SINGAPORE -- I still don't know why I wasn't invited to this year's World Gourmet Summit. I wrote the organizers telling them I'd be in Singapore this month, but all I could get out of them were press releases describing multicourse meals with Hudson Valley foie gras and $200,000 white truffles from France.
Still, a traveller has to eat. And if I couldn't dine out on meals prepared by renowned chefs at the Hyatt, nothing could keep me from street food - which not only belies the sanitized sameness of a city famous for its laws against chewing gum, but also is a Southeast Asian smorgasbord that reduces the delights of white truffles to the merely commonplace.
Better yet, Singapore street food is safe. In the 1970s, the government applied its penchant for regulation to the country's itinerant food vendors by sweeping them into specially built food centres with regular health inspections - the Asian equivalent of the food court, only much, much better.
Since then, these "hawker centres" have flourished. In the government-run centres alone, there are an estimated 12,000 hawkers serving variations on as many as 150 different - and utterly original - dishes.
This mind-boggling culinary diversity can be attributed to the island's ethnic mix. Chinese immigrants, particularly Hainanese and Hokkien, live and work alongside Indians and Malays. And over time their respective traditions have intermingled: Hainanese now tweak Malay curries, and Indians play around with Javanese delicacies.
All of which, I soon discover, is to everyone's benefit. On the second day of my visit, my sister Dori and her children take my husband and me to the Newton Food Centre. The biggest and best known (some say the best) of Singapore's hawker centres, it is a horseshoe-shaped mall with dozens of brightly lit booths around an outdoor eating area.
Dori gives each of her kids - 12-year-old Theo, nine-year-old Isobel and seven-year-old Willa - 10 Singaporean dollars and sends them off to buy their dinner. After eight months of life here (halfway around the world from their home in Vermont), these kids are hawker experts. They're not exactly adventurous eaters, but they have strong opinions on which vendors sell the best Hainanese chicken rice and their favourite carrot-orange juice with sugar cane.
As for me, I'm awestruck. This is a food carnival the likes of which I've never seen before. The garish and colourful signage touts mysterious dishes such as nasi lemak (coconut rice with anchovies and peanuts), laksa (curry noodle soup) and roti prata (a pancake roll that comes in hundreds of variations). Even the English names are bewildering: Crispy carrot cake, for instance, is fried white radish cake - not a carrot to be seen.
Each of these dishes also varies from vendor to vendor, depending on whether they are preparing the Indian version or the Hokkien version. Which leaves my husband and me so overwhelmed by choice we end up ordering whatever looks good and bears some resemblance to familiar foods. Even with that uninformed method we do well.
And we don't skimp on portions. That evening, we dine on pepper crab, barely cooked spicy greens laced with caramelized garlic, crispy baby squid, barbecued duck, a tender crepe rolled around a spicy mutton mixture and an oyster omelette made from sweet-potato flour, baby oysters, coriander and garlic.
Nonetheless, we finish the evening regretting the fact that there are limits to how much one can consume at a single sitting. So two days later, Dori, my husband and I head to the East Coast Lagoon Village for lunch - a relatively quiet time since not all the stalls open in the daytime and most residents are loath to leave their air-conditioned offices in the hot afternoon.
Mind you, we find plenty to keep our plates full. We eat excellent popiah (spring rolls), spicy pork wontons, crispy carrot cake filled with fat mee pok noodles and a bowl of prawn noodles. Then we quench our thirst with lime and sugar cane juice. In other words, it's a substantial meal by any international standard - even in a city playing host to a bunch of uber food snobs.
Still, on my return home, I wonder why I didn't try the famous fish-head curry - served in a bowl with the intact head of a red snapper - when I had the chance. I find myself lamenting the fact that I was not adventurous (or hungry) enough to search out the very best popiah Singapore had to offer.
Indeed, the things I didn't eat have turned out to be as memorable as the things I did. Sometimes I even find myself wondering what it would be like to try a bowl of kueh chap - rice noodles and broth with pig intestines. Surely it would be every bit as delicious as the livers of force-fed Muscovy ducks. And I wouldn't have to wait for an invitation.
*****
Pack your bags
WHEN TO GO
While the summer is officially a
monsoon season, it is actually the least rainy period in Singapore, and hotel rates are competitive since business travel slows down.
WHERE TO EAT
Newton Food Centre Near the Newton Mass Rapid Transit stop.
East Coast Lagoon Food Village 1220 East Coast Parkway
Tiong Bahru Food Centre 84, 84A Lim Liak St.
Chinatown Complex Food Centre Corner of Sago and Trengganu Streets
MORE INFORMATION
For a guide to Singapore street food, visit makansutra.com. For tourism details, visit visitingsingapore.com.
46