Travel
Singapore: Eating her curries and kway
Here’s a guide to the food heritage of the Lion City
Singapore: Eating her curries and kway:- A 2016 survey by
Singapore’s Department of Statistics lists 7,679 establishments — 2712
restaurants, 477 fast food outlets, 450 caterers and 4041 ‘others’ — that make
up the food and beverage services industry in the island nation. It’s hard,
therefore, for visitors and residents to go hungry here for long.
Food discovery
tours have made eating out a part of the tourism industry, as the nation hosts
restaurants from all parts of the globe.
Eating centres
Hawker centres
are a hallmark of eating out in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. These
open-air food halls with shared seating offer a more sanitised option to
alfresco dining and mobile street food shops.
In the Wok ‘n’
Stroll Hawker Discovery tour that we undertake at the Tekka Market in Little
India, we are introduced to familiar friends — masala dosa,
idli-sambar and samosas.
Guide Abdul
Rahim takes our group of five on a laid-back exploration of this
residential-cum-shopping complex of Little India, peppering his talk with
nuggets of food history, stopping only to connect the dots in the world’s spice
trade.
The ginger in
the Teh Tarik (a frothy ‘pulled’ tea made with condensed or evaporated milk and
served in mini glass tankards) helps us digest the yummy samples we are served.
Located in what
was once an area of cattle slaughterhouses, the modernised Tekka Market opened
for business on Buffalo Road in 2009.
But it still
remains a melting pot of cultures and cuisines — Chinese shopkeepers are fluent
speakers of Tamil in this little enclave of Indian-origin business
establishments, says Rahim.
The market has a
host of hawker stalls selling delicacies like biryani and ‘prata’ — the
Southeast Asian version of our maida parotta — and also snacks
like wheat flour crepe rolls with fillings of peanut butter, Nutella and jam.
Treading
carefully through the wet markets inside Tekka, one can see fish and meat
stalls getting their stock ready for the day, while a distinctly pungent corner
announces the presence of dried seafood stores, much before you see them.
In another
corner, machines make quick work of coconuts — grating, grinding and even
extracting milk from the pulp as required by customers.
Some of the less
odorous cousins of the durian are on sale at the fruit market, besides fresh
produce from all over the world, and ethnic stores that specialise in
ingredients like fried tofu skin and handmade egg noodles.
“Look out for
the certification before you decide to eat at a restaurant,” says Rahim, as we
trek down towards Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple in Little India. “An ‘A’ is
excellent… ‘C’… maybe not so much,” he chuckles. The certification by
Government authorities is a way to ensure that smaller eateries maintain
hygiene standards.
The next day,
there’s more history to come, at Lau Pa Sat centre on Raffles Quay. The 24-hour
hawker food centre is buzzing when we drop in close to midnight, looking for
nourishment after a hard day of trekking through museums. The
intricately-filigreed wrought iron frames of the arched building were cast in
Glasgow, Scotland, and shipped to be assembled in Singapore, when the market
was relocated from its original waterfront site in 1894, by the country’s
Municipal Engineer James MacRitchie.
Hainanese
Chicken Rice, nicknamed Singapore’s national dish, is flying off the counters
at a restaurant, as famished visitors queue up.
The combination
of steamed chicken and sticky rice cooked in broth, that is eaten with sides of
clear soup, chilli and soy sauce, is delicately spiced.
Plates are
colour-coded according to diets: white for non-Halal and green for Halal, and
washed in separate facilities for the Lau Pa Sat’s eateries.
Right behind the
food hall is the ‘Satay Street’, a night-time eating spot that opens for
business when both ends of the Boon Tat Street are blocked off and vendors set
up tables and barbecues selling marinated meats on bamboo skewers.
Peranakan treats
As our trip
draws to a close, there’s still time to squeeze in some ethnic cuisine before
we leave. At Joo Chiat Place, Peranakan (Straits-born Chinese immigrant)
culture comes alive through its quaint little stores and heritage shop houses
painted in candy colours.
The Guan Hoe
Soon restaurant has been serving Peranakan dishes since 1953, and is considered
to be the oldest such place in Singapore. We order beef rendang for lunch. The
dry curry is cooked to perfection, the spice paste and coconut milk-infused
meat falling off the bone.
Ayam (chicken)
curry and stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts bring to mind, traditional
preparations of Chettinad cuisine. Sambal terung (eggplant sautéed with
spices), is a crunchy surprise, and a homely treat when eaten with steamed
rice.
We wash it down
with barley water, and for dessert, order a chendol made with coconut milk,
rice flour jelly, shaved ice, palm sugar syrup and red beans. It’s a
combination of unlikely ingredients that, quite like Singapore, leaves a
lasting impression.
The writer was
in Singapore on the invitation of Singapore Tourism Board.
Source: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/travel/singapore-eating-her-curries-and-kway/article22609484.ece
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