Sampling a Tasty Sliver of Singapore"s Cuisine

The view through the oil-slicked window that separates the line from the food revealed a handful of narrow shelves packed with dishes filled with mounds of juicy squid drenched in spicy tamarind gravy, pork belly braised in a sweet soy sauce, chicken slathered in fermented shrimp paste and deep-fried to crispy perfection and, finally, crunchy planks of thin pork chops coated in a saltine-cracker crumble and fried.

What you would not find here is Hainanese chicken rice. Though it is arguably Singapore’s most famous dish, there is much more to Hainanese cuisine in the country. It has a breadth that serves as a reminder of Singapore’s colorful migrant history and is one of the country’s first fusion foods.

The Hainanese style of cooking in Singapore can be traced back to immigrants from Hainan Island in China, who began arriving after the British established a trading port there in 1819. Among the wave of Chinese, people from Hainan were among the slowest to arrive, a fact that dictated the trade they would take up. “They were pretty much the last people on the boat,” said Yin Phua, a Singapore-based food and travel TV producer who is of Hainanese descent. “What was left when they got here was jobs in the kitchen.”

These kitchens were often in colonial households, where the Hainanese, known as “cookboys,” learned to make standard British dishes such as roast beef but also adapted some Hainanese dishes using British or Southeast Asian touches, said Cynthia Chou, a native Singaporean who is associate professor and head of the Southeast Asian Studies section at the University of Copenhagen. Along the way, they “also acquired innovative techniques to use whatever available condiments there were to recast the dishes,” she said. Hainanese chicken rice, for example, is spiced up with chile and tropical pandan leaves, and tastes unlike the typical chicken dishes you’d find on the actual Hainan Island.

After World War II, when the British began leaving Singapore and kitchen jobs dried up, the Hainanese cooks began setting up snack counters and hawker stalls selling British-inflected Chinese dishes, Ms. Chou said, signifying the beginning of Hainanese cuisine in the country.

Hainanese food is one of several delicious varieties of ethnic Chinese food you’ll find in Singapore’s hawker centers, restaurants and homes. Beloved Teochew-style porridges, Fukienese fried seafood noodles and hearty Cantonese soups have, over the decades, become tightly woven into Singapore’s gastronomic fabric.

In my many years of living in the United States after growing up in Singapore, as Singapore’s cuisine has become more internationally known, people have often asked me about Hainanese chicken rice — which is tasty, to be sure. But as delectable as it is, I’ve long known that it represents just the tip of the iceberg. So, on a trip back to Singapore last year, I was determined to more fully investigate this sliver of my country’s cuisine — and refresh my Hainanese palate.

One evening, I was making good on a promise to take my family to a good Hainanese meal, and was soon leading them past smoky karaoke bars and shops offering young Vietnamese brides for a fee in Golden Mile Tower, among the sleaziest of Singapore’s shopping malls. My family, though very adventurous and food-loving, had never been to the restaurant we were heading to (or spent much time in this mall) before. But a Hainanese-Singaporean friend had highly recommended it. And as the smells and chopstick sounds from a restaurant in a bright basement began to hit us, their anxiety dissipated.

Sampling a Tasty Sliver of Singapore"s Cuisine