So, nearly one week in and the question on every one's lips must surely be not only 'have I eaten?' but 'what have I eaten?' Oh, what haven't I eaten.... I've had hainesse chicken rice (steamed chicken with the rice also cooked in the same stock which comes on the side like a very thin soup; char kway teow (noodles, seafood, yummy); laksa (spicy coconutty broth with noodles, crunchy beansprouts, tofu and seafood); amazing curry in little India with the most heavenly roti paratha I've ever tasted (including curried pakora, the anti-Christ of all diet foods, surely); chili crab in China Town and xo bee hun fish head soup (the former slightly disappointing as its what people rave about when they talk about food in Singapore, the latter, well I thought it had eyeballs floating around in the soup but he reassured me they weren't); roast duck; suckling pig; roast pork; greens with oyster sauce and fried onions on top. I could go on. Oh yes. I have eaten.
In my guidebook there's a section where it talks about being careful about overheating and advises tourists to carry a bottle of water on the MRT (tube/metro). As it's on the page facing the one with all the recommendations of the best places to eat, hawker markets and so on, initially I misread it as a warning about being careful about overeating. Though in fact it would be no bad thing to give as advice to travellers. Eating here is definitely a way of life.
Every shopping centre, from the classiest to the crustiest, has a food court where there are a huge range of different outlets selling foods from all around the region. There are communities here from India, Malaysia and China each bringing with them their own rich culinary traditions. Then there seem to be foods from everywhere else as well: Japan, American, Thailand, Italy and so on.
You wander around until sometimes spikes your fancy and then take it on a tray and eat on communal tables in the middle of the space, like a huge school canteen. But oh, if only school canteens had this quality of food. If you want to slum it, though by no means necessarily take a dip in the quality of your food, you can go to a hawker market. These are like huge warehouses with little stalls selling the same range of foods. For 3-5 SD (roughly divide in half to work out how much in GBP) you can get a fantastic meal.
Those who know me are probably aware that I marry my love of eating and desire to be thinner than my diet would allow by ruthlessly cutting out carbohydrates in daily life, except on weekends and special occasions. In fact I have been trying here and gently failing to avoid the carbs. Sometimes it's possible. Sometimes it isn't. You can leave the noodles in the bottom of a bowl of laksa without much pain. Char Kway Teo is nothing but a bit bowl of tangly carbs, a massive carbohydrate road crash of a dish to the low carb acolyte. The roast meats, fine, fish head soup and chilli crab fine. With Hianesse chicken rice theoretically it should be fine just to leave the rice, but the rice is so delicious. The perfect combination of comforting carbohydrate and delicate chickeny, stocky flavour. Ahh. I didn't manage to leave too much of the rice.
The other devil tauting the low carb dieter is tiger beer. Wine here is very expensive while beer is prolific and in the heat nothing is nicer than a cold beer. My stomach is already telling it's own story. Week one though, fair enough in week one.
And so far no one has asked me whether I've eaten. There's time for that though. Plenty of time.
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