orangeblossom

I totally hear you! It's always great to get tip-offs on hidden gems and so much fun to seek them out Am looking forward to checking out Tim's in the next couple of days On the subject of good quality, reasonably priced Western food, my latest favourite place to go is Big D's Grill in Bedok South. The owner Damian is an old-school cook who does everything from scratch and, at the risk of sounding cliched, insists on good quality ingredients. You're not going to find the local Western foodstall standards such as chicken cutlet, fried chicken wings etc here. His menu includes an excellent (snapper) fish and (homemade thick-cut) chips, crabmeat linguine and even his sides are very well made - buttery pumpkin mash and purple coleslaw. I'm all for a makan session with fellow egulleteers in S'p Perhaps those who are keen can set out a couple of possible dates and we can get rolling from there? OB

Hey, sorry, I haven't checked the boards in a while either! Well, that should gives you plenty of time to explore our small island and do some serious eating. Have you gone through some of the other threads on S'p regd the food here? In a recent thread on dining in S'p, I listed a couple of my favourite restaurants and hawker centres but am happy to give you a few more suggestions if you need. Where are you coming in from? How adventurous are you when it comes to street side eating? Though it has been said that S'p street food is rather "sanitised" OB

Hey ya Is this your 1st trip to S'p? Fine dining in S'p generally revolves around the various international cuisines while street/local food is best sampled at hawker centres and stand-alone coffeeshop outlets. (Of cos, having said that, there are plenty of mid-priced eateries that serve good eats from both ends of the spectrum.) I'll just give you my two cents worth on each end of that spectrum, mostly my faves Fine dining: Modern French - Gunther's (my favourite place for a nice meal - fantastic produce, clean flavours, discreet efficient service, simple comfortable dining room); Chinese - Hua Ting / Shang Palace / Chef Chan; Japanese - Tatsuya / Nogawa (Sentosa); Italian - Garibaldi / IL Forlino Modern Continental - Iggy's Street/Local: Makansutra is a good starting guide to the various local dishes and where some of the best stalls selling them are. It's organised by the dish but there is a short section at the back of the guide that cross references the stalls with the part of the island they are located. For visitors, it's probably best to head to the hawker centres for the best variety of food within one convenient compound. If you have some time and are adventurous, you may want to seek out some of the stand-alone stalls. Some of my favourite hawker centres are at Whampoa, Old Airport Road, Chinatown, Hong Lim, Amoy and Maxwell. I'm assuming here that you've trawled some of the other threads regd S'p's street food, so I won't get into it here. But do let me know if you want some info. Happy eating. Cheers. OB

Hi Haven't been in for a while, so I just saw your post. Which part of Aug will you be here? I'll be away early-mid Aug but will be happy to meet up with a fellow egulleteer if you want. It's always lovely to meet new folks who are into eating as much as I am )) PM me if you are keen. Cheers.

oh, I forgot! Regd seafood - no signboard is known for their white pepper crabs. Very good. Apart from the ubiquitous chilli crab and black pepper crab which I think rates high on the priority list of most foodie visitors, one of my favourite places to go is Sin Huat (Geylang Lorong 35). You may have seen other postings in egullet about it in topics on S'p. THE dish to eat there is the braised crab beehoon (thin rice vermicelli) which is out of this world. It's not a fancy place, in fact it's rather dinghy and for such a setting, prices are not cheap, but it's fantastic quality. When Pierre Herme was in town recently, I recommended it and he and his friends enjoyed it. OB

