Go Hawk in Singapore
The wife and I just recently traveled to Singapore with one goal in mind, to experience the true essence of Singapore street food. So to truly embrace the Singaporean food culture, we ate our breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Hawker stands. Hawker stands typically specialized in one Asian specialty dish and charged either $3(small), $4,(middle) or $5(large) dollars per item. Within a food center, we were able to experience wide array of Chinese, Thai, Malaysian inspired comfort dishes. Overall, I consider Singapore Hawker stands as the mecca for delicious, inexpensive, no frills culinary experience. Now on to the food and Singapore hawker stands...
Lau Pa Sat
Our experience started at Satay Street in Lau Pa Sat. In the heart of the business district, this street is blocked off and vendors setup stands to serve a variety of meats on sticks and regional specialties (stingray anyone?) and let's not forget the local beer. along with plastic tables/chairs to serve some delicious satay sticks along with beer, and some other specialty items such as stingray. This experience purely exemplified what ones perception of street food should be like with the smoke and smells of grilled meats coming from the satay stands, humid air combining with spicy food to cause profuse sweating but all being washed down with ice cold tiger beer. energy from large groups of people laughing, hanging out and enjoying dinner after work with friends after work showcases how satay street can provide a great dining experience in a completely unpretentious and open environment. It was truly memorable. So now on to the food.
We chose to eat from satay stand #8 which was a good choice especially since we were able to take of picture of the satay master in action. We ordered satay sticks of beef/chicken and prawns. All were cooked well with a good smokey char, the meat was tender, the marinate was with cumin, lemongrass, sugar and some other fragrant spices. The touch of cucumbers were nice to calm the mouth down. But really the star and most interesting dish was the stingray fin cooked in banana leafs and covered with spicy sambal sauce and a hint of lime (which are much different here than in the U.S as they are similar to small key limes but the pulp is a rich dark caramel color and extremely juicy). The meat on the stingray was minimal and came along with quite a bit of soft bone and skin, but the meat was very tender and soaked in the delicious and spicy sambal sauce.
After boozing and eating in satay street, move into the actual hawker stands and try some of the specialty Asian dishes. We started off with a singaporean staple of Char Kway Teow which consists of chow fun noodles mixed with chow mein egg noodles, cooked together with soy, sugar, an egg, and cockles! Once perceived as unattractive shellfish for consumption, the Char Kway Teow dish was able to integrate the 'sea snails' and add a delicious briny/firm seafood item to the dish while maintaining a low cost. The Lai Heng stand executed well and I would definitely recommend.
Lai Heng
Right next to Lai Heng, Song Kee Noodle offered a fairly solid fish ball noodle soup. The ho fun noodles were not dried, keeping a slippery soft texture without being mushy. The fish ball and fish cake was delicious as they were plump, bouncy, and seasoned well. The broth was a clean clear Pork/chicken/fish broth that was very comforting.
Song Kee Noodle Soup
Maxwell Food Centre - Our favorite food court in singapore.
Zhen zhen porridge Stall #54
Wow! Our strategy was to get to the food court as early as they opened and wait in line at the places that had the longest queues! If the locals liked it, we figured we probably would too. So stall #54 it was a 10:30 a.m, 15 patrons in line and a 45 minute wait. This place had many food awards and you could definitely tell it was a famous hawker stand. So on to the food.
a mechanical pot stirrer that slowly turns the porridge to help break down the rice kernels until the porridge becomes smooth, gelatinous, and you no longer taste the rice kernels. A heavy helping of firm sliced white fish added texture and flavor to the porridge, and the raw egg put into the bowl before the hot porridge was poured over added a creamy full to the mouth feeling that added to the creamy gelatinous porridge. Similar to vietnamese style porridge a heavy helping of fish sauce was added to enhance the natural sweetness of the fish porridge. This was all topped off with a nice helping of freshly fried shallots, fried ground pork, and some green onions to provide some freshness. This was my favorite porridge I've had and I hope you can one day enjoy some of this $5 deliciousness!
Raw Fish Plate -
Wow wow wow! Mmm now this is what I call value based carpaccio! We got a huge plate of this raw fish salad for $5! It was awesome. It was full of thinky sliced firm white fish similar to snapper, a plethora of thinly sliced green onions, a heaping of thinly sliced green onions, toasted sesame seeds, freshly fried shallots, chili peppers, and a huge heaping of lime. The combination of spicy, sour, savory and vibrant flavors were delicious, and very memorable. TTT appproved!
