What to do on the weekends in Singapore? There’s always eating, right?
Picking our friends up from Changi airport on a Friday night we dropped the bags and went out to eat at Sin Hoi Sai Eating House on East Coast Road. For a pretty reasonable $60 for the four of us, we enjoyed excellent food from the extensive menu and large bottles of Tiger beer. To be honest, the beers were the majority of that, but Sin Hoi is just the slightest bit higher in price than other ‘street’ based restaurants for a couple of reasons; 1) it has the BEST reputation, having served food here for a couple of decades. Even though it’s on the wide pavement between Joo Chiat Road and Still Road there are enough tables around you and enough buzzing chat that it feels like you’re inside, all be it a warm restaurant. And 2) that large restaurant has a large floor plan to pay rent on. It’s not cheap to own a large establishment on East Coast Road and to have to pay the expensive business licenses that are at a premium. As the jet lag crept up on our guests we left the crew at Sin Hoi to continue until gone 4am.
On Saturday after the mandatory tour of Orchard Road, we stopped into Brewerkz on Clarke Quay for lunch, escaping the mid-afternoon heat of a muggy day. Brewerkz is one of Singapore’s fermenting brew-houses and makes its golden nectar on site. With the standard beer accompaniments of burgers, ribs and steaks, it’s very western and pretty stodgy stuff. The aussie rules footy on the television was a suitably masculine accompaniment to the red meat and a welcome diversion from the heat outside.
The brews are pretty varied though, definitely the reason to go there with a group of friends, and they’re strong. Starting at 4.9% golden ale, they move on to 7% head-thumpers! There are tasting menus available which allows you to sample whatever you’ve not tried before, before diving into a pint of new beer. Bottled beers are on the menu too and they have chosen interestingly boutique and global varieties; my favourites coming from the small UK breweries of Wychwood and Brakspears.
As one of our friends is a vet, we were obliged to visit the Night Safari, which you can see my blog entry about earlier. After meeting the animals we took a late-night taxi to Boat Quay, arriving about 00:30. We thought it would still be busy, seeing that it’s a long drag of restaurants and bars and Singapore likes to party on the weekend, but to our surprise a lot of the restaurants had already packed up their tables and chairs. We managed to find an indian/chinese crossover that was willing to serve us and we did get some very good curry and rice before they chivied us along and asked us to finish up and leave.
Shovel
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Little India – a different country in this country
We’ve been to Little India on three occasions now, first time when we pitched up in January for a look around, and subsequent to that we’ve been on our own and with some friends.
Banana Leaf on Race Course Road
Named of course because your food is served straight onto a green banana leaf from buckets of rice or curry. It seems rough and ready but is far from it; yes the setting is simple with sturdy heavy trestle tables and benches lining the aircon restaurant but the furnishings are rich, red and gold. Don't be fooled by the rough menu, just ask for some curry, rice and popadoms and you'll be taken care of.
It's not super cheap and a simple meal with a couple of beers ran to S$50 for the two of us and they do still supply you with cutlery!
Jaggi’s at 34 Race Course Road
For excellent, flavoursome and no-nonsense food from the Punjab or the North of India, you can't go past simple Jaggi's. There is again a coice of cutlery or fingers but it's totally up to you, just be mindful that there can be quite a line-up for the washbasin’s after you’ve finished. Tea urns or bottled beer caters for all sorts. It’s pretty loud when all the families get in and start chatting, but that you get entire families mixing together there says something about the ambience of the place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a simple room, pretty rough around the edges but it’s all about the food here; simple food that tastes great.
Chapatis and Dhal are excellent as is the brinjal (or eggplant). The tandoor meats do get nuked to warm them for you on the spot, but they’re all freshly cooked that day.
Komala Vilas on Serangoon Road
I’d been there once, a long long time ago. It looked familiar when we’d walked past it on an earlier exploration of the gridded streets, I remembered the metal trays with inset sections for various sauces, dhals and curries and for the first time, eating with my hand.
Its still the same vegetarian fare with optional utensils and we take a seat, chewing on a handful of fennel seeds, the licorice taste and barky husks sticking to our teeth. The menu is pretty simple, well thumbed and curled around the edges, but the offerings are totally dependent upon what the kitchen is cooking today. On three occassions the attending guys had to run out to check whether we could get what we wanted.
Dosai, stuffed with vegetables and with three sauces to dip into. Vadai (pronounced wadai), a savoury donut that’s plain but you can dip into further sauces and an onion baji, which was the oddest looking baji I’ve ever seen. It was more a ring of onion inside a deep red bready type package that was deep fried.
