Food

 

It’s an understatement to say that Singaporeans live to eat (not eat to live). Listen in to a conversation at a hawker centre and the top-ic will inevitably be that of the next meal…even if the current one is half-fi nished. Self-professed food gurus wax lyrical about their search for the best <insert food dish here> and blog their way through their culinary adventures. If you want to leave with a keen understanding of being Singaporean, then it’s essential to understand the lay of the (food) land.

  HOW IT ALL BEGAN…

Singapore has a history of migration. As each ethnic group and subgroup came to Singapore, it brought its own cuisine along. Each type of food remains largely undiluted to this day, but as often happens when cultures are transplanted far from home, local variations and customs have crept in. Just as the people of Singapore developed their own characteristics the longer they were separated from their homelands, the character of dishes such as fish-head curry, chilli crab and yu sheng (raw fish salad eaten at Chinese New Year) have all evolved from traditional favourites. Singaporeans live to eat, and while you’re here you might as well join them.

For Singaporeans, what’s on the plate is far more important than the quality of the china (or plastic) it’s served on. The smartest-dressed businessman is as comfortable sitting down on a cheap plastic chair at a plastic table and wading into a $3 plastic plate of char kway teow (a Hokkien dish of broad noodles, clams and eggs fried in chilli and black-bean sauce) as he is eating $80 crabs in an air-conditioned restaurant. Combine this unpretentiousness with infinite variety, high standards of hygiene and the prevalence of the English language, and you have some of the best and most accessible opportunities in Southeast Asia.

SPECIALITIES

 Chinese

With Chinese food, the more people you can muster for a meal the better, because dishes are traditionally shared. A Chinese meal should be balanced; a yin (cooling) dish such as vegetables, fruit or clear soup, should be matched by a yang (heating) dish such as starchy foods or meat.  The best-known and most popular style of Chinese cooking is Cantonese, despite the majority of Singaporean Chinese not being of Cantonese descent. Cantonese food is usually stir-fried with just a touch of oil to ensure that the result is crisp and fresh. Typical dishes include won ton (dumpling filled with spiced minced pork) soup and mee (noodles). At the expensive end of the spectrum are shark’s-fin and bird’s-nest dishes.

One of the most famous Cantonese specialities is dim sum (also known as yum cha): small snack-type dishes usually eaten at lunchtime or as a Sunday brunch in large, noisy restaurants where the dishes are whisked around the tables on trolleys or carts; take what you like as they comeby. Xiao long bao (pork dumplings fi  lled with a piping hot sauce) is a must-try.

Arguably the most popular local dish is Hainanese chicken rice: a mix of steamed fowl and rice cooked in chicken stock, served with a clear soup and slices of cucumber. It’s practically the national dish and the ultimate Singaporean comfort food. Eaten with dips (ginger and chilli or soy), it’s light but surprisingly filling. Another popular Hainanese dish is steamboat, which features a boiling stockpot in the middle of the table, into which you dunk pieces of meat, seafood or vegetables and extract them when cooked.

Many of Singapore’s Chinese are Hokkien, from southern China, infamously coarse-tongued folk whose hearty noodle dishes like char kway teow, bak chor mee (noodles with pork, meat balls and fried scallops) and  hokkien mee  (yellow Hokkien noodles with prawn, served either fried or in a rich prawn-based stock) are fast-food favourites.

From the area around Shàntóu in China, Teochew is a style noted for its delicacy and natural flavours (although many say it’s bland). Seafood is a speciality – fish maw (a fish’s swim bladder) crops up alarmingly of-ten. The classic Teochew comfort food is rice porridge, served with fish, pork or frog (the latter being a Geylang favourite). Most neighbourhood koptiam (coffeeshops) have a tzechar (cooked food) stall serving a mix of all Chinese cuisines to cater to fussy local palettes.

