[akiko]

We had the opportunity to be in Singapore for 12 hours recently. After seeing Bourdain's episode on Singapore, I really wanted to go to Sin Huat but they aren't open for lunch and since I only had from 7am to 7 pm we hit a bunch of hawker markets instead.

This turned out to be a pretty good site for hawker market research purposes -

Makansutra

Our first stop of the day happened to be at the 7 eleven at Singapore Airport (which has quickly become my favorite airport in the world. They have a reflexology massage station, incredibly cheap and good massages. After a 13 hour flight, this makes so much sense, every airport should have one). Where I found this:



Its a package of yakult in different flavours - original, grape, orange, and green apple. I know, probably not interesting to anyone but me. However, when you are intending to eat this kind of food



you need all the friendly probiotics you can get.

[akiko]

We started our morning at Serangoon Garden Way. I wanted to try Roti John since I had heard so much about it but when we got there the vendor wasn't open yet so I hit Garden Street for their Kway Chap



Kway Chap is pork broth with thin rectangular ribbons of rice noodle and various pork parts served on the side . This version was particularly satisfying, with good depth of flavour and beautiful silken ribbons of noodles. Really, it was the noodles that made the dish.



There is a better pic of the noodles.

We finished the dish and the roti john stall was just starting to get going. We ordered the original and waited for it to be brought to our table.

Roti John is fried french bread stuffed with an omelette. The omelette itself can has varying ingredients in it.



It was, in a word, disgusting. Blah tasting omelette in a bad baguette that was badly fried. Maybe I just had a bad version of this dish. I was expecting something more akin to Shopsin's french toast sandwich in NYC (which I'm rather fond of). I'm sure there is some vendor somewhere in Singapore that does a better version. I just didn't find it on this trip.

[akiko]

After a bit of shopping (okay, maybe a lot of shopping, there's not all that much more to do in Singapore besides eat and shop. Besides, I now have my long awaited zojirushi fuzzy logic rice cooker!) we headed out to the hawker market on Old Airport Road.

I had chosen old airport road because I wanted to eat pepper crab and the one at Mattar Road Seafood Barbecue had come recommended. He was sold out when I got there . At least, I assume he was sold out, he didn't speak english and I don't speak whatever it was that he was speaking to me so that is what I could gather from the hand gestures. Its amazing how much more foreign the hawker food centers feel than the rest of Singapore.

So we meandered back to the front of that block to order a plate of Hokkien Fried Mee from Nam Sing. There were a lot of Singaporeans sitting around waiting to take boxes of this stuff to go but I was still surprised to find out that we'd have to wait 45 minutes to get a plate of this stuff! So we put our order in and I wandered around the market looking for other things to eat.





And then that's when I found this



This is my new favorite drink. Its soursop juice made fresh with huge chunks of soursop fruit floating around in it. I'd never had the fruit before and the sweet-sour-creamy-slippery flavour has completely won me over. This particular stand had won an award from Makansutra and is just a few stalls down from Nam Sing. I had sour sop quite a few times again after this one but everyone else served the drink all whizzed up. I much prefer this juicier with pulpy pieces version.

One row closer to Old Airport Road there is another noodle stand that had a long queue in front of it. Since we had time, I stood in line with everyone else. No idea what I was ordering, I just said I'd like one order. This is what came



Delicious, prawn and chicken rice noodle dish. Again, the noodles were outstanding. Good chew and flavour from the sweet soy.

And finally the long awaited Hokkien Fried Mee arrived:



It turned out to be another one of these things that I just don't understand. It looked and tasted like what gets left at the bottom of your sink after washing up the dishes from a chinese meal. But a lot of Singaporeans seem to disagree with me as they were waiting around to bring this stuff home by the bagful.

We ran out of time but there were other food centres I wanted to sample - Maxwell Road and New Upper Chiangi Road were on my list but we didn't get to either one.

[The Scream]

I've never seen multi-colored yakult before.

To my surprise I saw a tv commercial for yakult when I was in London.

[Tamar G]

Quote

This is my new favorite drink. Its soursop juice made fresh with huge chunks of soursop fruit floating around in it. I'd never had the fruit before and the sweet-sour-creamy-slippery flavour has completely won me over.

It's fairly common in central and south america, but they call it Guanabana and make smoothie- or milkshake-like drinks with it. Sooooo good.

[beachfan]

I found the food centers to be overrated, compared to the hole in the wall restaurants in Little India, or even better, the fancier ones like Bannana Leaf Appollo.

Exception being the seafood centers out on the old airport road.

[fantasty]

Any recent suggestions for eating in Singapore? High and low both appreciated.