We end as we began with a travel day. The hang at the club after Susan's final show lasted until 3:00. Then it was back to the hotel to pack, post last night's blog, and get a couple of hours of sleep before checking out.

Breakfast was at the food court in Changi Airport which, I hear, has been rated the world's best airport. It consisted of:

-octopus salad
-otah
-nasi lemak

The octopus salad was from a sushi stand. Compared to other Asian cuisines, Japanese food is under-represented in Singapore.

Otah is a mixture of fish paste and chille which is wrapped in a tube of banana leaf and grilled. Nasi lemak also comes wrapped in a banana leaf. It's rice with chille paste garnished with peanuts and tiny dried anchovies. Ours also came with a whole smoked fish about eight inches long. In an earlier post I identified this fish as sambal, but that actually refers to the chille sauce that's on it. I don't know what the fish is, other than tasty.

The remainder of the meals were eaten in transit from Singapore to Seattle. Thanks to the peculiarities of time zones and the international dateline these all occured between 1:10pm and 5:30pm of the same day although the total travel time was over 20 hours! What a world...

EVA Air Flight 226 (Singapore to Tapei)

-fried fish with spicy sauce
-rice
-greens and carrots
-green salad
-dinner roll
-mixed fruit
-custard (lemon?) with red (pomegranate?) sauce
-red wine

I think this was my first meal in 5 days that didn't include red chille sauce. It was the only meal on this flight since it was a short four hour hop. Near the end of the flight we had a little bag of mixed nuts and rice crackers.

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (Taipei) Terminal Two

We had a five hour layover, so we wandered around a bit before choosing a spot to eat. There were lots of choices ranging from fancy restaurants to groups of stalls arranged sort of like Singaporean hawker centers. (Man, I already miss them!) The cafe we chose was playing a mixture of Bacharach era oldies and old-school country western music. Among other tunes, we heard Unchained Melody, Pretty Woman, My Way, and New York, New York. This provided an interesting counterpoint to two stalls down the concourse, one of which was blaring aboriginal Formosan music while the other (an orchid display) looped a video with a sound track of cheesy instrumental Chinese synth pop.

-udon with minced meat and bean sauce
-meat and vegetable dumplings
-miso soup with lots of seaweed
-a healthy portion of Susan's spicy beef ramen
-Russian ice cream (1 chocolate, 1 ginger)
-Taiwan beer

Susan also had a "Cantonese pastry with date longan" which she described as being like a fig newton with more filling and flakier wrapping. Somehow I forgot to try any of this.

EVA Air Flight 26 (Taipei to Seattle) meal 1

-sweet and sour pork balls
-rice
-mixed vegetables
-green salad with corn, raisins, and soy-sesame dressing
-mixed fruit
-Heineken

EVA Air Flight 26 meal 2

-rice porridge with chicken
-pork floss
-Chinese steamed bun
-mixed fruit

The pork floss, which came in a foil packet, was finely shredded dried pork, reminiscent of the dregs of a bag of beef jerky. There was quite a bit of it, and I'm not sure how it was intended to be used, but it was fine mixed with the porridge.

Well that's a wrap. Thanks to Saturday's gluttony, I surprised myself by managing to have all but one item on my initial "must try" list. That item was rojak, a savory Malaysian fritter containing tofu, egg, potato, prawns, and sprouts, and served with a thick, spicy peanut sauce.

Of course every time I walked a block in Singapore I saw things to add to the list, including, but not limited to, roasted chicken wings, pig tail soup, and pork ribs. Also, I just can't believe I only had char kway teow once. I could see spending a week just trying different versions of that, with maybe the occasional break for some baby squid. (It turns out there was a little collection of stalls on a back street right down the hill from the hotel that had a sotang stall. I didn't notice this place until the last day, but judging by the number of people eating there, I need to try it out.) I hardly ever entered a traditional restaurant (I can think of two at the moment) but I have recommendations of places I need to try from some of the people I met. And then there's the place on the second floor of Plaza Singapura...Rick says they serve a killer Peking duck. Time to start planning the next trip!

Cheers

Final day. It's 4:00 in the morning and it was a big day. Let's get started.

