Archive for the ‘hawker/street food’ Category
playing nice with chicken rice
Look it rhymes. It never rhymes so that’s kind of big deal.
You know what else is a big deal (in Singapore, anyway)? Chicken rice. Most everyone is a fan of chicken rice. My last few run ins have been just eh. I mean steamed/boiled chicken and some rice. How good could it be.
Apparently, pretty darn good if you get lucky.
one bánh for the road
Have you ever been more confused by a plate of food in your entire life? There is a lot going on here. This food is a speciality of Hue in central Vietnam.
This is the last of the HCMC series. Bánh, bánh and more bánh!
tân hoàng ty, hcmc
I wrote this post awhile back and scheduled it for delivery tonight but wanted to put a plug in for folks who want to help the people of the Philippines. To find ways to help or track down more information visit Google’s Typhoon Ondoy page.
Hooray! More Vietnamese food in Vietnam!
My last meal in Vietnam was bánh canh (erm I think that’s what it was called) at Tân Hoàng Ty. Plates of boiled pork, pickled veggies, cucumber, crepes, and crazy heaping piles of unknown herbs.
Heaping piles. No lie. So heaping that for the first time ever I’m gonna show my face up on this blog just so you have some context.
al ameen eating house, bukit timah
This is the second Saturday in a row where I’ve rolled outta bed at a too early hour. This time it was because of Isaac and Pui and their love of hiking and because of Jade Garden and my love of eating (btw, the Jade Garden at Plaza Singapore = not worth yer time).
Since dinner on Friday including Peking duck. Saturday included a hikety hike hike to burn that overzealous duckie off.
And then afterwards we had some roti.
the great singapore food tour
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.
uncle leong’s seafood, ang mo kio
One of the many mini mountains of crab shells left over from our bingefest tonight.
CrazyVinny (you’ll recall the one that goes left when we always go right) invited me, Steph, and Jay to join him, Rachel and his friend, Anand, at Uncle Leong’s Seafood. Uncle Leong’s is inside the vast Ang Mo Kio (AMK) estate in the northern part of the island (and I mean NORTH – check out the map to see how far this is from my usual haunts). The AMK HDB area is HUGE. Like, impressively gigantic but somehow still neighborhoody. I like to call it the ‘burbs. If you visit, I recommend taking the MRT to Ang Mo Kio and then taking a taxi to the restaurant. We taxied from Tangong Pagar and the trip cost almost SGD20.
Per the blogosphere there’s another well known seafood place in AMK called Melben which is apparently owned by Uncle Leong’s brother (and is just across the way). CrazyVinny’s friend Anand used to produce a food show on TV and he says Uncle’s is better. I’ve never tried Melben before but after our meal tonight, Uncle Leong’s is gonna be hard to beat.
onde onde(licious)
I’ve had a great day of eating (and laser tagging) and am now at home making the familiar dent in my couch while I couch potato status and watch American Idol. (PS Adam Lambert, you are totally overrated.)
My Makansutra guide has been gathering dust on my bookshelf for a few months but I pulled it down to do some research for an upcoming work event. The section on onde onde reminded me of some of the posts on EatingAsia that sing the praises of gula melaka. This prompted a lunch time hunt for these sweet treats which, I’m proud to say, was very successful.
popiah – finally!
It took me 6 months to finally have popiah in Singapore.
That is pretty sad.
Popiah (pohp-ya) is un-fried egg roll wrapper holding together a savory, peanutty, vegetable and noodle filled mixture. See Exhibit A.
You can have it with or without chilis and they serve it sliced in pieces that can be stuffed in one bite or more politely taken out in two. The verdict? I like it. It tastes like Filipino fresh lumpia except instead of the peanut flavor being in the sauce, it’s put in the filling. There’s a lot more veggies in the Filipino version while the Singaporean roll has lots of noodles, some lettuce, and some carrots.
mack’s chicken inasal atbp
Atbp is one of my favorite abbreviations. It’s the Filipino version of ’etc’ and is short for ‘at iba pa’ which translated means ‘and other stuff.’
When it comes to the Filipino joints at La Pau Sat, I’ve been pretty loyal to Panyeros which gives you two ulams (viands aka things to pair with your rice) and rice for an easy SGD5. Sadly, their dinner menu is pretty sparse so on a recent dinner trip with Jay, I opted to try out Mack’s.
black pepper party at eng seng
We rented rollerblades and bikes at East Coast Park today. I’ve wanted to do this since my first visit (I’m one of those weird people who still likes rollerblading even though the last time it was seen in cool pop culture was in the Mariah Carey video ‘Dreamlover’ about a millenia ago) so I was pretty excited to finally get the chance to strap ‘em on and rollerblade up and down the park. Imminent rain be damned.
Too bad that saying ‘imminent rain be damned’ doesn’t actually *stop* the rain. We got about an hour of rollerblading in before the rain came. We hid out at a pub type place before hoofing it to the black pepper crab place frequented by Pearl.
This place is about a 15 minute walk from the Marine Parade Library on Still Road next to the giant durian eatery. Poor Erika waited an hour in line to snag us a table.
The place was packed and while there were a few other stalls along the side that selled rojak and satay, most of the diners were feasting on the famed BPC. By all accounts, this scene makes it a promising meal.
if you’ve ever been to LA you’ll know that LA County grades restaurants on cleanliness. They do this in Singapore too. A’s are hard to come by unless you’re in a mall and B’s are pretty standard for most hawker stalls. This place has a C. You can see it in the picture above – on the right under the ‘Eng Seng Restaurant’ sign. There are generally 2 reactions when you are at C-grade restaurant.
Reaction 1: Oh shit, this is probably going to be good.
Reaction 2: I’m glad I have my hepatitis shots. Did I bring my antibacterial hand sanitizer?
Honestly though. Are you going to turn this down? Sorry, I’m skipping ahead. There were a few other dishes that made their way to the table first.
A giant plate (we’re talking bus steering wheel sized) of fried rice with overcooked egg and green onion. I prefer white rice but this was acceptable.
Remember you tiao? From the hypothetical Taiwanese breakfast that may or may not have happened? Take those, cut them up, fill them with squid paste, fry them again, and then drizzle them in mayo. Sounds kind of gross, tastes really good. The double frying is questionable but the result was not overly greasy. The squid paste has a balance of snap and softness and the mayo adds a little zing.
Veggies came too (kangkong with shrimp paste) but I’m not going to take a picture of kangkong everytime I have it. That would be overkill.
Yuuuuum, black pepper crab. I easily prefer this to its slightly messier chili crab cousin. There is hella pepper on this sucker. After you’re done it will be all up in your teeth like you’ve been chewing on charcoal. The sauce is oh my goodness good – slightly sweet and sticky with a dark soy sauce base. The pepper is tingly hot. Hits you hard at first and numbs a bit over time. It’s nicely tempered with rice and some of the extra sauce at the bottom of the dish. The claws come cracked but you’ll need extra strong teeth, clean fingers, and stealthy chopsticks to get to the goods.
We also had some fish. Pearl says it was grouper. It was gingery and tender but I only had a few bites. Obviously I was saving stomach space for the BPC. No room for this fish nonsense.
The meal was SGD340 for 8 people – 6 big crabs, fried rice, veggies, steamed fish, and veggies for all. We had about SGD10 worth of wet naps. Ha!
Lastly, I leave you with the aftermath. Hot mess.
Eng Seng Restaurant: somewhere on Still Road near the Four Seasons Durian place. 
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