Sambal stingray is one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth. But really, the entire time I spent in Singapore was a foodie's paradise. If you want to experience the entirety of Asian cuisine in only one stop, make that stop Singapore.
> If you want to experience the entirety of Asian cuisine in only one stop, make that stop Singapore
I have to disagree with that. Genuinely good vietnamese, thai or even japanese food is pretty hard to find in singapore, and believe me I tried. Its specialities are dictated by its influences - southern china, malaysia of course, india, to some extent indonesia. The rest is decent of course but I just don't think there's an adequate population of, say, vietnamese in the city to sustain a general standard of quality comparable to what's available back home. Just try and find a good pork Banh Mi in singapore, I dare you.
If I had to name the city with the best general variety and everyday average standard of asian food - believe it or not I'd probably say Sydney.
> Genuinely good vietnamese, thai or even japanese food is pretty hard to find in singapore
I agree with you on Vietnamese food, but both Thai and Japanese food are very common in Singapore. Did you try Golden Mile Complex for Thai food, or Robertson Quay/Liang Court/Cuppage Plaza for Japanese food?
> Just try and find a good pork Banh Mi in singapore, I dare you.
Many eateries here cater towards the halal market, so it's sometimes a little difficult to find the pork version of anything that isn't mainstream international cuisine.
Singaporean in Sydney here -- I've barely found any decent Asian food in my time here, not to mention the exorbitant prices. Could you recommend some options? I'll love to improve my food options here.
Sydney is generally cheaper than Singapore in my opinion. What you get for $2.50 at a hawker centre is absolute junk. Ingredients have costs, and most of it is imported from AU anyway. Any price advantage you see in SIN usually means skimping on ingredients compared to what you would see in SYD.
I find that hard to believe, which area are you in? I have a list I normally give to friends visiting, I'll pare it down to some of the best Asian options though
Dumplings - Chinatown Noodle King (also ridiculously cheap, order the Fried & Spicy Pork & Chive ones),
Ramen - Ryo's,
Thai - Khao Pla (used to be amazing, not so sure about the quality now),
Viet - Hello Auntie,
Banh Mi - anywhere in Cabramatta,
Izakaya - Yakitori Yurripi
I never thought I'd see the day where Chinese Noodle House gets a run on Hacker News (albeit in a comment). But can definitely second this for dumplings - my favourite place to go after uni.
Just to add a useless comment to this three day old thread - I have been conducting an ad hoc, opportunistic global calamari survey and I remain convinced, until conflicting evidence emerges, that Golden Century on Sussex St has the best fried squid rings on earth.
Agreed, Viet food is lacking in SG. For various reasons it hasn't caught on with the locals. Still, the average quality level of those Viet places that do exist is higher than that in the US.
As for hawker food, the increasing cost of doing business in SG means that hawkers use cheaper ingredients and give you less meat/fish. For dishes of Malaysian origin, Penang is the place to go for the best of the best. Even many Singaporeans will admit this.
I'd go with Bangkok as my personal #1 food city in Asia, but Viet cuisine is lacking there is well. So maybe Saigon?
> I'd go with Bangkok as my personal #1 food city in Asia
I honestly debated that. BKK is fantastic food-wise but it lacks viet, korean and northern China. Don't get me wrong, it's great. I live there!
I'm sticking with Sydney. It is all due to immigrants and students. I am pretty sure Sydney, or even Melbourne, Banh Mi is the best you can get outside of Vietnam. It's so ironic that the best overall cities for asian cuisine are all outside Asia but SYD, MEL, LAX, SFO and YVR are probably the best cities in the world for asian food, and it is all about immigration!
Vietnamese who used to live in Singapore here. Agreed that there's no good vnese place (The best option I could find was Little Vietnam but it's not exactly stellar). Currently in Vancouver and the vnese food scene here is much better (which is weird if you think about the Singapore-Vietnam proximity). For Thai food, I used to go to Pornsak (look it up folks, they call their employees porn stars) a lot and that was good!
Genuinely good Vietnamese is hard to find in Vietnam! and near impossible in Sydney - and most of the 'good asian' is white people fusion, there are two good ramen places (same guy). Singapore at least has proximity to the genuine ingredients.
I love Singapore. My wife and I go through Singapore when flying to Europe (from Australia) and usually stay 1-2 nights. We'll do the same again on the way back.