Susan had to go down to the club for some gear maintenance, so we headed to Boat Quay. While she worked, I visited a few stalls in the street behind the club, which is basically several blocks of food vendors. At the first stall I had:

-roti prata
-winter melon tea

Roti prata is a sort of chewy, oily Indian pancake with a curry dipping sauce-perfect for breakfast. The ingredients listed on the can of winter melon tea were: water, extracts of winter melon, sugar, permitted flavorings, permitted food additives of non-animal origin. One wonders what they list if they use non-permitted ingredients.

Then I moved up the street to the BK Eating House, which is an open air food court. These are everywhere. They're sort of a cross between a food court and a hawker center, and they usually have five or six stalls. Here I finally had:

-fish ball noodle soup

This is soup stock (chicken?) with fish balls, which are about the size of golf balls, sliced fish cake, lettuce, scallions, vermicelli, flat noodles, and chilli infused oil for dipping. The two-handed utensil routine is essential, with an added technique. To eat the fish balls, you skewer them with two chopsticks, dip them in the chilli oil, and have your way with them. This was a very satisfying dish, especially when accompanied by a Tiger beer!

Susan was spending some time practicing at the club, and I needed to rest up, so I hopped on a randomly chosen double-decker bus, plopped myself into the front seat on the upper level, and let myself be transported around the island for awhile. This is a great way to see some sights, and they also had a TV screen that was playing local soap operas. I rode out into the suburbs, took an hour walk that included an exploration of the music conservatory, and then rode a train back into town, straight to the heart of Chinatown.

In Chinatown, preparations were underway for the coming New Year celebration, and the streets were even crazier than a few days ago. Suddenly from out of nowhere came a rainstorm. These tropical rainstorms can be furious, but they usually end as quickly as they start. There's nothing to do but find some cover and wait it out, and there's no better way to do that than to duck into a street stall for some:

-roasted duck noodles

This dish was fantastic. Vermicelli with savory duck, greens, gravy, and bits of crispy duck skin, along with a side dish of broth. When a hawker came over to ask if I'd like a Tiger, what could I say?

I keep forgetting to mention the incredible cost factor in all this. Most of the dishes I've been describing cost three Singaporean dollars, which is just a little over two US dollars. Even if you pig out the way I have, it's a bargain!

After a rest and a shower at the hotel, it was time for a trip to the Tekka Centre in Little India. This is the biggest hawker centre I've been to, and the grittiest. There are hundreds of food stalls, and it's wrapped around the "wet market" which is a huge collection of stalls selling all manner of fresh meats and veggies. Here I had:

-carrot cake
-sugar cane juice

The thing about carrot cake is that it's not a cake and it contains no carrots. It's a fried hash of white radish and egg. The best way I can describe it is to say that it's like a cross between chewy noodles and home fries. Even though I'm not an egg fan, I enjoyed this a lot. The Tiger beer probably didn't hurt.

I watched the sugar cane juice being made and it was very simple-sugar cane run through a juicer. No need to add sugar to this one! It was actually quite tasty, with just a bit of citrus tartness.

Before going to Susan's gig I checked out a singer I had met who was working at a trendy spot called Oosh. All I had to eat here was some potato chips (they came with my Heineken) but it's worth mentioning because of its location. It was in the suburbs, in a complex called Dempsey Village, which was a collection of ultra-chic restaurants. It struck me that this was like a hawker centre on super-trendy steroids.

Finally, at Susan's gig we had some good old bar food! The fried chicken wings had a bit of curry flavor, and were quite tasty. We also had some pizza-always good at 2:00am.

Which reminds me that I need to get up in a couple of hours and catch a plane. There's a food court at the airport, so this may not be over yet...

Cheers

3:00 AM. Jim Beam. Blog.

We tried to begin the day at a little cafe near the hotel, but they were closed to the public because they're preparing to cater for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration, which lasts for a few weeks and begins the day we leave. It sounds like that's gonna be a huge bash all over town. Too bad we couldn't have breakfast there though, because it looks like they make some amazing pastries. I could have had a durian tart!

It worked out fine though, because we walked a few blocks to the Fortune City Food Court. Food courts are like hawker centers, but indoors and with fewer stalls. We got coffee at one stall, and then headed for the Syam Corners stall, based on the observation that it had the longest line. This was our first Muslim food. None of this food was on my list but it was great, really one of the best meals we've had. We sat and ate it at a sidewalk table. I've noticed that folks here often eat with a utensil in each hand, usually a spoon in the left and a fork or chopsticks in the right, and this was my first time trying that. My meal:

-sambal (a dry salted whole fish about 10 inches long with, of course, chille sauce)
-cuttlefish
-sauteed bok choy
-rice
-some of Susan's chicken
-some of Susan's bean and grain dish (large lima-like beans and a barley-like grain)
-green lemon juice (sort of like Gatorade)

We needed more coffee, so we stopped at a Kopi Tiam. Kopi Tiam means coffee shop, but it's really a food court that includes a coffee stand. We had Kopi C, which seemed to be coffee with condensed milk and lots of sugar poured over ice.

