Singapore: Asia’s food hub

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. –Virginia Woolf

I recently spent four days in Singapore on an actual food trip. It was a gourmand’s dream and a dieter’s nightmare of three-hour lunches and dinners, every day. You could say that it was an eating tournament, the winner of which was whoever figured out the secret to lasting throughout the entire meal with as much grace, poise, and good countenance as when he or she started. What worked for me was slow and deliberate pacing by taking small bites in order to savor every spoonful. Genial conversation with my seatmate, a fellow foodie, allowed for rest and digestion in between mouthfuls. Deep, controlled breaths dissipated my feeling of fullness and heaviness. But my best weapons during those four days were my trousers with elastic waistbands. Each meal was a celebration of the fresh and wonderful bounties of the earth and sea and the talent and effort poured into its preparation. The only way to accord each dish the justice it deserved was to engage all the five senses while partaking of it.

"Have you eaten yet?" is a common greeting in Singapore because Singaporeans make no bones about their passion for food. Their small island nation lies at the crossroads of the great medieval East-West trade routes, along which flowed valuable products such as ivory, gold, silk, batik, silver, ebony, sandalwood, tea, sago, sugar, pepper, nutmeg, cloves and coriander. The Malacca Straits were known as the Spice Route and from the ingredients that flowed through it. Singaporean cuisine was built up using recipes handed down through generations of immigrants from China, India, Indonesia, from European colonizers, and from sea-faring traders. This multi-cultural origin of Singaporean cuisine is what makes it truly unique.

I went to Singapore with a group of nine other writers, all in search of a culinary experience that is truly Singaporean, something that cannot be had in any other country. I kept a keen eye on what it is in their cuisine that makes it distinctive.

Day 1

Straight from Changi Airport, we sat down to a three-hour lunch at Zambuca Italian Restaurant and Wine Bar of the reputable and grand Pan Pacific Hotel, our home for the next four days. The maitre d’ gave us the best seats in the house, as provided by the wine cellar of the restaurant. This "cellar," as it is misleadingly called, is an architectural marvel. It is a glass-enclosed dining room with glass panels rising from floor to ceiling. It houses 2,300 labels of the world’s finest vineyards and around 8,000 bottles of wine. Zambuca boasts the largest wine selection in the whole of Asia and has been a Wine Spectator awardee in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Our group sampled three starters: the insalata anatra, a salad of smoked duck breast topped with arugula, raspberries and Spanish onion with a zesty citrus salsa; calamari fritti, breaded squid and perfectly flash-fried to a crisp; and warm spinach salad in an olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing.

I requested the rack of lamb for my main course and shared tiramisu, poached pears, and chocolate cake with the group for dessert. The food was good, but the highlight of my lunch was the glass of chilled 2002 Italian Pinot Grigio to accompany the appetizers, the taste of which still remains quite vivid in my mind and on my palate.

Dinner was at the Cherry Garden Chinese Restaurant of the Oriental Hotel, Singapore. The executive chef, Hiew Gun Khong, prepared a seven-course feast of smoked duck breast and fish fillet for starters, mixed seafood soup, deep-fried sea perch, oven baked lobster, calamansi refreshment to reawaken the palate, wok-fried udon noodles, and finally a chilled cream of mango with pomelo and sago pearls for dessert. This was the hands-down favorite in the entire repertoire. It is an upscale version of our local mango-sago pudding served at Chinese restaurants, but this one had the finest balance of fruit and cream and sweet and sour tastes from the bits of pomelo floating on the mango puree. It was ceremoniously served on a glass bowl atop a mound of dry ice. It bubbled and puffed out streams of smoke as it was served. It was a real visual and palate stunner. Aside from the dessert, the world-class impeccable service, characteristic of Oriental Hotels worldwide, is worthy of mention.

Day 2

After an extensive breakfast buffet at the Pan Pacific with Michael Schmitt, the hotel’s marketing director, we trooped to Mustard Restaurant at Race Course Road in Little India for lunch. The restaurant specializes in Bengali and Punjabi food, a quaint setup run as a small family enterprise. Mustard, whether it be the tiny, flavorful seed, the aromatic oil or the full-bodied leaves of the mustard plant, is extensively used in Punjabi and Bengali cuisine. Punjab is in the northern part of India, away from the coast, where there is ample land for animals to graze, so that its cuisine is based mostly on lamb and poultry. Bengal, meanwhile, is in eastern India, near the coast and known for its repertoire of seafood dishes.