Tian Tian, Boon Tong Kee and Wee Nam Kee are 3 of the best chicken rice stalls in town. They all have their merits and I think it comes down to a matter of personal taste. Also, given the different components of the dish (the steamed chicken, the rice and the chilli sauce), it makes it even harder to rate! (eg, I think the chilli sauce at TT is hard to beat). btw, to make eating in Singapore more interesting/confusing, this also holds true for most of the other local hawker favourites! If you're only in town for a couple of days and want to maximise your intake of some of the best hawker food in town with minimal fuss, i'd suggest you head to some of the more popular hawker centres which tend to have some of the better stalls. As a start my suggestions are as follows: Old Airport Rd Hawker Centre- rojak (a local salad with shrimp paste dressing; stall name Toa Payoh which is not to be confused with the neighbourhood of the same name); lor mee (noodles with a dark starchy gravy) stall opposite the rojak, look for the red bowls and the queue; kway chap (braised pork offal - large and small intestines, stomach, belly pork, pork knuckle etc, and wide rice noodles in broth) Tor Ricos which is nearer the back of the hawker centre; fried hokkien prawn mee (Nam Sing); wanton noodles (Cho Kee). Go for lunch since some of these stalls close by mid afternoon (but this is a large hawker centre and there's plenty of other local food stalls. Dinnertime is always a bustle) Tiong Bahru Hawker Centre - chwee kway (steam rice cakes with a fried radish topping) Jian Po; chicken rice (Tiong Bahru), Cantonese style congee (Hua Yuan); Mian Chang Kway (Chinese pancake with peanut filling). Serangoon Gardens Hawker Centre (not Chomp Chomp which is opposite and opens at night) - kway chap (the last stall at one end of the HC, near the toilets), even better than Tor-Ricos!; char kway tiao (fried noodles - an iconic S'p dish) Newton (1st stall at the other end of the HC); braised duck (a few stalls from Newton CKT). Adam Rd HC - small HC with large concentration of Malay and Indian stalls. Good soup prawn noodles, nasi lemak (Malay coconut rice with assortment of side dishes) look for the one with the queue and has 5-6 different sets shown on its signboard; roti john (Malay style egg-onion baguette with sweet sauce), soto ayam (Malay style chicken soup with noodles), sup kambing (Indian-Muslim mutton soup). Go in the evening/night for dinner for the best "atmosphere". The above are some of my favourites. There are tons of other good stalls which may or may not be found in hawker centres. Enjoy your trip. Let me know if you'd like more recommendations or maybe even meet up for a bite! OB

Thanks guys for the tip on using bi-carb powder to wash the pig stomach. Now I have no more excuse to put off making the soup! Dejah - thanks for the compliment Regd your question on the pig stomach and white pepper soup - it's just a recipe I used to drink as a child. It was made by both my maternal and paternal grandmothers and I've just sort of assumed it was the "normal" recipe. If I remember correctly, my paternal grandma made it once or twice with the addition of a big head of ham choi as well, something akin to duck/ham choi tong. Zhu zhang - definitely not pork knuckle, which is zhu kyok or zhu sao (translated directly as pig leg or pig hand). I think Dejah is right - it is the part above the knuckle, I think the leg. I asked the question because I normally buy my pork from my regular butcher at the wet market and local terms are sometimes tricky to corelate to the Western terms. Asian And Western cuts / styles of butchery are also slightly different, due to difference in cooking methods. As such, I usually go to a speciality butcher shop to get my "Western" cuts. OB

I've been reading this thread with great interest. My repertoire of Chinese soups is limited to only a handful, though there are a few more lurking in the recesses of my childhood memories which for some reason or other, I have yet to try making. I shall strive to add at least three new soups to my repertoire this year! One of these is the pig's stomach with white pepper soup, which i totally adore. I guess what's stopped me from trying this is that I'm very much daunted by the fact that the stomach needs to be really very well washed to get rid of the pig odour - anyone has a method to share? Dejah - I'm curious to hear that you put ham choi (salted mustard veg) in your lotus root soup. Does that add an element of saltiness, as in salted veg and duck soup, to it? I use lotus roots, pork bones, zhu zhang (is that the same as pork butt?) and or spareribs/softbone pork, red dates, dried octopus and dried scallops. Sometimes, for variation, I add peanuts and/or, some chicken feet (I use less pork in this case). Other favourite soups of mine include the ubiquitous carrot-potato-white radish-pork soup, foo juk tong (I add barkey, yee mai, in mine), peanut and pig's tail soup, peanut and chicken feet soup, chicken and yuk chok soup, and salted veg, white pepper and duck soup. Would be great to hear some other "lo-for" (old-fire, ie, slowly simmered for at least 3-4 hours) tongs you folks are making. OB

