Food and the City –– A Singapore Diary

How do I explain the shock of sitting down to a very homely lunch of bhaat, daal and maach bhaja (our very own fried fish) one morning and sitting down to lunch the following day only to find the whole sea aquarium “cooked and curried [and the uncooked!!]” on my plate –– cuttlefish, squids, scallops, octopus, stingrays and more. For an average bangali like me it did take some flexing of my culinary imagination, stunted as it is with its limited experience of the Indian type Chinese food. My Singapore experience helped me come to terms with the wide world of edibles we prefer restricted to the glossy pages of Children’s Guide to Sea Creatures.

Just a four hour flight away from Kolkata, this city state boasts of attracting tourists for its chic shopping malls, wildlife parks and oh yes, its food. You can guess its popularity on a very virtual scale— a Google search for ‘Singapore food’ is going to yield no less than 45,300,000 hits! And when you come to this neat first world country close to your home you will be spoilt for choice on what to eat and where to eat. I had begun my first morning at my aunt’s place in Singapore with cereals and milk, getting educated on where to go while she was out on work. I came to know that Singapore had four official languages … a total area of 655 square kilometers and four national languages, that’s like saying four languages for an area of a fifth of Darjeeling!!! I should have been cautioned right then and asked for some clue on what to eat outside … only later did I discover that I could have anything ranging from Chinese to Thai to Indian to French to Italian to Malay food…and all in very hygienic conditions and at reasonable prices in the open air or neon lit food courts that dot the city. For a country with such a diverse culture and liberal ways about food it is only natural that they take their food seriously.

Only the other day I was reading in one of these career advice columns that one’s probability of success depends upon your knowledge, attitude and skill. Nothing can be truer about your food experience here. It’s best to know and choose yourself rather than depend on others for choice of the menu when you come here. Of course, your attitude towards food will be tested as I already told you earlier. My understanding of a 10 day jaunt to this place says that food here can be divided into 2 basic groups. Ones that you see every other person in a food court ordering – in here, the wisdom is to note the person’s ethnicity, I am not trying to be racial in any way, but I don’t think you would enjoy dried fish paste in your curry as much as a South Asian would do. The next group consists of those must–eat authentic preparations that are part of the local or should I say South Asian cuisine?

The first category would list preparations like Mee Goreng– it’s supposed to be the regular fried hakka noodles that we eat here, it looked so delectable and innocuous but I cannot explain the strange pungent smell owing to I think sea food mixed with it; next in line would be Bee Hoon– a mix of cuttlefish, bean sprouts, pork prawns and cockles on steamed vermicelli rice. Don’t go by what you read in the menu about its being a cultural fusion in Chinese and Malay food and something that you shouldn’t miss. I think most people have heard about something called the Durian – it maybe the king of fruits in Singapore but don’t trust it unless you have a strong capacity to stop an automatic retch that will a happen quite involuntarily once you swallow it. Your search for the exotic will end with a very disgraceful run to toilet where you will be more than glad to throw up all you’ve eaten.

Let me now go to the other category of food which will fall under the must–eats category. Start with Satay or Sate, a juicier variety of our kebab , the Singapore chicken rice and move on to, last but not the least, the Sushi – the venerated caviar of the East but again know your sushi dipping sauce according to your palate, not everything can be managed with only the Wasabi sauce. To know more of such gastronomic delights arm yourself with a street food guide by Makan Sutra, Singapore’s biggest publisher of food guides.

If you are not the adventurous sort, the occasional McDonald’s or a restaurant serving continental food beside local delicacies isn’t hard to come by. In fact Singapore was one of the first countries in Asia to bring in McDonalds and KFC. For all those god fearing shudh shakahari Indians, there is no need to worry as you will find plenty of Tamil joints serving Dosa and Idli – remember, Tamils form the largest group of expatriate Indians here.

My ruminations on this topic will come to an end but not without a piece of advice: A big heart and in some cases a weak olfactory sense would get you past most of the vicissitudes that the plate can offer in Singapore.