We had pappadums, wafer-thin and crunchy. It was so spicy that one bite of it launched someone in the group into a coughing fit. I sampled a glass of Indian white wine, while the rest had lassi, an Indian yogurt drink known to temper the spiciness of certain dishes. We also had pakoriyan, assorted vegetable fritters dipped in garam flour and fried crisp; macher paturi, fish fillet in mustard marinade, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed; kosha mangsho, Calcutta-style mutton stew; palak paneer, cottage cheese cubes simmered in spinach puree; basmati rice, and a basket of naan, which are Indian leavened breads made of whole wheat flour. Dessert was gokul pithe, a pastry of semolina flour batter filled with sweet coconut, fried, and dipped in a sugar syrup. But the one dish that outshined the rest in presentation and taste was the changri macher malai curry: prawns simmered in a medium hot coconut cream, spiked with cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom, served in a fresh coconut shell.

We walked all that food off by wandering about the streets of Joo Chiat in the Katong district and were intrigued by the way of life of the Peranakans who reside within this small area. Peranakan, which means "descendants" in Malay, describes the offspring of local Malay women and Chinese businessmen who came from China in the 17th century. This place is where the roots of local-born Chinese took hold. The Peranakan culture is a marriage of Chinese and Malay cultures with some influence from colonizers: Portuguese, British and Dutch, along with Indian, Thai, and Indonesian cultures as well. Side by side along the streets were modern buildings juxtaposed with centuries-old, colorful heritage houses of colonial architecture, which were quite a sight to see. The intermarriage of these traditions gave birth to new customs and beliefs, unique practices, and varied cuisines. I was able to observe a cooking demonstration of typical Peranakan food and sampled the best of what their cuisine has to offer. This highly evolved cuisine, which is a fusion of Chinese and Malay cooking, is what is known as Nonya food. My favorite was the rice dumpling or bak chang. It is compacted rice with a meat filling, fried with a mixture of spices and winter melon cubes. It is wrapped in pandan leaves and boiled for two to three hours. It tastes distinctly Asian and, therefore, heavenly.

Dinner was a quick bite at Glutton’s Bay Makansutra hawker’s market. The hasty meal of oyster omelet, Singaporean fried carrot cake, which was surprisingly made of radish, and char kuay teow noodles was a most unforgettable dining experience for me, just as our last-day brunch at Maxwell hawker’s market was. On that final morning, I had Singaporean curry puff, which is close to a curry-filled Pinoy empanada, more carrot cake, and ham cheng peng, which is exactly like a Western donut without the hole. The native sticky rice dumplings called ondeh ondeh, which had brown sugar syrup oozing from inside, and lor mai qi, which had an exotic sesame seed flavor, were quite enchanting.

We were fortunate enough to catch an outstanding performance of the Russian modern ballet group, called Red Giselle, after which we had tea and cakes for an après theater supper at the V Tea Room right outside the theater of the Esplanade, more affectionately called "The Durian" due to its durian-inspired dome. The café looked like a Victorian lady’s boudoir, very opulent and feminine with rose-patterned upholstery on the furniture, pink damask wallpaper, and Venetian masks. It is famous for its signature melt-in-the mouth liqueur teacakes and for its selection of 30 varieties of tea. The Bailey’s teacake was an instant hit, and so was the barrel whiskey mud cake, which was a deep, dark, and velvety flourless chocolate cake drenched in Davidoff whiskey.

Day 3

We started the day with a sparing breakfast, a welcome change for our distended abdomens, which at this point were fighting to stay within the confines of our clothing. We went to the legendary Ya Kun Kaya Toast coffee stall near Chinatown that first opened its doors to the public in 1944. It has stood there all along and is swarmed to this day by locals and tourists alike. Breakfast was the traditional Singaporean thin, brownish toast with kaya, a local jam made from eggs, sugar, and coconut milk. Sometimes it is green in color, sometimes caramel. The bread is buttered and toasted over charcoal. It is paired with soft-boiled eggs sprinkled with pepper and a dark soy sauce. Singaporean local coffee with condensed milk is the drink of choice with this type of food. It was a light but invigorating breakfast, a perfect way to start the day.

Lunch at the Coriander Leaf Restaurant cum culinary school was one of the highlights of this culinary adventure. But the catch was we had to cook our own food regardless of the end result. Edible or not, we were expected to eat what we would have churned out!

Coriander Leaf is the new Asian food hub with a growing reputation around the continent. It is known for its pan-Asian cuisine, which has merited widespread critical acclaim as proven by its status as one of Singapore’s top restaurants, according to the Wine and Dine and Singapore Tatler magazines. Pan-Asian cuisine takes its roots from South Asia, the Middle East and the Orient, and modernized by the restaurant into simple, creative interpretations. Coriander Leaf’s fine dining cuisine is ironically served in a relaxed bistro atmosphere, which is adjacent to the glass-enclosed cooking classroom, all in a prime riverside setting on Clarke Quay.

