Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
An Introduction to Singaporean Food
I've been back from my trip to Singapore for about a week now, and while I've mostly finished digesting from my six-day noodle bender, I feel like I've only begun to wrap my head around the depth and diversity of the food scene there. Singapore is a tiny country with a voracious appetite: "we'll eat five or six meals a day," one local told me. "I'm not saying that to impress you—we really do."
Like in Malaysia, those meals will draw from Malay stir fries to Chinese noodles to Indian curries, all slurped down with coffee, hot gingery tea, or the sweet and herbal citrus vibe of calamansi limeade. And no matter where you are, or what you're eating, you'll hear someone tsk-ing about a better noodle, porridge, or bean curd at their favourite hawker.
Never has this New Yorker heard arguments more cutthroat about the best food in town. This is a country of five million dead-serious eaters, the kind of people who ask, "have you eaten?" as a form of greeting.
It's also a nation full of contradictions: a fervent post-colonial drive to be Western in all things against a patchwork of immigrant cultural traditions that refuse to be ignored. Food from Singapore hails from everywhere, but also, in a sense, from nowhere: the local cuisine is defined by what it's borrowed, and how those puzzle pieces are assembled into something totally unique.
What is Singaporean cuisine? It's food you eat in Singapore. Bak kut teh may have come from Southern China, and fish head curry from Southern India, but today they're just Singaporean.
It's a crazy country that can set your head spinning, but food, of all things, will keep you grounded. You'll find fragrant coconut jam on toast in the shadow of skyscrapers, and hear the crack of crab shells in the alleys of red light districts. Wherever I was, and whatever I was doing, I always had the sense that I was in the company of people who cared deeply about what they ate.
If I had to briefly answer what I learned from my trip, it's this: my cheapest meals were some of my best, I could spend the rest of my life eating in hawker centers, and f*@k, these people know how to make noodles. You could spend a trip—or an expat's lifetime (not that I've thought about it or anything)—eating nothing but noodles for less than $5, and feel like you're on top of the world.
If there's anything that ties the endless array of Singaporean food together, it's how good they make humble ingredients taste. A plate of rice and egg noodles stir-fried with shrimp stock and lard tastes way more vibrant and interesting than you'd think it has any right to. A spoonful of quivering tofu from a plastic carton will change your relationship with bean curd.
This kind of perfection in simplicity can only come from a place where eating is a way of life unto itself. And where a meal is judged solely by what comes on the plate—fancy restaurants and big name chefs not necessary
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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