Maxwell Hawker Centre, Singapore

Anyone who's ever been to Singapore will be familiar with the concept of hawker centres.  In fact, lots of people who haven’t been to Singapore will be familiar with hawker centres as well – thanks, in a large part, to the work of Street Feast London / Tweet Up's Hawker House.  But for those visiting Singapore, like myself, for the first time, a visit to a hawker centre is an absolute must.

The hustle and bustle is really quite something as well.  I went relatively early on at lunchtime and already the place was heaving – barely enough room to find a corner of a table to perch at.  Hawker centres are sometimes talked about as if they are the heart of Singapore – and I can see why.  Here you will find all walks of life – families out with kids or grandparents for chicken and rice, Singapore's ultimate comfort food, to high-flying suits, scoffing down noodles and fish balls. 



Maxwell Road's hawker centre is (I am told) amongst the best.  Located in Chinatown, it has a very Chinese-focussed cuisine.  But that's not to say that you won’t find plenty of other foodstuffs on the menu – from Arabic grills to Indian curries - all washed down with copious fresh juices and kopi.

At the nearby Chinatown Heritage Centre I learned that food hawking started in Singapore in the late Nineteenth Century, as the booming populations began to flog (or hawk) their edible wares from the five foot way in front of each shophouse.  However, it wasn't until the mid-Twentieth Century that hawking really exploded in Singapore, with the occupation of the Japanese during the Second World War.  The economy took a nosedive and so, in an effort to scrape together a living somehow, locals began to cook and sell food for very low prices.  Such hawking was eventually formalised into the hawker centres we know and love today.

Today's hawker centres are a little different to how I imagine the first centres looked.  They are big, clean and well run.  Each little booth contains a stovetop or other cooking apparatus and encompasses an entire kitchen – bringing in the fresh produce and turning it into ready-to-eat food. 

The biggest challenge I faced was choosing between the hundreds of offerings.  Eventually, I just had to plump for something.  Following the rule that lots of people = good food, I joined the back of a long queue.  Pretty soon I found myself at the front of that queue, utterly bewildered and unsure what to do.  The friendly chap who ran the booth offered to do my a mixed plate.  I readily accepted. 

What is it all, I hear you cry? Well, here goes: fried noodles; spicy pork sausage (red ringed meat); bean curd (yellow cubes, top of the plate); egg and pork cake (browny-orange cubes, bottom of plate); fish ball (looks a bit like a tater tot, left of the plate); and neck of pork fried in the skin (underneath the whole lot, not shown).  The two sauces are sweet plum (left) and fiercely hot chilli (right) (YUM).  All washed down with a mug of green tea.

I cannot recommend a visit to a hawker centre more highly.  The food is fantastic, the atmosphere electric, and the price unbelievable.  In a city that prides itself on its food but has seemingly no limit to what it's prepared to charge it was fantastic to eat like a prince whilst paying like a pauper.

 - GrubsterBoy - 

Singapore Chilli Crab, Jumbo Seafood

Visiting Singapore, my friend said that there was one thing I absolutely had to do (food-wise, at least) before I left: eat crab, Singapore style.  We headed down to Jumbo Seafood to give it a whirl.

There is something of an ongoing argument that all Singaporeans appear to be engaged in: which is better, chilli crab or pepper crab.  As there were only two of us it would have been impossible to have both, so we really were forced to make a decision – we could only indulge in one.  Given the option I took the very tough decision and plumped for chilli crab.  It was not a decision I would come to regret.

We accompanied our crab with a couple of other bits and pieces from the menu.

First up (and intended as a starter, although the rather sketchy service meant that it actually arrived after the crab) was dragonfruit and lobster salad.  The combination of the tangy fruit and rich meat was fantastic.  I cannot, however, recommend the lashings of mayonnaise that accompanied the dish.  Also, sadly, the lobster meat was bordering on the sparse…

Still, a seriously beautiful looking dish.

We also ordered up a big dish of peeled oatmeal prawns.  These were fantastic.  No two ways about it.  The prawns are coated in a big helping of panko breadcrumbs and desiccated coconut.  This gave them a sweet, dry, crunchy coating to match the succulent, rich shrimp meat inside.  Astrid warned me off ordering the oatmeal prawns in their shells: if you do so, all the pleasure is lost, as you rip off the crunchy coating to get at the meat inside. 