No trip to Singapore would be complete without a shopping spree, so we went to East Coast Plaza, which Aya, the pianist on Susan's gig said was the best shopping center. It's a huge complex with hundreds of tiny stalls and (of course) a food court. We didn't buy anything.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Paradiz Centre Food Court for a snack. Susan had a disappointing beef noodle dish with black bean sauce. I liked the noodles which were the thick, gluey rice variety, but Susan doesn't really go for that. I'm not sure which part of the cow the beef came from, but it was almost indistinguishable from the noodles.

I had laksa, a sort of soup, which is another signature Singapore dish. I wasn't expecting to be knocked out by this but I was wrong. Singaporeans are pretty passionate about where to get the best laksa, and I have no idea if this place is on the list but it was great. The broth, which they call "gravy" is chicken stock (I think) with coconut milk and, of course, red chilli sauce. It's full of vermicelli, fish cake, cockles, bean sprouts, and fried tofu. I didn't think I was hungry, but I had no problem putting it away, chopsticks in right hand and spoon in left.

After a nap, Susan left for the gig and I went back to the Newton Food Centre. I got there around 9:30, and as I expected, the place really comes alive after dark. Most of the tables are outdoors, and the bright lights and noise are intense. I'm getting used to the hawker centre procedure. You find a spot, usually at a table with other people, as there are seldom empty tables. You reserve your spot with a personal item, often a pack of tissues. (There are no napkins, so people use tissues, and believe me, you need them. There are people walking around from table to table selling packets, three for a buck.) Then you go from stall to stall ordering everything you want and telling the hawkers where your sitting. You go back to your seat and they bring you your items. You pay them at your table. Large groups have a constant stream of hawkers visiting them with goodies. I was by myself so I had just two items:

-sotong
-ABC stout

The stout was quite good, kind of a cross between stout and porter, a bit more bitter than Guinness.

There's no question about it, sotong is the most amazing thing I've had here. It's basically popcorn squid. I took a picture with my phone; I'll try to post it when I have phone service again. The hawker, Ms. Tan came over to my table and chatted for awhile and I got the recipe from her. The baby squid, about an inch long, are deep fried (I'm guessing in lard, although she didn't say) ahead of time, and then fried again when you order. The sauce is a mixture of plum sauce and sweet Thai chilli sauce. These were garnished with sesame seeds and cucmber slices. They're crunchy, not chewy like other squid I've had. I hope I can find baby squid at home, because I'd love to try making this.

Ms. Tan (Newton stall 86) told me that her father started the business 36 years ago, which means he was there at the dawn of the hawker center era. In the early '70s the government here gathered all the street vendors into hawker centers to aid traffic flow and improve sanitation. This probably seemed repressive at the time, but like many of the somewhat repressive strategies of the Singaporean govenment it seems to have turned out brilliantly.

Tomorrow's our last full day, and I've got a lot of things I'd like to try, so we'll see how I do. Topping the list are carrot cake (contains no carrots and isn't cake) roti prata, rojak and fish ball soup.

Cheers

The first night of Susan's gig went great. The local rhythm section plays really well; they did a good job with her tunes and seem to be enjoying themselves. We were up quite late, so I'm writing this in the morning while sipping a cup of hotel Nescafe. I hit two hawker centres yesterday. Susan had business, dealing with immigration in the morning and a rehearsal/sound check in the afternoon, so I got serious about stuffing myself. It was really hot, so I had a lot of Tiger beer and Heineken. I keep forgetting to try ABC stout which is the other local brew. I'll fix that today.