Lady had a chapati derivative that looked like two doughy breast implants, puffed up like double Ds and full of hot air. She popped them with a spoon to release the steam and then ripped them up, using them to pick up the rich chenna masala and vegetable curry.
For four of us, the bill came to S$30. It wasn’t a huge meal, we had the equivalent of a small main each, a small drink and two masala teas and it sounds very reasonable doesn’t it. It was a quick cheerful meal, so in that respect, yes it was pretty cheap for four of us. I think the comparison to what we’re used to is that it didn’t include any meat, which obviously is more expensive than veggies, and it didn’t include alcohol. So the lesson learned is that if you stick to the basics, you can eat very cheaply here. The added frills are where it gets you.
As an aside, while I'm talking about all this indian veggie food, in the back of a taxi to the airport last week I was watching an advert; some SG taxis have a small TV screen and internet hookup on the back of the front passenger’s head-rest. The advert-come-infommercial was about how to save the planet by becoming vegetarian, citing a number of stats about the volume of resources that cattle require in return for nutritional value of protein. On the strength of the food from Komala Vilas, I’d consider it, well maybe just a reduction of meat in my diet.
Shovel
Banana Leaf on Race Course Road
Named of course because your food is served straight onto a green banana leaf from buckets of rice or curry. It seems rough and ready but is far from it; yes the setting is simple with sturdy heavy trestle tables and benches lining the aircon restaurant but the furnishings are rich, red and gold. Don't be fooled by the rough menu, just ask for some curry, rice and popadoms and you'll be taken care of.
It's not super cheap and a simple meal with a couple of beers ran to S$50 for the two of us and they do still supply you with cutlery!
Jaggi’s at 34 Race Course Road
For excellent, flavoursome and no-nonsense food from the Punjab or the North of India, you can't go past simple Jaggi's. There is again a coice of cutlery or fingers but it's totally up to you, just be mindful that there can be quite a line-up for the washbasin’s after you’ve finished. Tea urns or bottled beer caters for all sorts. It’s pretty loud when all the families get in and start chatting, but that you get entire families mixing together there says something about the ambience of the place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a simple room, pretty rough around the edges but it’s all about the food here; simple food that tastes great.
Chapatis and Dhal are excellent as is the brinjal (or eggplant). The tandoor meats do get nuked to warm them for you on the spot, but they’re all freshly cooked that day.
Komala Vilas on Serangoon Road
I’d been there once, a long long time ago. It looked familiar when we’d walked past it on an earlier exploration of the gridded streets, I remembered the metal trays with inset sections for various sauces, dhals and curries and for the first time, eating with my hand.
Its still the same vegetarian fare with optional utensils and we take a seat, chewing on a handful of fennel seeds, the licorice taste and barky husks sticking to our teeth. The menu is pretty simple, well thumbed and curled around the edges, but the offerings are totally dependent upon what the kitchen is cooking today. On three occassions the attending guys had to run out to check whether we could get what we wanted.
Dosai, stuffed with vegetables and with three sauces to dip into. Vadai (pronounced wadai), a savoury donut that’s plain but you can dip into further sauces and an onion baji, which was the oddest looking baji I’ve ever seen. It was more a ring of onion inside a deep red bready type package that was deep fried.
Lady had a chapati derivative that looked like two doughy breast implants, puffed up like double Ds and full of hot air. She popped them with a spoon to release the steam and then ripped them up, using them to pick up the rich chenna masala and vegetable curry.
For four of us, the bill came to S$30. It wasn’t a huge meal, we had the equivalent of a small main each, a small drink and two masala teas and it sounds very reasonable doesn’t it. It was a quick cheerful meal, so in that respect, yes it was pretty cheap for four of us. I think the comparison to what we’re used to is that it didn’t include any meat, which obviously is more expensive than veggies, and it didn’t include alcohol. So the lesson learned is that if you stick to the basics, you can eat very cheaply here. The added frills are where it gets you.
As an aside, while I'm talking about all this indian veggie food, in the back of a taxi to the airport last week I was watching an advert; some SG taxis have a small TV screen and internet hookup on the back of the front passenger’s head-rest. The advert-come-infommercial was about how to save the planet by becoming vegetarian, citing a number of stats about the volume of resources that cattle require in return for nutritional value of protein. On the strength of the food from Komala Vilas, I’d consider it, well maybe just a reduction of meat in my diet.
Shovel
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