For double the pleasure, by the way, please let me recommend that you take an oatmeal prawn and give it a big dunk in the crab sauce (if eating chilli crab).  It's amazing. 

However, all this is so much stuff: the star of the show is the crab.

Now, you know you're in for a treat when the staff bring you bibs.  This was one of those times.  In fact, bibbing is absolutely essential – throw all your pretentions and shame out the window, you need the bib.  In fact, you need one of those biohazard suits, because this is going to go everywhere.  It's not like eating lobster in Maine, where you risk flicking a drop of butter on your shirt.  No, you're going to get sauce everywhere.  So bib up. 

They’re also pretty amusing. In fact, it wasn't long before a bit of entertainment at bib wearing just turned to all-out absurdity.

Chilli crab is cooked in a big, hearty red sauce.  The crab is trimmed, chopped and chucked in in pieces, so that it cooks in the sauce.  Presumably the brown meat seeps out of the head to mingle with the sauce, which is a rich tomato, garlic, egg and peanut concoction.  Don’t be put off by the moniker either – whilst there's a definite chilli flavour and a kick of heat, it's really quite mild.

I loved this stuff. Absolutely loved it. I mean, I love crab – and, in fact, most shellfish (and all shellfish with legs). This was a revelation. You see, I'm usually one for banishing sauces. Steak tastes better, for instance, without hiding its flavour behind ground peppercorns and cream. Battered cod is not improved by lathering it in mayonnaise, tarragon and pickles, or drowning it in vinegar, or coating it in sugary tomato paste. Sauces should be, at best, a compliment, not a feature.

But here, however, it is the dish. It is its heart and soul. The sauce is every bit as much a feature as the crab. You're ordering sauce, like one might order soup, and being grateful that it comes with beautifully tasty crab meat at the same time. Because the sauce is flipping brilliant and as much part and parcel of the dish as the crustacean it accompanies.

And Astrid was right.  Crab eating – at least, chilli crab eating – is an essential 'must-do' for any foodie visiting Singapore
 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Cocktails and Nightlife, Singapore

This started out as a food porn post. But then I got kinda carried away and wanted to show you some of the highlights of Singapore's awesome skyline by night.

After drinks on a roof bar (Singapore is full of them, it's amazing), we headed to Catalunya for cocktails as it was a Wednesday and Wednesday's is 'one-for-one' (English: two-for-one) cocktail night at Catalunya. 

I'm jolly glad we went, actually, because the cocktails were pretty damn good.  The highlight has got to be this quirky little number - made with Amaretto, honey, lime juice, Amontillado sherry, gin and cheese.  That's right.  Cheese.  It's even garnished with a little sliver.

They even bring you a little cocktail test tube - in it's own wee ice bucket (or perhaps that should be 'ice baked bean tin?) - to top up your drink, in case the first glass isn't enough.  Which, let's face it, when it comes to cocktails it never is.

Also, the eats were pretty damn good.  We had a spherical olives too, which were wholly unimpressive to look at and incredibly amazing to eat.  I won't spoil the fun but just think a little... Heston.

Then it was on to Ku De Ta for more drinks and more stunning views.

- GrubsterBoy -

Kaya Toast, Singapore

Anyone spending any amount of time in Singapore is likely to become quickly versed in the culinary oddity that is a breakfast of kaya toast and kopi.

I'm not altogether sure if anyone can properly articulate where this unique start to the day comes from.  It's faintly bizarre – at least to the Western palate. 

Basically, there are three elements to this most local of breakfasts.

First, we have the toast itself.  Very finely sliced, it is filled with an ultra-sweet coconut jam and slabs of butter.  Literally, slabs – it's not spread on but cut off the block.  It's a funny old thing – not at all unpleasant, but extremely rich and sweet.

Then we have the accompanying eggs.  They're described as soft boiled.  Now, I've had plenty of soft boiled eggs in my time.  In fact, as a kid they were a regular Sunday night supper if we were good – dippy eggs and Marmite soldiers.  These are not soft boiled eggs, in my experience.  They’re hardly cooked eggs.

