tummy in your tummy
Some of the crew had been raving about the soup at this joint at the Arcade near Chevron Tower. I had a sip of the Chinese herbal chicken soup on Wednesday and had to agree that it was pretty good. The ginseng adds a herby flavor coupled with some cilantro which obviously I totally heart.
There was no herbal chicken soup on tap for our visit last Thursday but we had our choice of mushroom chicken soup, peanut lotus soup, and pig stomach soup. Lotus root gives me the willies. I was scarred for life after this nasty Photoshopped graphic made its rounds on the internet. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. Pass on the lotus root and, obviously, pass on the pig stomach (at first glance). Mushroom chicken soup it is.
ah bolling peanut soup
One of the first stalls on Smith Street is the Ah Bolling stand. I recognized the name from the guidebooks and made sure to leave some room in my tummy for a visit after dinner.
For a mere SGD1.50 you can get 4 balls in your choice of soup: almond milk, peanut, and I can’t remember the third. The balls come in sesame, peanut, red bean, green tea, and a few other flavors. I used to keep these in my freezer in Mountain View (minus the soup part) but these are a gillion times better than those.
The almond milk is lightly sweetened and a bit watered down. Next time I think I’ll try the peanut soup (a bit of a brain fart for me to not get peanut soup when the place is called Ah Bolling Peanut Soup). The red bean filling is heavy and sweet but the black sesame was my favorite. A little bit salty, nicely grainy, and sweet at the end. I liked the rice flour outside since it’s slightly sticky but not gummy.
There will be plenty of additional visits to Chinatown Food Street.
makansutra glutton’s bay
I invested in a Makansutra guide during one of my first weeks in Singapore. It’s supposed to be a go-to guide to good street food. I’ve been slacking a bit in venturing to all the different parts of the island to taste things up but I did make it to Glutton’s Bay at the Esplanade on Sunday.
Glutton’s Bay is a selection of Makansutra’s favorite hawker stands They are a little pricier than regular stalls but as a bonus you get a nice view of the waterfront.
I downed a cup of lime juice right when we got there. (I think I might be addicted to lime juice but that’s another story.) There are just a handful of stalls to choose from: drinks/dessert, kaya toast, satay, roti, bbq, hot pot, char kway teow and other noodle dishes, and Western food.
surprise dumplings
Another weekend, another trip to Din Tai Fung. For you DTF lovers, I’m not doing this to irritate you. I didn’t even know I was eating there until I showed up to Tampines Mall.
Anyway, Tampines is up near the Northeast part of the island. I generally associate that area with Ikea but there’s also (as with most places in Singapore) a mall in the area. I met Thiena and her sister’s friend Evelyn there (who’s doing a stint in Ho Chi Minh City but is actually from Singapore) and they had done the work of ordering.
I’ll spare you from the usual grub (pork soup dumplings, shrimp dumplings, fried pork (yuuuum), noodles with cabbage and minced pork, and seaweed salad). The surprise of the meal were these suckers.
Steamy dumplings with the required 18 folds filled with…
Sweet taro paste. No frills. Sweet and smooth and a new favorite.
chinatown street eatin’
I had a super jam packed day yesterday which started in Tampines and ended in Chinatown to partake in the last night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Tatay had mentioned that he had eaten some awesome food in Chinatown back in the day when his ship made a stop in Singapore in the 70s. Imagine my happiness when we found Smith Street and got to do a little street eatin’ ourselves.
congrats franky & sasa!
There was major insistence on getting dim sum for the first meal of the trip. The staff at the Metropark Hotel Mongkok (which ps is not terrible but is not as nice as the Metropark Hotel Causeway Bay) recommended we truck it over the Pioneer Center for some eats. After finding the food elevator we arbitrarily picked a floor and, bc we’re out of our minds, decided on the floor that opened into some of the tackiest decor I’ve seen this side of Vegas.
In true Vegas fashion we had run right smack dab into some wedding reception. Congratulations Franky and Sasa! Best wishes on your wedding!
super star seafood, hong kong
Ok so obviously this is not real food. I found this little set up during a restroom hunt post-mango sago break at a toy store in Mongkok. The awesome part is that it’s almost an exact replica of the neverending dinner we had the night before at Super Star Seafood at Harbour City.
Feed your reader! 