 Indian

Broadly speaking Indian cuisine can be classified into two categories: south and north. South Indian food dominates Singapore, as most Indian Singaporeans and migrant workers originate from the south, but North Indian restaurants are becoming much more widespread, thanks to the growing number of North Indian professionals and tourists in Singapore.  South Indian food tends to be hot, with the emphasis on vegetarian dishes. The typical South Indian dish is a thali (rice plate), often served on a large banana leaf. On this leaf is placed a large mound of rice, then various vegetable curries, rasam (hot, sour soup) and a dessert. South Indian food is traditionally eaten with the right hand, not utensils –though spoons are always available.

The most popular Indian dish among local Chinese is roti prata – a flat bread cooked with oil on a hotplate and served with a curry sauce. Prata restaurants usually list dozens of varieties, both sweet and savoury. Try a roti telur (prata cooked with an egg) or a roti tissue (ultra- thin prata cooked with margarine and sugar and served in a cone shape).

Other South Indian vegetarian dishes include masala dosa, a thin pancake that, rolled around spiced vegetables with some chutney and rasam on the side, makes a cheap light meal. An equivalent snack meal in Indian halal (Muslim) restaurants is murtabak – paper-thin dough fi  lled with egg and minced mutton and lightly grilled with oil.

Another favourite Indian halal dish is biryani, which is different from the North Indian version. Ordering a chicken biryani will get you a mound of spiced, saff  ron-coloured rice, a piece of deep-fried chicken, a bowl of curry sauce and a small mound of salad (often with a squirt of sweet chilli sauce on top).

North Indian cuisine is more familiar to Westerners, and most commonly associated with heavier, slightly less spicy dishes, eaten with breads like naan (leavened bread baked inside a clay oven) and chapati (griddle-fried wholewheat bread). Think tandoori chicken or butter chicken.

Malay &  Indonesian

The cuisines of Malaysia and Indonesia are similar. Satay – grilled kebabs of chicken, mutton or beef dipped in a spicy peanut sauce – is ubiquitous. Other common dishes include tahu goreng (fried soya bean curd and bean sprouts in a peanut sauce), ikan bilis (anchovies fried whole),  ikan assam (fried fish in a sour tamarind curry) and  sambal udang (fiery curried prawns).

Both ayam goreng (fried chicken) and rendang are popular staples.Nasi goreng (fried rice) is widely available, but it is as much a Chinese and Indian dish as Malay, and each style has its own flavours. Nasi lemak is coconut rice served with ikan bilis, peanuts and a curry dish.

The Sumatran style of Indonesian food bends much more towards curries and chillies. Nasi padang, from the Minangkabau region of West Sumatra, consists of a wide variety of spicy curries and other smaller dishes served with rice. You pick and choose what you want and it’s dolloped on a plate. Mee rebus (noodles in a thick soya-based sauce) is a Javanese dish that is also widely available in food centres.

Desserts

The lurid mini-volcanoes you’ll often see at food centres are ice kachang, a combination of a mound of shaved ice, syrups, evaporated milk, fruit, beans and jellies. Cendol is similar, consisting of coconut milk with gula melaka (brown or palm sugar) syrup and green jelly strips topped with shaved ice. Both taste terrific or at least a lot better than they look. Also worth trying is ah balling, glutinous rice balls filled with a sweet paste of peanut, black sesame or red bean and usually served in a peanut- or ginger-flavoured soup.

Head to Little India to experiment with Indian sweets: burfi, ladoo, gulab jamun, gelabi, jangiri, kesari and halwa, to name a few, are made with ingredients that include condensed milk, sesame and syrups.

Nonya (Peranakan) desserts are typified by kueh (colourful rice cakes often flavoured with coconut and palm sugar) and sweet, sticky delicacies such as miniature pineapple tarts that are sold everywhere in small plastic tubs with red lids. The magnificent kueh lapis, a laborious layer cake that involves rodigious numbers of eggs, is a must-try.

One notable popular Singaporean oddity is the ice-cream sandwich, dished out by mobile ice-cream vendors and enjoyed by young and old alike. This consists of a thick slab or mini-scoops of ice cream folded into a slice of bread, though sometimes it’s served between the more traditional wafer slices. There are plenty of vendors along Orchard Rd and along the northern bank of Boat Quay.