Slathering them in soy sauce is the local way to go about your business.  And despite all of my initial hesitation at eating what are basically uncooked eggs (salmonella fears rushing to mind) the combination of the toast and the eggs was fantastic.  The saltiness of the yolks and the salty-sharp taste of the soy acting as the perfect foil to the sweet, rich toast filling.

Then there's the coffee.  Or kopi, as it is known.

There's something faintly disquieting about Kopi.  Because I drink a fair amount of coffee, generally.  I know coffee when I see it.  I am friends with coffee.  Singapore, this is not coffee. 

Instead, robusta beans (which are stronger and have a higher caffeine content) are roasted in margarine to the make the base.  Then condensed and evaporated milk is added.  What's produced is a drink that reminds you strongly of coffee without actually being an awful lot like coffee.  That's not to say it's bad – not at all, I quite enjoyed it – it's just different.  And rich.  And sweet.  Very sweet.  So very rich and very sweet that I had difficulty getting through a whole cup.

Altogether, I really enjoyed the experience.  Would I go back?  I don’t know.  Ya Kun is supposedly one of the finest purveyors of kaya toast (even if it is a bit chain-ey), and I can’t fault them.  And it was nice.  But it was also very, very rich and equally sweet.  Which isn’t necessarily what an Englishman wants for breakfast.

 - GrubsterBoy -

Thai Feast, Kata, Phuket

Grimly aware that it was our last day on the island, before the slog back to the City and (for Astrid at least; I was still on holiday...) a return to work, we set out to get ourselves a bang up meal before heading to the airport.

 

We had had our sights set on a rather swish place we'd discovered earlier in our stay.  Sadly, however, it was closed for lunch so a roadside canteen had to suffice.  In hindsight, I am jolly glad.

 

We ordered ourselves up a great big feast, starting with a mound of pad Thai  For those who don’t know, it's a dish of rice noodles stir fried with eggs, tamarind, shrimp, chilli, palm sugar, fish sauce and whole lot else.  Ours came with crumbled peanuts and raw beansprouts on the side, and a lime wedge for drizzling, which is pretty standard.  All in all, it was damn good and didn’t last long.

Next up we had chicken wrapped in pandanus  This is a kind of leaf that gives the chicken a delicate aroma and, crucially, keeps it from drying out during the cooking process.  The result is beautifully soft, tender meat.

And to keep it company, we had a plate of morning glory (which in Texas they call swamp spinach...). 

Finally, we treated ourselves to a duck red curry. It being our last day in Thailand I was reluctant to miss out on it. I just absolutely love Thai curries and - for some inexplicable reason - I never seem to eat them that much at home.  There's something intoxicatingly good about their hot, punchy spiciness combined with the cooling flavours of the coconut cream and the lemongrass.  For me, it's heaven.

This example was good, there's no denying it.  Sadly, the duck itself was a little disappointing – tough and a touch flavourless.  But otherwise, the curry was great.

Our whole feast was washed down with fresh watermelon juice, beautifully served.

I was sad to leave Phuket, in the end.  It was a wonderful escape from the day-to-day desk job of life at home, and a great way to kickstart a week's holiday in Asia.  Not a bad looking island, too.

- GrubsterBoy -

Patong Night Market, Phuket

Having rounded off a cracking supper at Baan Rim Pa we decided that a wander through the town was in order.  As we did so, we happened upon a fantastic little night market, largely set up for entertainment, in the form of bizarre variations on the standard fairground games of 'skill' and 'luck', complete with life-size stuffed animals as prizes, and food.  And boy, was there a lot of food to be eaten.

Some of it looked fantastic – almost too good to skip, although sadly our dinner had left us stuffed to the gunnels. 

Some of it was perhaps... less appetising. 

And then there was pudding galore.

Patong is a funny old town, really.  It's got great spots – like this market, like Baan Rim Pa.  But it's also got a massively seedy side, complete with the ping pong shows and open-air strip clubs of lore. 

So I guess it's kind of up to you what to make of it.

 - GrubsterBoy -