Jonathan's Spontaneous Travels: Fourth day food round-up

I'm trying to return the focus to eating now. I thought I did a lot again today but it still only adds up to 3 meals worth. Considering the 10+ miles I walked today, I should have been able to do better.

Went back to hawker food court across from the hotel to try some more of the classic street dishes. I started with rojak, a salad of sorts with pretty random ingredients, including pineapple, cucumber, jicama, and fried tofu in a sweet shrimp paste sauce with crushed peanuts. It was ok, but I didn't feel like all the ingredients actually went together, and it was too heavy on the sauce.

Second course was wanton mee, noodles with char siu pork and wantons. A great dish, but I think the one I got was not one of the better ones, so I think I'll try again. And topped it off with fresh sugarcane juice, quite satisfying. I got it in China too and it was kind of bland, but the one here was sweet and flavorful.

After walking around the downtown area for a while to get some pictures now that the haze is starting to clear, I headed out to the suburbs along East Coast Road. There's sections that are really cool, blocks and blocks of nearly nonstop restaurants and food shops, catering to locals, very reminiscent of Tokyo. First stop, 328 Katong Laksa for, well, laksa, a spicy coconut-milk-based noodle soup with shrimp and clams. Served instantly and gruffly in a run-down shop, as all good noodle soup should be.

I then stumbled across a local-looking ice cream shop, and was pleased to discover they offered both soursop ice cream as well as "kaya toast" ice cream, a coconut base with pieces of toast. Sadly the kaya toast one wasn't particularly flavorful, so I went with soursop, which tasted good but the ice cream quality was poor and gummy.

Then it was on to the East Coast Seafood Centre, a collection of restaurants at East Coast Park right on the southeast coast several miles from downtown, hard to get to but well worth the trek. It was time to try the famed chili crab. Some of my dining companions last night, both expats, had advised me that I should not wait until the last day to do the chili crab, as eating it soon before flying could pose a risk to one's well-being. I was advised to try No Signboard Seafood for a high quality preparation. They have several locations around town, and apparently the service varies quite a bit, but once there I can't imagine wanting to go anywhere else besides East Coast for this, as the setting is terrific. You sit outside among a grassy park alongside the water and stare at the ships anchored just offshore and see the planes take off from Changi.

I ordered the chili crab (using a house Sri Lankan crab, as opposed to an Australian or Alaskan crab, which were obscenely expensive, ~S$40/kg vs S$200/kg), as well as fried butter prawns. The crab was good, I enjoyed it, but honestly I don't get what all the fuss is about. This is mainly because I don't get what the fuss about crab is in general. I don't see why I should pay a bunch of money to work hard and make a mess picking out a very small amount of meat from the severed limbs of an ugly creature. If it's expensive, shouldn't it be because somebody else did all the hard work? It was a good meaty crab in a tasty sweet and spicy chili sauce, but I can hardly say it's worth the S$77 they charged me for it (they also have the nerve to charge you $1 for the wet-nap in your place setting, but that's unfortunately pretty common here).

Then I walked along the water to the neighboring East Coast Lagoon Food Centre, an open-air hawker food court, interestingly large and busy despite East Coast Park being far from everything and hard to get to. But this place is incredible. It's huge, very crowded, has tons of interesting stalls, and is set right on the beach. This is kind of the ultimate night market for food. It also specializes in satay, with skewers going for 60 cents a piece (10 skewers minimum), grilled out in front of the stalls. I got an order to go, which comes conveniently with little sealed bags of satay sauce and vegetables, and headed for a beachfront bench to chow down. Seriously delicious, and a great way to fill up after seafood.