  VEGETARIANS & VEGANS

The predominance of the Buddhist and Hindu religions in Singaporemeans finding a vegetarian restaurant, stall or cafe is usually not difficult. Little India in particular teems with vegetarian food, but food courts and hawker centres all over the island often feature a vegetarian stall, or have some vegetarian options.

One thing to be aware of is that interpretations of dishes among Chinese and Malays can be slightly diffrent. We have encountered ‘vegetable soup’ that contains both chicken and prawn (the reasoning being that because it contains vegetables, it’s a vegetable soup!) The solution is to be highly specifi  c when ordering food – don’t just say ‘vegetarian’, but stress that you eat ‘no meat, no seafood’ and make sure you’ve been understood.

Vegans are likely to find life a little more difficult, but since the consumption of dairy and other animal by-products is relatively limited, usually all you have to do is ensure there are no eggs.

HAWKER CENTRE, KOPITIAM OR FOOD COURT?

Aside from the standard Western-style restaurants and cafes, Singapore has several local species of eating venue: hawker centre, kopitiam, food court, food centre, canteen…all of them feature open dining areas, around which are clustered anything from a handful to a hundred stalls. The subtle distinctions between these places are often a mystery to foreigners, but Singaporeans insist they are different.

The term ‘hawker’ was once used to describe food vendors who moved their wares around in mobile carts, stopping and setting up their burners wherever there were customers. Of course, such itinerant behaviour was unacceptable in modern Singapore and virtually all of them are now stockaded into hawker centres.

Hawker centres are usually standalone, open-air (or at least open-sided) structures with rows of food stalls. There are usually a wide variety of different local cuisines on offer and the atmosphere is often raucous. However, the food is uniformly good. If it isn’t, stalls go out of business very quickly. Some hawker centres are located along with a corresponding wet market and locals simply refer to the hawker centre as a ‘market’. Confusing, no?

Food courts are indoor dining areas, often found in air-conditioned shopping malls. There’s a wide variation of cuisines and prices are marginally higher. Some very swanky food courts are springing up, where the food is fancier and the prices a little higher still.

Coffeeshops, also called kopitiam (tiam is Hokkien for ‘shop’), are another Singaporean institution. These are open shop front cafes, usually with a handful of stalls inside, patrolled by an ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ who takes your drinks order after you’ve got your food.

  HAWKER CENTRE   ETIQUETTE

Visitors to Singapore often say that hawker centres are among the most memorable parts of their trip. Food courts located in malls are easy, but for the first-timer the older hawker centres can be a little daunting, so it’s worth brushing up on some etiquette before plunging in.  When you arrive, bag a seat fi  rst, especially if it’s busy. You can either do this by placing a member of your group at a table, or do it Singaporean style and lay a packet of tissues on a seat (this behaviour has recently been viewed in the media as being rather ungracious, but hey, it works). If there’s a table number, note it as the stall owner uses it as reference for food delivery. Don’t worry if there are no free tables; it’s quite normal to share with a complete stranger.

You’re then free to wander off in search of food. Signboards list the stall’s specialities, and you can buy any number of dishes from any number of stalls. Sometimes the stall will have a sign saying ‘self service’, which means you have to carry the food to the table yourself, not dish up your own food. Otherwise, the vendor brings your food to you (which is why you should get a table fi  rst, or they won’t know where you are).

Generally, you pay when you order, but some hawkers take money when they deliver.  In older hawker centres and kopitiam (coffeeshops), someone will come to your table and take your drinks rder. You pay them when they deliver the drinks. In the modern food courts in malls, you have to go and order from the drinks stalls.  Some hawker centres have wandering touts who try to grab you when you arrive, sit you down and plonk menus in front of you. You are not obliged to order from them and in fact it’s illegal for stalls to tout at all, which you might like to point out to any persistent pests.

Singapore’s amalgam of cultures has largely made strict eating etiquette redundant. Each ethnic group still follows its own eating code for its own food, but often ignores the codes of other cuisines. You’ll see Chinese eating rotiprata (fried Indian flat bread) with a spoon and fork, Indians eating Chinese food with a spoon, Malays attacking a pizza with a knife and fork… In other words, don’t feel obliged to follow any rules.

 

Food