Hi, sounds like you're having a fine time, lucky you! I'm sure you'd be blown away by the fabulous range of both street and "proper" food in Bangkok. Some of my faves include: Chinatown (Yaowarat) - the Chinese in Bangkok are mostly Teochew Chinese (a major dialect group). Fantastic Thai-style / Thai-Teochew style Chinese food, both in the day and night. Just walk down the main street and veer off for shorts jaunts into side alleys. Day - lots of hawker carts selling breakfast, lunch types of food, noodles, fruits. Night - again, lots of hawker carts, but some different foodstuffs. The big seafood stalls will also be in full operation. If you're adventurous and not bothered by the ethics etc, you may want to try shark's fins soup (the Thai-Teochew style of cooking shark's fins is really divine!) and bird's nest soup, which is a dessert. There are many food carts and shops which offer both delicacies. For a more expensive version (and IMHO, better quality), I usually go to Chinatown Scala, a restaurant near the start of Yaowarat (I can't remember the name of the hotel but I think it is White Orchid. Scala is directly opposite it) btw Scala has 2 shops, both within 50m of each other! Out of habit, i usually go to the older one which is the original. Pad Thai - known as one of the best versions of this iconic dish - Thip Samai 313 Maha Chai Road, Pranakorn, across from Wat Ratchanatdha and not far from Democracy Monument. Open only at night. Also serves a very good frozen coconut juice. Very yummy. Aw Tor Gor - Fantastic food market opposite Chatuchak market. Open daily. In terms of "ambience", it is less authentic because it was set up as a sort of "model" market. But the range of foodstuffs and fruits is amongst the best quality. From the BTS Mochit station, walk about 200-300m to the main Chatuchak entrance. Facing it, turn left and follow the parameter fence of Chatuchak market all the way to the very end (about 10-12 mins walk). Alternatively, take to Kamphaengphet MRT station, which is at the edge of Chatuchak and Aw Tor Gor is diagonally across. Khaosan Rd is the backpackers' mecca - worth a visit for the great atmosphere at night. Food - not the best but i guess you can get an idea of the ubiquitous Thai food that most Westerners identity with. Also, I love the fantastically sweet Thai orange juice (looks like small green oranges, the bright orange juice is usually sold by street hawkers in plastic bottles), the baby coconuts (the size of a large grapefruit) (the hawker will crack it open for you. Drink the juice and use your fingers to tear off slices of the tender flesh), and the fresh cut fruits sold by hawkers everywhere. Accommodations - try Samran Place. This is a budget hotel which is a 5 min walk from Ratchadewi BTS station (1 station away from Siam BTS station which is the main interchange hub). Basic amenities but very clean and functional. Lots of food stalls in the area. In the evenings, there is a really good and super cheap beef and pork noodle cart at the foot of the BTS station outside 7-11 convenience store. Other accommodations which you can consider are Asia Hotel (a large tourist-class hotel) this is directly liked to the Ratchdewi BTS station, and Novotel Siam Square (my choice) as it is right smack in the shopping hub of Bangkok, next to the Siam Sq BTS station, and has a whole row of cheap, good and most important, decent and clean massage shops next to it. I love going for a relaxing foot massage after a hard day's shopping and eating! Hope the above is useful. Enjoy! OB

Rob That IS the shop! I can almost smell that warm wonderful waft (alliteration not intended!) of the Jewish pizza. Incidentally, we tried 2 other pastries which are very very good - an almond cookie and the ricotta chocolate cake was just fantastic. My husband does not usually like cheesecakes but he wolfed down 2/3 of the ricotta-choc cake all by himself! Thanks for the recipe - I will definitely try it and report back! OB

I just got back from a very short trip to Rome and while I was there, I stumbled upon the most AMAZING fruitcake I have ever had. It was in the Jewish quarter, the Ghetto, and the small nondescript-looking shop along Via del Portico d’Ottavia is run by a couple of matronly ladies. We had just finished a nice lunch further down the street when we saw a queue and decided most fortuituously to join in. The elderly gentleman behind my husband and I in the queue struck up a conversation with us - he was from Israel but used to live in Rome - and told us in no uncertain terms that this was the best fruitcake in the world and he always paid the shop a visit when he was in town to buy back for his family (the cake supposedly keeps very well). And what an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC fruitcake it was! Baked in huge rectangular trays, it was more a thick cookie wedge than cake, and it was very very generously studded with a delicious mix of candied fruit, almonds and pine nuts. This was all held together by a crumbly buttery pastry. The sides and the top crust were the best parts because of the crispy charred bits. It was so good we had to go back early the next morning before our flight to get another slice. We asked the lady in our broken Italian what the cake was called and she said it was a Jewish pizza. Sadly, because we were making a few other stops before coming home, we couldn't pack any back. I am wondering if anyone out there can shed more light on this simple, rustic but oh-so- delicious treat, and if it included a recipe, I'll be more than delighted and grateful. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the heads up on the line-up of chefs for WGF8. I'm a regular partcipant at Singapore's WGS, and am planning to try to go to a couple of the WGF8 events, so your list will certainly come in useful for my research purposes! Just my two-cents worth - I was at the Roman Fornell class when he was in town for WGS, and he was clearly very innovative, yet true in spirit to the claasical traditions. My favourite was a fantastic roast suckling pig paired with an inspired green apple sorbet. He also had fun with a dried fruits and foie gras mousse dish impersonating your typical yoghurt and breakfast muesli. Anyway, hope to meet you at WGF8

