Fifth day food round-up, and trip wrap-up

The intent today was to cover the remaining foods I was curious about but hadn't gotten around to yet.  I mostly did that, but had some hiccups with out of date listing and closed buildings that cost me a few hours and left me unable to visit a few places, but overall I didn't wind up missing out on anything I wanted to try.

I started with a guava and sour plum juice to hydrate, and it hit the spot.  Then I warmed up with a chicken curry puff and a Singaporean diamond-shaped egg tart from a Chinese bakery, but good but nothing to go out of your way for.  These can't hold a candle to the Portuguese egg tarts either.

I then tried to to find the nearby outlet of a notable dessert place, Annie Peanut Ice Kachang, but alas the food court in which it was supposedly had no mention of it at all.  No matter, it was time to head out to the burbs again to reputable locations for prata.  I went to the Roti Prata House and ordered a prata with egg and onion, which also comes with a little curry sauce for dipping.  This is buttery deep-fried heart-clogging stuff, and boy is it good.  Buttery, flaky flatbread filled with scrambled eggs.  I also ordered a lime juice, which is made fresh from calamansi limes and cane sugar, and that too was extremely good and refreshing, so I ordered a second.

Now it was back into town to try to found an outlet of a place know for ayam penyet, or "flattened" fried chicken, which is mallet-smashed before being marinated.  Alas, this place had moved far away, and I had failed to understand this when I had checked their website this morning, so I had so far struck out twice today.

I was heading south so continued further south as part of my contingency to find the main location of Annie Peanut Ice Kachang. I went to where the placemark on the map was and wandered around a shopping plaza at that place, but couldn't find it.  I did pop into a grocery store and discovered to my deligh bags of both Malaysian mangosteen and Malaysian passionfruit, which I will attempt to bring home tomorrow, crossing my fingers that this will not be a problem when trying to re-enter California.  Then I walked half a block up the street and noticed a construction site and a sign that informed me that the food plaza I was looking for was being reconstructed and would not open until 2014.  Damn you Annie, I spent over an hour trying to find you and your ice kachang in not one but TWO locations, and you failed me.

But I had a contingency for this too, and I walked just a few blocks up the very scenic colonial Tanjong Pagar road back to my home base, the Maxwell Food Centre.  There I recharged first with a straight-up passionfruit shake, which was about the best thing I've had in liquid form this year.  I also got more popiah because it's addictive and amazing, it's basically the love child of a spring roll and mu shu, so how could it not be good.  And then I got a mango ice kachang from a place I'd spotted on the first day, ensuring I wouldn't be deprived of this.  It's a shaved ice with sweet mango sauce, as well as about 3 other sweet sauces, with red beans and jellies hidden beneath the ice.  It's totally delicious and perfect for hot weather, and at only S$2 seems criminally cheap.

At this point it was time for happy hour so I was going to try out a Japanese rooftop bar at Marina Bay that potentially had good views.  I ordered a Spicy Hachimitshu, a vodka-based cocktail with cucumber, honey, lemon, and wasabi gomme.  I should have known better to order wasabi in a beverage.  Needless to say, I was unimpressed with the cocktail, as well as the bar, the views, and the price.

It was sunset, so I wandered along Marina Bay again to get those pastcard-ready views, which were particularly nice because the smog had cleared back down to about 66 today, which is merely in the "moderate" range, compared to the "hazardous" 401 from Friday.  On my way home I found another impressive hawker food court in the business district, and the second stall I saw had none other than ayam penyet, the smashed fried chicken, so I got to try it after all.  It's not that unique from other fried chicken, but it's tender and falling off the bone, and still delicious.  Plus hidden under the chicken was an omelette, and you can hardly complain about that.  Not wanting my last night to end, I grabbed a nyonya dumpling, glutinous rice filled with bbq pork, as well as a final passionfruit banana shake, and that's going to have to end the show, unless there's anything notable at the airport at 4:30 am tomorrow.

In kind of a poetic ending to this unplanned trip, while I was not fully aware that there is a public laser light show, it so happened that I was down at Marina Bay at the perfect time as well as at a perfect place, as the 8pm nightly light show at the Marina Bay Sands began right as I was looking out from a roof terrace with a sweeping view of the area, as if the travel gods were smiling upon me for my spontaneity one last time.

Guava and sour plum juice.

Chicken curry puff.

Singaporean egg tart.

Roti prata with egg and onion.

Calamansi lime juice with cane sugar.

Mangosteen and passionfruit from the supermarket.

Passionfruit shake.

Popiah station.

Popiah.

Mango ice kachang.

Ayam penyet (smashed fried chicken) with green beans and rice, with an omelette hiding underneath.

Nyonya dumpling (glutinous rice filled with bbq pork).

Passionfruit and banana shake.

Night Safari

The Singapore Zoo has a Night Safari attraction, which is essentially a full zoo containing only nocturnal animals, that opens only at night, from 7:30 until midnight.  It features a 40-minute tram ride with narration that shows off the major animals, and then 4 walking trails of about 20 minutes each where you can see even more animals, and much closer, at your own leisure.