We slept in pretty late, so I missed breakfast. (They have a free breakfast at the hotel, but with all the food available in the city, it would be crazy to eat it.) I started out by wandering around Chinatown for awhile, getting away from the tourist-filled market, but it wasn't long before I made my way to the Maxwell Food Centre, Chinatown's hawker centre. I was there for the early part of the lunch rush, but not all the stalls were open yet. Still, there was plenty to choose from. I had:

-2 kinds of spring roll
-prawn dumpling
-Hainanese chicken rice
-fried banana
-grass jelly juice

Chicken rice is considered the signature Singapore dish, even more than chilli crab. They call it steamed chicken, but really the chicken is boiled and then submerged in cold water to stop the cooking. The rice is cooked in chicken stock. The chilli dipping sauce is an essential accompaniment (of course!) I had mine at the Tian Tian stall, which is supposed to be one of the best, but I have to say that I wasn't that impressed. The chicken was very tender and the rice was tasty, but compared to all the other great stuff that's available here, chicken rice seems kind of bland. The chilli sauce was excellent.

Grass jelly juice is a dark green (almost black) iced drink with little blobs of jelly that get slurped up through the straw. It tasted a little like bubble gum. The fried banana is heavily battered, and the banana within takes on an almost custardy consistency. Very tasty with a Tiger. While I had it, I watched a street troop of acrobat/dancers and percussionists (gong, cymbal and a giant bass drum.)

After a little shopping I stopped at the hotel for my second of three showers. Then it was off to the Newton Food Centre. This place is awesome; I'll definitely be back. It's supposed to be at it's best after dark. It was just getting going when I showed up around 5:00. I was still pretty full from lunch, and I thought I was going to have dinner at the jazz club (that didn't end up happening) so I wanted to take it easy. I had two things that I've really been looking forward to:

-char kway teow
-durian juice

The durian fruit is famous for its nauseating smell. In fact you can be fined for bringing it on the subway. (It's true. I have a picture of the warning sign in the station!) I figured I'd start out with juice and work my way up to the raw fruit, but the juice was just durian meat run though a juicer. They may have added some sugar; it was pretty sweet. The first thing I did was smell it even though everyone has told me not to. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, but the smell isn't exactly encouraging. It has a slightly sulfurous, slightly spoiled odor. The taste was different than the smell, sort of sweet and smoky, and the consistency was kind of like milk of magnesia. After a few sips, the smell is less troubling.

Char kway teow could be the best thing I've had yet, although the baby squid is strong contender. It's wide rice noodles AND long thin noodles in a black soy-based sauce fried with sweet chinese sausage, egg, fish cake, and cockles. The cockles look like fat little clams (about the size of a small marble) and taste like mussels. I'll definitely have a few more versions of this before I leave. The Newton Centre has several stalls selling fried baby squid as well as other squid preparations, so I may have a squid and char kway teow feast after dark tonight. The duck noodles also sound pretty good.

Now it was time for my third shower after which I met Susan at the club. She wanted to grab a quick bite, and for some reason we went into a place called Billy Bomber's American Diner! Susan had a chicken caesar salad. I didn't have anything (except a Tiger.) The chicken was okay, but the salad wasn't at all caesar-like. The place reminded me of a Johnny Rocket's.

Susan's gig was well-attended and there was a good hang afterward. We got back to the hotel around 2:30 and I was hungry, so we went to a nearby place called Banquet that's open 24 hours. Our menu:

-roti John
-wonton noodles

Roti John is a variation of roti prata, which I have yet to try. It's a fried sandwich with egg and meat, in this case mutton. It was tasty, but there was a lot of bread. There was a good savory dipping sauce. We can probably find a better version this. The wonton noodles didn't contain any wonton. They were fried noodles with greens and barbecued pork, quite tasty. It's pretty great how easy it is to get late-night food around here!

That's all for now. A few possibilities for today are the Tekka Centre in Little India and a place we heard about that will do individual servings of Peking Duck.

Cheers

I did a lot of walking today, and it's a good thing because I took in a lot of calories. Now it's about 2am and I'm sitting on the terrace sipping the Jim Beam that I bought at a drug store in Little India. The sky is clear and there's a nice breeze. I'd say it's about 75 deg F. It was probably near 90 at this afternoon.

I've got to come up with a better strategy if I'm going to hit as many hawker stalls as I want to. There are just too many of them and every time I turn around I see something else I need to eat. The food's cheap and it's easy to fill up at one place, but with a little restraint, I should be able to eat five meals a day. Today I walked through the hawker centers in Little India (quite bizarre-pun intended) and Chinatown, but I didn't eat at either because we had restaurant plans. Each hawker center has a completely different character.