I had a risotto once where marrow was used as the starting base for the recipe, ie, melting the marrow to sweat the chopped onions. The resulting dish had a mellow richness which set it apart from the usual risotto. Your frozen marrow could probably be put to good use in this dish, but just be careful that the risotto's accompanying ingredients can stand up to the richness. For instance, I think it would be better in a mushroom risotto rather than an asparagus one. Have fun experimenting!

ecr I just saw ths thread and thought i'd chip in my two cents worth. Yes, S'pore still has its wet markets, albeit slightly more "sanitized" than its regional counterparts Someone mentioned earlier that wet markets tend to be located in the surburban heartlands. This is true as most typical Singaporeans stay in HDB estates in the surburbs. While there has been an attempt at the gentrification of the city in the last 2-3 years, supermarkets are still more popular with young couples living in the city. Nevertheless, hearteningly, there has been a growing trend for supermarkets to incorporate some elements of the wet market, such as bins of live seafood and fresh produce (as opposed to the cling-wrapped styrofoam packs). The two most widely acclaimed wet markets in S'p has to be Tekka market and Chinatown market. They have the best range of meat, seafood, herbs, spices, vegetables and fruits etc at reasonable prices. Also, because Tekka market is very close to little India, there is also a good range of Indian-related food products and spices. There used to be also the Geylang Serai market, but that was recently torn down. It is being rebuilt and a temporary market housing most of the original stall-holders is located nearby. It is still wortha look for the myriad of Malay spices and foodstuff. If you are going to Tekka market, it's worth taking a slight detour to Mustaffa Shopping Centre in Little India. It has a fantastic supermarket/foodhall, where you will find one of the best/freshest spice selection (this is due to a very high turnover vol), and a mind-boggling array of Indian (frozen) food items (ready-to-eat-meals, rotis, dairy products and so on. It's open 24hours, and I go occasionally for late-night food shopping sprees! Btw, i'm off to ho chi minh tomorrow, for a week, and am looking forward to eating at all the fantastic places you, shiewie and pieman mentioned in the HCMC thread. thanks for the heads up. Yummmmm

hello thoughtbox welcome to singapore. I second nicklam's recommendation on the Makansutra food guide. It has a very comprehensive list of all the best local street eats - though true to the singapore foodie spirit, i am not always in agreement with the ratings given Some local publications with decent food commentaries include: The Sunday Times - the last 2-3 pages of the lifestyle section always carries a food section (catering more to the mass-market) and this is a good source of the latest food trends and outlets. Business Times (weekend edition) - again, this has a regular food section and carries good restaurant reviews. Perhaps because it is a business paper, I find the writing and restaurants reviewed are generally targeted at more of the PMEB crowd. IS - this is a free weekly lifestyle publication distributed at many restaurants and cafes all over Singapore. It has a food section and its restaurant reviews are generally credible. There is good food all over the island. Every local will have an opinion on where the best chicken rice, cha kway tiao, satay etc is. Some good hawker centres - meaning they are home to a higher than usual number of good food stalls - include the ones at Old Airport Rd, Maxwell Rd, Chinatown, People's Park, Tiong Bahru, Bedok Interchange, East Coast Lagoon and Ghim Moh. And beware Newton hawker centre - that is a tourist trap. I have an exceptionally long list of faves both street food and restaurants) which is "serviced" regularly to ensure it is of quality and up to date! I'd be happy to share them - PM me if you like. Happy eating!