My husband calls me the Food Monster, and not surprising to be honest, as all I think, dream and talk about is food.
As mentioned in a previous post, there are numerous places in this island – and around Asia of course – to find great food.
One of my favourite ways to explore the city and get to know the local customs is by visiting the local Hawker Centres.
A Hawker Centre, or Hawker Market, or food market, is usually an open-air area with stalls that sell a wide variety of very inexpensive, but very good dishes. You can find food for every taste: Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Indonesian, Thai. You name it. In addition, they sell super tasty fruits, juices and smoothies ( I’m a junkie ).
I adore Korean food. Here a simple version of a typical Bibimbap dish (beef, rice, fried egg & vegetables, minus the hot stone). Delicious.
You can buy a very good tasting dish for as little as S$4 (equivalent to £2) and I usually joke that the food can’t possibly be that cheap unless they save money by cooking cat meat. That’s a bad joke as local places are usually subjected to very stringent health and sanity regulations, which means you should feel safe with your cheap dish.
These centres started being built in urban areas in the 50s and 60s, mainly to address the problem the country had at the time of unhygienic food served by unlicensed food stalls. I have only visited a few so far (Lau Pa Sat in the Business District, Zion Food Centre near our flat, and Newton Circus, which is a bit ‘touristy’ but I found the food really nice).
I still have a long list of hawker centres and restaurants I plan to visit. I keep it on my iPhone and refer to it whenever I’m hungry 🙂
I LOVE fresh, cold coconuts. They remind me a bit of my own country’s.Everything here is imported, so most of these come from Malaysia like the one below.
A Latina in Asia 