It's super clean, well run, the public transport makes every other country look like a joke, the food is amazing, the laws are tied meaning it's a super safe place to live and wonder around, and everyone is lovely. We're considering a year of living there (and bracing ourselves for how expensive it is.)
If you haven't been: go. It's one of humanity's gems.
Aussie but not a fan of Singapore here, I live in China and prefer Bangkok for food. A couple of years I did an alphabet foodie tour there and had no problems starting with Afghanistan, Burmese, Chinese, Danish, Ethiopian ... right through to Yemeni and Zhajiangmian. :) If anyone wants to join the next one, hit me up. I believe the unique feature of Bangkok is intact communities supporting real food from a range of regions, not just show cuisine.
Don't doubt it! However, in my experience ingredients in the UK are generally not up to snuff versus what you can get in Bangkok, especially tropical produce. If you go the full Waitrose, it's cheaper to fly to the country and eat the cuisine there.
Errr, I think that over states things just a tad. I really love Singapore, but:
1. Public transit: it’s good if you go where public transit goes. Try to get out to East Coast park, and you have a 45 minute transit ride vs a 15 minute Uber.
2. It’s clean for an Asian city and depends where you go. Try Little India on a Friday night (and then Saturday morning) but it does clean up amazingly well.
The food centers are amazing. I haven’t visited in a few years and miss it. Maybe you’re right, for a year it would be super fun.
Yeah, it’s clear you’ve never lived in Singapore. Lots of important places are inadequately served by transit including major universities, many major embassies, important employers, the best food centers, and many of the popular Western expat neighborhoods. Want a bit of nature? Hope you like a 30 minute cab ride to the Pulau Ubin ferry terminal, which is also not served by transit. Want to go out for drinks? MRT and most buses stop at midnight. Maybe it’s only a 10 minute inexpensive cab ride home for you but your Singaporean friend probably lives in an HDB in a more remote area and is going to have to go a lot farther and pay a lot more.
Oh yeah and even if transit seems like it’s in close proximity, many of these areas are seemingly designed in the most pedestrian hostile way possible. What looks like a 10 minute walk can easily be 20 minutes once you factor in absurdly long pedestrian signal times and having to go over overpasses etc. And the average temperature is 30-32 degrees, it feels like 35 when humidity is factored in.
Easy for you to say “take Uber” but Uber left SG last year, it’s now Grab which is a much worse experience. And good luck getting a Grab or a taxi during anything approaching peak hours, or when it’s raining. Do you commute by cab every day where you live?
I think the (metro) transport situation has improved a lot in the last 3-4 years since the Downtown Line opened, and things will only continue to get better when the various other lines launch in around 5 to 10 years [1].
Go-Jek (from Indonesia) has also very recently launched their private hire service here, but they've done very little to hire new drivers. Fares are slightly better as compared to when Grab had a virtual monopoly here though.
Uh, I’m not Singaporean and don’t live in Singapore any longer but good guess.
You must have taken Uber more than a few weeks ago because it’s been shut down since late 2018. If you don’t believe me open up the app on your phone and try to book a ride between two points in Singapore.
Not really surprised that they haven’t completely removed all the marketing from their site, it’s not like Uber is renowned for attention to detail.
Just a note that 'laksa' here means the usual version served in Singapore. As the Wikipedia article [1] notes, there are many variations of laksa served in the region.
Personal story: my father came to visit me here in Singapore, when I was studying at the local university here in the early 1990s. He went to a hawker stall to order laksa for lunch and was surprised to be served by what he called 'curry noodles'. The laksa in our hometown in Malaysia was a completely different version [2].
As a Singaporean, I'm a bit sad that the Peranakans (i.e. "Straits-born Chinese") [1] only got a passing mention in the article, since the Peranakans are quite possibly the best representation of the melting pot that is Singapore's local population. The founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was known to have Peranakan roots too [2].
The Peranakans also have a cuisine that they can call their own [3].
On the other hand, I've never had the "feng" curry mentioned in the article before.
"Straits" refers to the "Straits Settlements" of the British East India Company East India Company which comprised Penang, and Malacca in present day Malaysia and also present day Singapore. And "Chinese" here refers to ethnic Chinese not necessarily Chinese speakers, nor did the OP imply they were Chinese speakers.
Singaporean here. I think Singapore and Malaysia tend to share ownership of many dishes.
