If I could carry all of the food we ate this week, my arms would not just be tired, I believe they would fall off. My first and only set of friends who will ever visit Singapore spent the last week in Asia and we ate more than our combined weight in food.
Katie purchased the ever-so-famous Makansutra, a book all about Singapore’s great eats, along with a couple touristy books. Knowing that Katie and her husband would be visiting, Paul and I decided to leave a lot of the touristy items for their arrival. This was a smart move as we got to experience a few of these things for the first time with our friends.
First on the list was a drink. Not just any drink, though – the Singapore Sling. The drink was invented here about a hundred years ago at the Long Bar in the existing Raffles Hotel.
Beginning Van’s quest to consume as many species as possible, we decided to venture to the Newton Food Centre, a popular hawker centre in the heart of the island. We sampled two kinds of chicken rice, Hainanese and Cantonese fried rice, as well as two kinds of seafood. We ate tiger prawns that were grilled so crispy even the skin was edible. We also tasted grilled sting ray, one of my favorite animals to visit in the aquarium. We all agreed that it was gamey and very stringy but it was very good.
On Sunday we attended brunch at the St. Regis and covered our table four times over in dim sum plates – 34 in all – after two rounds of ordering and at least six rounds of placing plates down and clearing plates away. It was fantastic. BBQ pork bao was my favorite (I ate half of our two orders). We also sampled shu mai, shark fin soup, congee, pork belly, duck, jellyfish…and a lot more.
No one can visit Singapore without tasting the famous seafood offered by our home at the East Coast Park. We sampled geoduck (pronounced gooey duck), abalone, black pepper crab, chili crab and Sri Lankan crab steamed in white wine and chicken broth.
No meal is complete without dessert, so why not start the day with some? We found a dessert place on Bukit Timah that boasted local and typical ice cream flavors. That had freshly baked pie, brownied, waffles and even mini baked Alaska. Again, great. This followed my single Pop Tart breakfast yesterday:
Nut brownie with Kahlua Latte and Reverse O (chocolate Oreo) ice creams. Mmmmm.
Katie and I ventured out on our own this morning to try something called roti prata, an Indian flaky pastry. We ordered two, one plain and one with chocolate, along with a strawberry lassi, a traditional Indian beverage. Yes, one more time – fantastic.
Today is the first day that I truly felt like a local, which is crazy because I acted like such a tourist. I ate so many different things and found so many great things to do but I can’t take credit for half of those things. It was certainly a great week and I am so thankful to have friends like Katie and Van to make my week that much better.
1 comment:
Final count was 16. I think if I had found some sort of fishery, I could have made it to the high 20s.
Post a Comment