Before I get to today's events, a quick note about yesterday's. Those eggs are tea eggs. They often show up as a sort of garnish. OK, onward. I know it sounds like I only had two meals today (we slept in too late to do breakfast) but believe me this was a lot of food. This is me talking--you know it's true!

Our first restaurant was The Banana Leaf Apolo in Little India. The menu, served on huge squares of banana leaf:

-lamb curry
-curried vegetables
-saffron rice
-papadom
-fish head curry

Fish head curry is a huge red snapper head in a bowl of tomato based curry broth with okra and other veggies. Some people consider the eyes a delicacy; I found them a bit grainy. At the end of the meal, the waiter cracked open the center of the skull and insisted that I eat the brain. It tasted like a salty lump of soft fat. What's not to like about that?

Chinatown Hawker Center
-butterscotch gelato

Plaza Singapura
-Starbucks ('nuff said)

Plaza Singapura is an enormous shopping mall. The first time we came up into it from the subway we couldn't figure out how to get out to the street! It's a marketers dream.

In the evening, Susan's contact Rick took us for a feast at the East Coast Seafood Center at East Coast Park. This is basically a row of restaurants, each with outdoor seating and barkers outside luring people in. (Come to think of it, that pretty much describes almost every street in Singapore.) We ate at Chin Wah Heng Seafood Restaurant. There were supposed to be 10 of us. Rick ordered before everyone had arrived, and then two didn't show, so we had, ahem, plenty of food. Here's the rundown:

-chilli crab
-pepper crab
-satong (whole baby squid fried crisp and served in a savory sauce)
-steamed prawns w/chilli sauce dip
-mussels in black bean sauce
-deep fried Chinese buns
-bee hoon (fried rice noodles with veggies)
-kau kang w/oyster sauce (kau-kang is morning glory greens!)
-siao bai chye (Beijing greens-whatever that is)
-fruit (watermelon, honeydew, pineapple, mango)

Chilli crab is one of the signature dishes of Singapore. A Sri Lankan crab (fairly small body, huge claws) smothered in chilli sauce. Pepper crab is a variation that used black pepper instead of chille; I liked it better. The baby squid was awesome. Tiny squid, less than an inch long, with just the right crunch and a fantastic sauce. Rick's wife (apparently a great cook) pronounced the mussels unsatisfactory and sent them back, but not before we'd eaten half of them. I liked them. The morning glory greens were delicious, kind of like spinach in a spicy sauce. I'll have to figure out if these are the same morning glories we have in Seattle (I thought they were poisonous) because our yard is full of them.

That's all for today. Tomorrow we're having dinner at the club where Susan's playing, and I'll try to hit at least one more hawker center.

Cheers from the equator!

OK, here it is, the first day of the Singapore Snog Blog. In case you're confused, this doesn't refer to "snogs" in the British sense. For purposes of this blog, "snog" is used in the broadest Seattle musician sense. It means roughly, "a session of eating." The dates get a bit confusing because of the pesky international date line, so I'll use Singapore dates, although the first day technically spans two days! Anyway, here goes:

Seatac Airport:
-a bag of Bugles
-some of Susan's raisons & almonds

EVA Air Flight 25 (Seattle to Taipei) meal 1
-fish w/rice, green salad, mixed fruit, 2 oreos
-some of Susan's chicken pasta

EVA Air Flight 25 meal 2
-Chinese rice porridge, sesame pastry, mixed fruit, soy drink
-some of Susan's sausage link

EVA Air Flight 225 (Taipei to Singapore)
-Chinese rice w/pork, hard-boiled egg, steamed bun, seaweed salad, mixed fruit
-some of Susan's sausage link

I know it's difficult to believe, but I actually ate half of that egg! It wasn't like our eggs. It was marinated in something kind of smoky and had a much firmer texture.

Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel:
-peanuts, beef & chicken satay, Singapore Sling, Tiger beer

From now on I won't list drinks (you understand) but I thought the first SS and Tiger deserved a mention. The Long Bar is definitely a tourist trap, but supposedly the SS was invented there. You throw your peanut shell on the floor.

Lau Pa Sat Hawker Center:
-BBQ stingray
-dumplings w/vegetable noodles
-some of Susan's Taiwanese shredded pork rice

The dumplings were stuffed with a mystery meat and some kind of mushroom. Everything comes with chilli sauce!

Cheers