Singapore’s food paradise

Asia, cities, culinary cultures — By Bob Riel on September 25, 2006 at 11:03 am

If you’re a traveler who counts culinary adventures as one of your favorite means of exploring new cultures, then Singapore may be an appealing destination. Noted author and chef Anthony Bourdain has a mouth-watering piece in the NY Times Travel Magazine about his experiences with food in Singapore.

There’s a fever-dream quality to Singapore, particularly if you’re a foodie. Outdoors, the heat is smothering. In the ubiquitous megamalls, the air-conditioning could frost a bottle of beer. Everyone, it seems, when not shopping for Prada or Armani, is feeding their faces. Yet unlike in other modern centers of conspicuous consumption, in Singapore, the local obsession with food focuses on “hawker stands” and “eating houses,” which are clustered in open-to-the-street food courts. They offer a nearly unlimited variety of Malaysian, Chinese and Indian mom-and-pop operations, each of them specializing in one or two dishes.

Centuries ago, when Chinese merchants immigrated south and were encouraged to intermarry – and when Indian entrepreneurs and planters joined the mix – a fantastic process of natural fusion began. Not the fusion of trendy restaurants of the West, where after a trip to Thailand a chef begins to toss around lemongrass with abandon, but a long, slow process of culinary mutation, born of people from three distinct cultures living and eating together. It is not unusual for a Singaporean or a Malaysian to grow up cooking three cuisines.

For budding gastro-tourists and first-time visitors to Asia, Singapore is the perfect city to avail oneself of a broad spectrum of culinary delights without straying too far from the familiar. English is an official language. Mass transit and taxis are cleaner and more efficient than in most places. Crime and annoyances are virtually, and rather notoriously, nonexistent.