Overall, it's really impressive.  It's very safe, sanitized, and Disney-esque, but done in a way that hides all that.  The animals are not really in pens, for dangerous animals they use trenches to contain them, but position the trenches and vegetation so that you can't really see that there are trenches, so it feels like the animals are right there and could even come at you.  The safe animals, like wallabies and deer, and not in pens at all and are free-roaming, you can walk right up to them and they can walk right up to the tram, and they use vented cattle crossings in the road to prevent each animal from wandering to another section.

This puts you face to face with a lot of interesting animals, like hyenas, leopards, lions, giraffes, elephants, and some exotic Southeast Asian animals.   The bat section was particularly cool, it's an open-air pen (with a net about 40 feet up) full of bats that you can wander through and walk right up to and do everything but touch the bats.  I've always found bats to be pretty adorable up close, and this was no exception, but it is a little unnerving that they're right there and could fly at you if provoked.

This was an usual and recommended experience.  Unfortunately, given that it is a dimly-lit night attraction and flash is understandably completely prohibited, taking photographs with standard equipment is pretty difficult, so I apologize in advance that my photos suck.

Remy the rat.  Ok not the most interesting animal, but the best lit.

Wallaby. 

Suspension bridge.

Walking path.

Giraffes.

The bat enclosure.

Pelicans.

Wandering

Yesterday I wanted to get back to eating, and so wanted to do a lot of walking, both to access some new places as well as work up an appetite.  I had some places in mind, and with GPS I felt comfortable just getting lost in the areas in between.

I started by walking to the waterfront around Marina Bay to get some sweeping views over downtown and most of the central parts of the city, now that the smog is starting to clear up.  It did not disappoint, this part of town is very well laid out, and you can look in any direction to get a great view.

I then wanted to head out along East Coast Road, where there's a section with some notable food places, and then a few miles farther is East Coast Park which houses a seafood centre and a hawker food court.  Unfortunately East Coast Road is not easily accessible, I think there are some direct but slow bus lines that head out there, and then the MRT parallels East Coast Road but is as much as a mile north of where the food is.  Undeterred, I thought it would be a good opportunity to wander, so I took the MRT and then just got myself lost in side streets.

It worked out great.  This part of town appeared to be relatively affluent suburbs, with nice houses, quiet streets, and little corner parks.  It was a really interesting contrast to the bustle of downtown.  Then the food section along East Coast Road was terrific, as mentioned in the previous post.  Then I set out for the multi-mile walk to East Coast Park, which was similarly interesting, discovering quieter parts of the island, although walking in the 95-degree heat was quite painful.

East Coast Park was very scenic, a beautiful setting on the beach looking out over the ships, and bustling with walkers, joggers, cyclists, and families, and of course, full of delicious food.  It also features a lagoon with an automated wakeboarding tow-line system, which I found very impressive.

It was an awesome day of exploring and eating, tiring but well worth it.

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.

Rojak.

Fresh squeezed sugarcane juice.

Wanton mee.

Laksa.

Soursop ice cream.

Fried butter prawns.

The famous chili crab.

Dinner with a view.

The view from East Coast Seafood Centre after sunset. 

East Coast Lagoon Food Centre.

Satay stand.

Satay to-go, picnic-style.

Satay with a view.

Day three food round-up

There's a decently well-regarded dim sum place a block from hotel called, appropriately, Yum Cha, so I started there.  Dim sum for one person is a bit of a challenge, you can't get the diversity of dishes, so the challenge is to fend off the cart ladies and focus only on new and unusual dishes.  My haul was, pan-fried prawn buns, chive dumplings, prawn and mango fried rolls, radish toast, xiao long bao (better actually than the mall Din Tai Fung ones from day one), and coconut balls, which seem to be the dim sum take on a macaroon, but soft.

Then it's back over to the hawker food court to try to get soursop juice.  I first find a place that has "soursop drink", which tastes poor and I think is simply a canned beverage poured over ice with soursop pulp added after.  Other stands offer "fresh soursop juice" which is the real deal and awesome.

Later it's a pre-dinner snack of char kway teow, which are flat rice noodles stir fried with cockles, lard pieces, Chinese sausage, egg, and bean sprouts.  It's pretty much Singaporean pad see ew, so it's completely awesome, and I'm hooked.  And for good measure I add to that a soursop and kiwi shake, because how often do you get to order soursop.  On my way out, I see a stall with nothing but a wok and two people preparing some kind of deep-fried dough.  I'm intrigued by any place that only sells one thing as that tends to mean it's interesting, so I get an order of these, which I think are some kind of doughnut filled with a bean paste and coated in sesame seeds and sugar.

In another serendipitous happening in this unplanned trip, it turns out my friend's friend is in Singapore as part of an extended trip motivated by a wedding.  So I met up with her and her family for drinks and dinner, the Singaporean take on Italian food, with a solid lobster pasta.

Pan-fried prawn buns.

Chive dumplings.

Radish toast.

Xiao long bao.

Prawn and mango fried roll.

Soft coconut balls.

Yum Cha restaurant.

Fresh soursop juice.

Char kway teow.

Soursop and kiwi shake.

Sesame doughnuts.