What I ate in Singapore

Last week I went on a one-week business trip to Singapore with my school to visit some companies and make new contacts that could be relevant in our future careers. When I was there I tried to eat something different everyday to get to know the culture as much as possible. Turned out, they only eat rice and noodles, alllllllll the time, everyday. Not much to complain about as I like noodles and rice a lot, but to be honest, after 6 days of eating only rice and noodles for lunch and dinner, it gets too much.

But what are the things I ate and where did I eat them? Well, I'll tell you all the spots right now.

1

We started our week off with the second most expensive meal of the whole week, no big surprise as it was in the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. We went to a place called "Din Tai Fung's", where we ate dumplings, spring roles,etc. It is situated downstairs at the shopping mall of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Our order consisted of the following things:

- Fragrant Pork with crushed garlic ($9)

- Sliced duck in crispy spring onion pastry ($9)

- Stir-fried spinach with garlic ($11,80)

- Steamed chicken Xiao Long Bao ($12)

- Steamed shrimp & pork dumplings ($13)

We shared these dished with 5 people and per person the total price was around $15. When eating in Singapore don't be fooled by the prices on the menu, because these don't include taxes yet, so your bill will have a higher amount in the end when paying. I liked all the dishes except for the Fragrant Pork as the red sauce over it was very spicy and I am not into spicy food, the rolls on itself were really good.

2

The next day we went on a business trip to a company called "Dignity kitchen" a realy nice concept where disabled people are offered work in the kitchen or somewhere else in the company to make food for the elderly at a very cheap price. In this way they help both the elderly and the disabled and you can really see on their faces that it makes them so happy, it was one of the best experiences I ever had. We also had the opportunity to eat here so we ordered noodles with chicken and soup, for only $3 and it was delicious.

3

Next we went to Chinatown. You can find the famous Maxwell hawker center here where one foodstand got a Michelin star for their chicken rice. My friends and I went to the Maxwell hawker center but it was too busy at the time to find a place to sit for all 8 of us and it was also too hot outside. So we went to another famous hotspot in Chinatown, the Chinatown Food Street. I cannot recall the exact name of the place we ate but it was a Chinese restaurant that looked the most fancy, in my opinion. We were seated upstairs as we were with a big group and got a private waitress. Unfortunately, her English wasn't that good nor was the service very fast. We ended up having to take-away the food as we had an important company visit right after. I ordered Noodles with shred Vegetables, which were the best "dry" noodles (without soup) I had in Singapore.

We went to Chinatown once more, on Thursday night. I ate the famous dish "Laksa" for the first time which consisted of Curry soup, noodles, fish, hard boiled eggs and some vegetables. It was really delicious, only the weird bread-like things in it were a bit strange.

4

Another delicious hawker center/ food market is situated downstairs in the ION mall at orchard road. It looks really fancy and expensive when you look at it from the outside but the meals are really fair priced, you don't pay more than $10 dollars, only when you buy a big size with expensive meats. I, again, chose for noodles with fish and soup.

5

On Friday we went to another food market in the Raffles City shopping Centre. This is a really big food center where you have all kinds of foods to choose from; desserts, Asian BBQ, noodles, rice, dumplings, etc. Here I decided to choose a rice meal instead of always noodles. It was called Cereal Fried rice and consisted of rice, shrimps, vegetables and another type of fish ($6,30). At first glance it looked really dry, but once I ate my first bite it was really delicious and I was glad I finally had something else to eat than just noodles and soup.

6

When the end of the week approached we all got sick of the noodles so we went to pizza express near our hotel and the day after we went for pasta at niam niam also in the Bugis area. Pizza express was really good, nothing special about it, but exactly what we needed that night. I chose for the La Reine pizza with mushrooms, olives, Ham and mozzarella ($16) and at niam niam I tried the "Mentaiko Crab squid ink pasta" ($21,90). The pasta was something I never ate before but it was really delicious and just enough to fill my hungry stomach. The only downpart of eating at a real restaurant in Singapore is that you pay way higher prices than in the Hawker centers where prices don't go above $10.

7

Lastly, I went to the famous KOI café, where you can buy different types of bubble teas. I ordered the Honey green tea with golden bubbles. The tea on its own was really good but I didn't like the bubbles at all, I like the concept of the bubbles popping in your mouth when you drink bubble tea, but here you had to chew on them and the taste was also really bad. So I won't recommend choosing those type of bubbles, they have other options that are way better, such as Aloe Vera bubbles.

I had a blast in Sinapore, good food, amazing people, and lovely company visits. I won't be eating a lot of noodles any time soon, but I loved trying these new recipes and I'll definitely try to recreate them at home when I miss the noodles again.

A bientôt!

Bisous