Food Republic

The Singaporeans have a cozy relationship with food. As I noted in one of our first posts, food is very important to Singaporeans, and they keep plenty of it around, so you'll never go hungry in Singapore.

In fact, Singaporeans find eating so important that they feign sovereign nation status for their eateries. Hence we find pastry shops operating under the name Donut Empire:


There is a popular chain of food courts operating under the name Food Republic:


And you can buy sweets sold at the Candy Empire:


And one more "empire," the Imperial Herbal & Singchi Tcafe:

Taste Test Challenge

English food has a terrible reputation worldwide. Why? Well I can give you at least one example. The last time we were in England, we had a breakfast in our hotel. It consisted of eggs and sausages boiled in grease. Yes. Not fried. Boiled. The grease wasn't hot enough to fry, just sort of a warm simmering pan of week-old oil. Boiled long enough to absorb the greasy flavor of everything else they cooked in the same oil that week, but not hot or long enough to actually fry the egg or fully cook the sausages. If you accidentally cooked this at home, you would throw away and start over.

But to be fair, that was hotel food. And it was a very cheap hotel at that.

Is the rest of English food all that bad?

One way to find out is to do a taste test. Based on my previous experience, I didn't want to set the bar to high. So I had to find some type of food to give England a sporting chance.

So my taste test challenge is English Food vs. Airplane Food. It seemed like an obvious match-up of historically bad cuisine. And I didn't have access to other obvious contenders: hospital food or high school cafeteria food.

But it is not fair to represent all of England by one cheap hotel breakfast. So to find a better ambassador for the Empire, I went to a traditional pub in the afternoon and ordered one of the specials off their hand-written chalkboard menu.

Please meet today's contestants:

English Food	Airplane Food
click to enlarge	click to enlarge
The Defending Champ: On the left, representing England, a traditional pub meal from an inn in Wiltshire county.	The Challenger: On the right, representing the air travel industry, from Singapore Airlines Flight SQ-318
Weighing In With: Grilled sausages, potatoes, carrots, peas, gravy on everything, a basked of pre-buttered sliced bread, apple pie (not shown), and a pint of cold beer.	Weighing In With: Grilled beef, potatoes, carrots, crackers, cheese, one bread roll, shrimp salad with packet of thousand-island dressing on the side, and a tiny plastic cup of water.
Scoring: Visual Appeal: 8 Ambiance: 8 Taste: 9 Beer: Yes	Scoring: Visual Appeal: 3 Ambiance: 1 Taste: 5 Beer: No

The winner by unanimous decision: English Pub Food. No contest really. A meal with only a tiny plastic cup of water will never compare to anything with a pint of beer. There is nothing better than a generous country farm meal served with beer in a traditional English pub.

In fact, everything we ate in England was good, and with generous western-sized portions and friendly, but never overly persistent waiters.

As much as I've enjoyed all the variety of Asian food back in Singapore, noodles and rice can get old now and then. It is fabulous to get back to the west where you can enjoy a hearty meat-and-potatoes supper. Congratulations England!

Kovan Wet Market

Across the street from our condo complex is the Kovan Wet Market. Actually, there’s a lot more then that -- there’s also a hawker center, the Heartland Mall, a Kovan subway station, and the former bus interchange.

The wet market is one of the more entertaining areas near our condo. Its covered against the rain and all powerful sun, but its outdoors. And its not called a “wet” market for nothing; be careful what shoes to wear. You'd think that sanitation would be a problem, but millions of people shop from the wet markets in Singapore (and no doubt elsewhere around the world) without any ill effects. Having shopped mostly at western supermarkets, however, its quite a new experience.



As you can see from the quick video, there are dozens of different stalls selling sell fresh fruits and vegetables, together with fish, poultry, and other meat. They will butcher your meat for you on the spot. We went to get fruit, but we spent some time watching the fishmongers set up their stalls and prep and sell their fish. Being the squeamish westerners that we are, we did not buy any fish or meat.

We did have to haggle over the prices. Everything in Singapore has three prices, from highest to lowest: the tourist price, the expat price, and the local price. We can usually avoid the tourist price, but we never get the local price. We'll be walking away thinking we got a good deal, as overhear them quoting next customer about half of what we paid.

But at least we're not paying in US dollars.

As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again

You'll never be hungry in Singapore.

The food is fresh and plentiful. Singapore has hawker stands, food courts, and restaurants everywhere. You can get any kind of food you want, Asian, Indian, European, Western. Anything. Anywhere. If you stay away from the touristy spots, you can get your food cheap or at least very reasonably priced. And best of all, they make it for you fresh on the spot.



You need a lot of places to eat when you need to feed nearly 5 million people every day. To compare that to California, if you combine all the cities in Santa Clara County, it comes to about 2 million people in 1,300 square miles. Singapore has less than 300 square miles for almost 5 million people. That’s less than a quarter the area for more than double the population. It works out to about twelve times the population per square mile. So I figure Singapore needs about twelve times the number of restaurants per square mile. And that means a lot of places to eat.



And that how it is. You can find something to eat everywhere. The only thing you can't find (a least not at a reasonable prices) is a good beer or glass of wine. Singapore has very high tariffs on alcohol, so you have to pay a premium for your drink. To make matters worse, you can't find good California wines here. There's some OK Australian and New Zealand wines and a few decent bottles from France. But nothing compares to our great California wines, and there's almost none here. It’s terribly sobering.



Are you coming to visit from California soon? Singapore allows you to bring in 1 liter of wine duty free with each adult. If you are wondering what to bring us in Singapore, please stop by your local Trader Joe's and pick me up a good bottle of California wine. (If you forget the wine, Singapore also allows you to bring in any amount of currency.)

Eating in Singapore can also be a surprise. We've been eating fish every day. Not intentionally. See, there are all kinds of pastry shops that sell perfectly normal-looking breads, donuts, and pastries. Some of them are indeed perfectly normal, filled with chocolate or custard or cream or something else appropriately sweet. Others only appear normal. When you bite into them however, you find your doughnut is filled with fish or pork and some greasy secret sauce inconsistent with your anticipated donut experience.



The other thing about eating in Singapore is you have to bring your own napkins. Not in the expensive restaurants catering to westerners--they have all the usual western amenities. But in normal restaurants where the locals go, everyone carries their own little tissue packs and napkins with them.



More importantly, if you eat to the hawker stands or indoor or outdoor food courts, you need your little pack of tissues to reserve a seat. Due to the other 5 million people trying to find a place to eating at the same time as you, there aren't enough tables in all 300 square miles for everyone to sit. So before you order, you have to reserve an empty seat. If you skip this step, you'll end up holding a tray of food with nowhere to put it down. You reserve your table by leaving your little tissue pack on the table. Only then can you go order. When its really crowded here (uh, all the time), you'll see people hovering over likely tables to be first to claim them when the current occupants are finished.

I suppose you could claim a table with your umbrella, or cell phone, or shoulder bag, or anything else, but you'll be less disappointed to loose my tissue pack if it turns out that the Singaporeans are bit less "law and order" than they say.