What wasn't mentioned in the article is that the peppery Teochew style is far more common in Singapore. The herbal Hokkien variant is often known as "Klang bak kut teh" here in Singapore, after Port Klang in Malaysia. Malaysians also seem to like that version better.
Having being born and raised in Malaysia, and nowadays frequently visiting Singapore (for business, but ostensibly to eat the food of my childhood again), I am still getting used to the subtle differences of names of same or similar dishes.
For instance, I really miss Roti Canai, but it has a different name in Singapore (Roti Pratha IIRC), so even trying to search for a good stall on Google Maps doesn't find the places that make it.
> For instance, I really miss Roti Canai, but it has a different name in Singapore (Roti Pratha IIRC), so even trying to search for a good stall on Google Maps doesn't find the places that make it.
Roti prata.
I think you'll be hard-pressed to find bad roti prata in Singapore. I've heard Mr and Mrs Mohgan's is one of the best: https://goo.gl/maps/bv3b3sFwK1A2
One's search engine of choice might not know that.
The grandparent comment wanted to look for good stalls. I just tried doing a search for pratha on Google Maps, and it yielded results that were less relevant as compared to if one used the more common spelling of prata.
Well, south Indian food is everywhere. One can't really go wrong with any place that makes their prata fresh.
(For really good prata, there's the usual suspects like Mr and Mrs Mohgan's, Casuarina Curry, Springleaf Prata Place, Sin Ming Roti Prata… I personally have a soft spot for the ABC King group of restaurants — their food is above average — since one opened next to the Singapore Hackerspace.)
If you're looking for north Indian cuisine, I'm thinking that the area immediately around Mustafa Centre would be a good bet.
The name Bak Kut Teh is Hokkien Chinese. Of course the same dish appears in Malaysia too. Culinary history of Singapore and Malaysia is shared and intertwined, nevermind that the perennial favourite flamewar between Malaysians and Singaporeans is about what dish is whose :)
Chicken Rice and Chilli Crab are regarded as the usual trademark dishes of Singapore. The article interestingly departs from usual practice.
Chicken rice isn't unique to Singapore though. It's pretty much the same in Malaysia and the Thai version is quite close as well.
Katong laksa on the other hand (which is in the article) is probably the famous hawker dish that is most uniquely Singapore.
Incidentally, the Katong laksa at Cassia in Santa Monica is probably as close to the real deal as you can get outside of Asia. But be prepared for sticker shock.
> Chicken rice isn't unique to Singapore though. It's pretty much the same in Malaysia and the Thai version is quite close as well.
Funny enough, many of the chicken rice vendors in Singapore sell a Cantonese-influenced version (though many places continue to label their chicken rice as "Hainanese chicken rice").
From what I understand, the Cantonese-style steamed chicken gets dunked in ice to keep the gelatin in the skin. The rice also tends to be slightly wetter and more flavourful.
The chicken rice I've had in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in some other "Malaysian" restaurants around the world, tend to be dryer and yellower.
My experience in the US is that Thai restaurants are the best bet for Hainanese chicken rice. It’s not on the usual Thai restaurant menu so any place offering it is probably doing so because they have a passion for the dish and/or their Thai clientele demand it. Greatly missed chicken rice until I figured this out.
Hainanese chicken rice in a thai place may be serviceable, but I've yet to have a good one. I live in NYC, and even here, with thousands of asian fusion restaurants, there are only 3 or 4 that serve chicken rice that compares well to Singapore.
Hainan was part of Guangdong province until the late 1980s – so I think the dish is Cantonese to begin with. My understanding is that it spread to other places from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainanese_chicken_rice
Right!? How is chicken rice not on here? It’s the single most common dish in the city so far as I saw. Kaya toast makes sense, never seen that anywhere else even Malaysia, clearly the toast is directly British.
I had a great tasting chicken rice, but it lost a couple points for having a head and spine laid across the side of the plate. Fine, just wasn’t expecting that!
Chicken rice isn't uniquely Singaporean, though, or Singaporean in origin. You can find it in pretty much any place with a significant Chinese diaspora.
Singapore is without doubt my favorite place to eat in the world. I say that having lived and worked in the UK, Belgium, France, the USA and Australia.
How refreshing NOT to see faux 'Singapore Noodles' on that list. Having been born and raised in Malaysia, it is the street food that I miss the most, now that I live in Australia. Probably why I love going to the night markets in my town.