Fish Head Bee Hon Stand -
Directly across from Zhen Zhen porridge. Excellent and life changing bowl of noodle soup! Who would have though fish noodle soup could be so amazing? Similar to Zhen Zhen, there was a line of nearly 15 people and the wait was about 35 minutes. So was the wait worth it? Yes! This dish inspired me to learn how to cook milky fish head noodle soup! You can choose between either fried fish slices, regular sliced fish, or fish head to join this delicious noodle soup. We chose to go with fried =). The broth was really the star, as it had a milky smooth and full to the mouth velvety texture, full of fish/chicken/pork flavor, some ginger and onions to provide some fragrance, fish sauce for the questionable sweet umami flavor, all topped off with fried shallots and red chili to add an explosion of flavors and textures. The rice noodles were nice, but it was really the broth that defined this to be TTT (Tim to table worthy). There are some websites that discuss the milky broth can be achieved by quickly boiling fried fish heads on extremely high heat. I think really the trick is just to use condensed milk. Please check out a link to my homemade version of fish head bee hon. TTT worthy.
Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice -
An Anthony Bourdain absolute disappointment. For all the hype, all of the bullshit Bourdain billboards of having such fragrant chicken, this place fell way way short. We of course ordered the Hainanese chicken rice, which is essentially boiled chicken served with chicken broth infused rice, and a sweet soy to add flavor to the bland dish. This could be my personal preference, but there is a particular type of chicken I now enjoy and which in my opinion produce the best hainan chicken and chicken pho. These are "teenage chicken" that have properly balanced sweet meat, bouncy skin, and still tender but firm meat. The chicken used for this Hainanese chicken was a young chicken, so it was very one dimensional with soft meat but no natural sweetness, no texture to the meat and definitely no bouncy yellow skin. Don't waste your time and money on this famous hainan chicken restaurant.
Lao Ban Soya Beancurd
Excellent! There a huge line for this well established soy Beancurd stand. It is chilled silken Beancurd which provides an extremely refreshing dessert after sweating bullets from eating spicy soupy food in a non air conditioned humid environment. Unfortunately we had to get the almond flavored silken Beancurd as they ran out of regular flavor. This was so really good, very smooth, and refreshing. A definite TTT approval, but remember to get there early.
Chinatown Food Court
This food court is close to Maxwell and is in the heart of Chinatown. Some of the items we had in this fairly good, but our favorite would still be Maxwell food court.
Ann Chin -
We were lured by the man in the front hand making popian skin paper wraps. It looked very similar to a crepe as he put a thin layer of popian batter on a flat hot surface and spread out to a very thin layer. Similar to a Vietnamese spring roll, the rolls had lettuce, bean sprouts, crushed nuts, and were served with a slightly sweet sauce. Overall these looked delicious, but as they were vegetarian and the popian wrapper was dry, they sure looked a lot better than they tasted. However they were cheap at $1.60 per roll.
Ah Ling Cooked Food stall #02-173
Specializing in Fried Kway Teow, we got a small sized plate for $2.50. The char Kway Teow consisted of freshly stir fried chow fun noodles along with bean sprouts, egg, chow mein noodles, and cockles in a slightly sweet soy sauce. Although this was fairly good, it wasn't great as it was still a bit dry and lacked the Wok Hay that produce the nicely charred flavors on noodles. I preferred Lai Heng back at Lau Pau Sat as each order was individually cooked versus a large batch being cooked at Ah Ling. The conclusion is that taste is fine, but there is definitely better out there.
Next to Ah Ling, there seems to be also a famous stand serving the raw fish salad. I ordered a small plate which was more expensive than Zhen Zhen porridge for $6 dollars. It was subpar as it lacked in robustness of flavor vs. zhen zhen. Not enough sesame seeds, not enough lime, not enough fried shallots, no chili. The fish was firm and fresh but lacked any type of sweetness. The verdict is go to zhen zhen porridge at Maxwell for a good raw fish carpaccio! Ok but I do not recommend.
Newton food court -
We weren't too impressed with this tourist driven food court. The second you got there, you know it's not that place the locals eat as you have many stall owners trying to lure you in to try their products. The prices are 1-2 dollars higher than the other food courts, the food served at each stall are very similar with little differentiation, and on top of of this the stall owners must be known to try and rip off tourists on seafood (look at the comic to the left). I suggest you not to come here.
Heng Carrot Cake -
similar to Lo Bak Go which you typically consume during dim sum, this was a freshly made pan fried white turnip cake with egg. Although supposedly well known, the texture was much too soft and tasted like mush with oil. I wouldn't recommend.
Banana Leaf -
We trekked out to little India to try the famous fish head curry from Banana Leaf Apollo. The fish head was big, deep fried and then put into a red gravy full of Indian spices and subtle deep heat. We attacked the fish head from all angles including the meat on the collar, the chewy meat of the cheek, even around the eyes. The fish head curry was served with an unlimited amount of basmati rice and cooked potatoes/onions that were fairly delicious. We also ordered Saag paneer, naan, and a limeade to wash down the spicy food. You can definitely tell the restaurant is catered to get tourists in and out. Although its a restaurant, let me warn you that it is by no means a fancy restaurant as the wait staff come by once to drop off your food and never come back, yet expect a tip. The bathroom is a shithole(literally there is no toilet to sit on). We spent about $50 and weren't satisfied with our dinner. We should have just stuck with the hawker stands and got full for $10 bucks! I do not recommend Banana Leaf Apollo.
