Fine dining you can afford: Cau Go Vietnamese Cuisine,
First impressions:
I've only been here a little over a day and a half, but this is a remarkable place. Remarkably polluted, yet there's so much of a distinct culture that you can just feel. This is not your sanitary Singapore with air conditioning. This is your 95+ F with 60+% humidity that has you dripping like a ice cold beer no matter what you do, with people who barely speak English, and well, let's just say that neither myself nor my "bodyguards" know enough Vietnamese to get by. As my Uncle Wilfred put it, we are 4 sotongs (squids = clueless people) wandering through Vietnam. It's the blind leading the blind! Living standards are way different, but it's so fascinating to sort of step back in time into what my sister called "Singapore from the 1970s."
My Bodyguards:Food places I'd recommend going to
Cha Ca at Cha Ca Thang Long Restaurant: BBQ'd fish that gets fried in spring onions and dill at the table, and served with rice vermicelli, shredded spring onions, peanuts, fish sauce, basil, and mint. $6 USD (or 120,000 dong) per head, and we got the combo which came with beer, fruit, and tea for $8 USD/head. Pretty awesome.
Quan An Ngon Restaurant: Steamed rice noodle with BBQ pork, fish sauce, and herbs. This is a good place for trying out dishes with fresh vegetables, and offers a fairly decent array of food from all over Vietnam. Not the best steamed rice noodle I've ever had, but it was pretty decent for the price ($6 including a soybean milk).
Lychees! Ok so maybe not exactly a "SEA" fruit, but definitely an asian one. Generally air flown from China. Generally brown-ness on the outside means it hasn't been stored at the right temperature and might be "se-kor" (spoiled) on the inside. Fruit should not have any dents visible from the outside. Try to eat one before you buy. Jumbu-- "Rose Apple" (tastes nothing like roses but is like a very airy apple)Where to buy these thingsThe market works well, but if you're really into fruit (and have a friend with a car in Sg) then you should go to the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Center.
Cendol-- the perfect appetizer, yeah? (In all seriousness, this is a must-try dessert that is basically Indonesian shaved ice and we were trying to cool off from the hot weather while waiting for my cousin to join us. Plus I have a family of dessert freaks who will eat dessert before a meal all the time.) My eating companions:
I first ate my first black pepper crab when I was 9 (I really loved that stuff more than chili crab, so I have no idea when my first chili crab was). I've learned to cook it (really time intensive) but nothing beats eating the Sri Lankan crabs down here (I've had to turn off my ocean-conscious-and-guilty-brain for all of this seafood indulgence). We have yet to try the salted duck egg crab, but we did order a black pepper and a beehoon crab last night. Yummy. This restaurant is apparently the place that created the beehoon crab dish. Breakfast standards that are pretty decent everywhere:
Lunch/Dinner:
As I sit here, munching on my jumbu fruit, relaxing on a couch in my grandmother's living room with the breeze coming through the open window, a part of me really thinks that living in Singapore is quite pleasant. Granted, I'm staying with family, and had fantastic food at the local wet market where I discovered that you can eat an amazing breakfast for less than S$5. Pinapples for S$2, fresh durian, mangosteens, rambutans, jumbu... American fruits seem so boring sometimes! And I'm avoiding the heat by staying out of the sun. For once I'm actually feeling a breeze here! Of course, on our first day back, we had to trek down to Orchard Road, the "shopping capital" of the island, to buy things (because there's also the "Great Singapore Sale" going on, lah). To get there we took the MRT (subway), which after living in Boston for so long and riding the dinky green line trains, the MRT seemed pretty luxurious. No squeaks, barely any jerky movement-- riding this public transit system was a breeze. Not only is it fairly straightforwards to get a card (you go up to the kiosk by the turnstiles-- you pay $5 for the card but each ride is substantially cheaper, though there are a few good alternatives for those who are only visiting for less than 2 weeks), but it's also really easy to figure out where you're going. The trains even tell you which side the doors are opening on, and their maps tell you were you are/where you're going. Plus, everything is full of air conditioning. Now why can't Boston's T system have that? (Well, this is the relatively new MRT system that the country did spend millions on, so....) But back to the story-- shopping on Orchard Road. Note that mid-day, although crowded, is still fine to bring strollers and wheelchairs around. Come rush hour, though-- it's a fast-moving river of people that's almost impossible to cross. Anyway, our first stop: the Ion Shopping Centre. Imagine your typical high-end shopping mall in America (like South Coast Plaza or the Natick Mall), but add more boutiques and shops you wouldn't find in the States. Even the American franchises are called slightly different things, like McDonald's McCafe, Coffee Bean's Beanery, though there was (surprisingly) a Dunkin' Donuts. Of course, I avoided those like the plague (though as a side note, it's more common to find packets of chili sauce here as opposed to ketchup), and followed my grandma into Ion's basement food court, also known as the "Food Opera." It's a bizarre place, with its picture frames around lights on the ceiling and random animal sculptures all over (including wall trophies). Despite the odd decor, I managed to find two shops with excellent food: the Teochew Fishball Noodle Soup stall and the Chicken Wing store (I bought Satay, though their wings did look good). For the most part, these basement food courts are generally sub-par of the traditional "sweating-my-ass-off-but-it's-so-damn-good" outdoor hawker centers that I grew up going to (which are beginning to die off because very few people in the current generation are willing to stand for 15 hours a day making amazing food). However, the satay was actually cooked over charcoal, and the fishballs were made fresh daily, so I figured I couldn't go wrong.
A few stores down from the food court was an interesting french-looking bakery called BreadSociety that had all sorts of interesting fusion breads. I didn't eat any of their wild concoctions (like lychee earl grey toast) but my grandmother bought some... stay tuned for the verdict.
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Adela WeeTraveling the world since 1994. Taking notes about the places I've been so that friends and family can go there too! Archives
January 2016
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