The animated owner, chef, and culinary director of Coriander Leaf, Samia Ahad, set a jovial mood in spite of the classroom’s bustling atmosphere by invoking fun and productivity as we went about our individual tasks of prepping and cooking our assigned dishes. She gave us a menu pulled out from her "Screen Cuisine" collection. Ours was the "Godfather Menu" inspired by the Oscar-winning Francis Ford Coppola mafia movie. The movie has over 50 scenes involving food and drink, and chef Samia developed a menu of dishes lifted straight out of the movie or those of Sicilian origin.

What puts Coriander leaf on top of my list of must-experience restaurants in Singapore, aside from its excellent cuisine, is the personality of chef Samia, who is an enigma all her own. She completed her culinary training in New York, moved to Singapore, opened Coriander Leaf in 2001, and has never looked back. Part of its success is the cooking classes, which are actually small educational parties that are tons of fun capped with excellent food and wine. 

Dinner was at Quayside Seafood Restaurant by the river at Clarke Quay. Quayside Seafood Restaurant was awarded as one of Singapore’s Most Popular Chili Crab Restaurants during the Singapore Food Festival this July. It has also been cited as one of Singapore’s Best Restaurants of 2006 by the Singapore Tatler magazine. We were served a typical Chinese family-style meal of crispy salt and pepper squid, sweet and sour fish, herbal drunken prawns, broccoli in oyster sauce, stir-fried beef in black pepper sauce, and ultimate fried rice. The star of this Chinese lauriat was the Sri Lankan chili crab, which is Singapore’s national dish. The crab was surprisingly meatier than any other kind I’ve tried. The sauce had that ideal balance of sweetness and spice that stimulated our appetite to no end.

Day 4

Our breakfast was a buffet spread of continental and Asian dishes at the Singapore Zoo. There was the standard continental fare of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausages, but the breakfast congee and steamed lotus paste buns were most popular among the guests.

After spending the morning with animals at the zoo, we motored to Poison Ivy, the second highlight of my trip. Poison Ivy is a 10-acre organic farm with an on-site restaurant serving local cuisine. It is a 30-minute drive out of the city, but is well worth every kilometer traveled.

We had a guided tour of the organic farm and sat down to a lunch of delicious carrot (actually radish) cake called chai tow kuay, spicy tofu, sweet and sour fish, okra with tomatoes, roti prata (Indian bread), and chicken and banana curry. Dessert was Singaporean versions of our very own banana cake, kuchinta, and cassava cake. The carrot cake and spicy tofu dishes were my favorites.

More than the good food and the lush gardens of herbs and vegetables and the orchards abundant with fruit, it was the dynamic duo of its owners that elevated the entire Poison Ivy experience onto new heights. Gregarious 58-year-old Ivy Singh Lim, a half-Sikh, half-Chinese statuesque beauty, and her husband, 63-year-old Lim Ho Seng, former CEO of Singapore’s largest chain of supermarkets, started the whole Poison Ivy enterprise. These two entertaining characters liked to describe themselves as gentle warrior farmers. They regaled us with anecdotes about farming in Singapore, which seemed to me like an oxymoron, and with endearing stories about life as retirees. The husband-and-wife team hopped from table to table taking care of all the guests animatedly and tirelessly, which could not have been fueled by anything less than passion for what they do.

Our final dinner was at Giraffe Restaurant, an ultra modern edifice amid the lush and verdant setting of Istana Park right smack in the middle of the city. Giraffe offers a wide selection of global cuisine from 15 countries. The restaurant is spread over two levels. The architects capitalized on its surroundings by using glass generously, effectively bringing the outdoors right inside to the dining salons. The full-height glass panels give patrons expansive views of the foliage, further enhancing the dining experience. The Giraffe concept was to approximate the feel of a giraffe roaming free on the savannas. This restaurant had the best interiors, the best view, and the best ambience. What I enjoyed most in our three-course dinner was the finale: a traditional South African dessert of Malva pudding, which is a light butter cake infused with orange and Jack Daniels, served with ice cream and orange sauce.

Singapore is a melting pot of international cuisine, arts, and architecture. It is where the urban meets the traditional, where modern architecture nestles comfortably amid colonial architecture and lush greenery, where 21st century high-tech merges wonderfully with age-old customs. Singapore offers the modern and the cosmopolitan, while retaining its distant local flavor, whether it be in cuisine or in the arts, and this is what makes it truly unique. This is what enchants all visitors and keeps them coming back.

My last day in Singapore was typical of any travel departure day – bittersweet, because the wanderlust, the culinary adventure and all the fun had come to an end. But there were none of the usual attendant hassles of checking out of the hotel and checking in at airport because of the sheer efficiency of the Pan Pacific Hotel and the Changi Airport crews, which offered signature Singaporean impeccable service at your beck and call. I left Changi Airport several pounds heavier but dead certain of my return in the very near future.

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E-mail the author at clfortyfied@yahoo.com.