FARMERS’ MARKET – DEMPSEY HILL

When you’re away from home there’s an overwhelming urge to dive into the local lifestyles and get to feel comfortable with your new surroundings. As explained on my earlier blogs, Singapore is a foody’s playground and there’s many many different new things to try. This weekend I ate my first fish-eye. Not quite as huge as those fish-eyes eaten on the UK trash TV show, “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here” but a fish-eye none the less. It’s considered a delicacy here and along with the fish’s cheeks something that people fight over at the dinner table.

Yet with all the new experiences, there’s always a part of you that yearns for a familiar taste, yearns for that comforting morsel out of your Mum’s larder, yearns for home.

We came across such a well-stitched expat security blanket through mutual friends a couple of weeks ago. On the first Saturday of every month, hidden away at Dempsey Hill is a small but perfectly formed Singapore Farmers’ Market. It has a diverse expat focus, centered around the small kitchen called “The Pantry” (which runs cooking classes for the foreign maids to learn how to cook western food) and on a wet, grey Saturday morning we are greeted by bunches of flowers, french and spanish wines, australian chutneys, english pies and pasties, himalayan jams and more imported fruit and veg that you could shake a farmer’s crook at. Portobello mushrooms bigger than your palm, rhubarb (RHUBARB!), parsnips (which grow so much better with a sharp frost, something that you’ll never find in S’pore) and red onions that don’t look like they were fished out of a drain with a net.

Once again we bump into our friendly purveyor of wines and beers, George, from East of Avalon Wines, but this time steer ourselves towards some fresh barn eggs that have no added ANYTHING! The shelf-eggs are crammed full of added vitamins, A, C, Omega 3, Lutein...any food chemists out there? It makes for an unsettled stomach, so the fresh unadulterated barn-laid eggs are a bonus. Watch out for Freedom Eggs at NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage. They’re not free-range and maybe freedom’s not the right name, rather ‘socially-mobile’, but it’s a step in the right direction.

As we purchase breads and tea-cakes from Wild Honey (which runs an all-day breakfast restaurant on Orchard Road, serving breakfasts from all around the world) we find that it’s more than just about food, it’s a social hub where foreign and locals alike arrive, meet and greet, share stories and for the more extravagant pop champagne over brunch. It’s all about getting into circulation and getting your name out there.

For example, the nice Australian Lady who spends all month cooking up jars of fabulous chutneys and piccalilli following her mother’s recipe, to sell them only on this first-Saturday. She is the culinary equivalent of the mayfly.

It’s an interesting place and one that needs the support of locals to really make a go of it. No doubt fresh produce and fine foods are going to bring in the crowds but they need locals to spread the word.
The Farmer’s Market runs from 9 – 2 on the first Saturday of every month at Loewen Cluster on Loewen Road which is just past Dempsey Hill. It’s pretty small and taxi drivers don’t really know where it is, so take a map. And take a taxi number with you so that you can call one to get you home.


Other amusing moments from this trip was the massive jam that occurred on our way home, along the PIE with jams at the junction of the SLE, CTE and KPE. Does that make sense to anyone?

A teen’s t-shirt with the simple statement “got chiz?”. Whatever that means, I don’t want it.

An advertising hoarding for a new apartment complex that describes that any investor would be “Living In An Attitude” should they buy in. Whatever that means, I don’t like it.

Shovel