Tastes That Send People Back
When one enters the Little hawker centre singapore chinatown, it will be like entering into a food carnival without the closing time. One can smell soy, garlic, chili, and charcoal smoke in the air. Booths yell what they specialize in on painted signs. The people grind and push their way in with their trays gripped firmly, with their eyes moving restlessly between the queues. It is loud, lively, slightly disorganized, and impossible not to resist. The food is not succulent here. It shouts, sings and even laughs at you when the spice burns your tongue.
Hainanese Chicken Rice–A National Treasure
It seems so chaotically simple: rice, chicken, soup, and sauce. Still, all the bites taste well-thought-out. It is really about the rice–incredibly fragrant and oily and full of chicken broth. The cooked chicken is sheened, and the poached chicken invites you in. Then the sauce: hot chili, acidic soy, and pungent ginger paste. These put together would explain why the queues develop every day.
The Return: Reasons Why
It is home cooking. Local people consume it once a week, or even every day, and they do not get bored with it. Tourists vow that when they get back home, they will compare every chicken dish with this. They mostly come back since there is no other variant that achieves the balance.
Char Kway Teow: The Best of Wok Hei
There were dark noodles fried on blazing flames, cockles added to the same with Chinese sausage, and egg scrambled into the lot. Bean sprouts are used and add bite. The special incantation is wok hei, considered that charred taste that could only be achieved with a well-worn wok and scorching intensity. When done correctly, the noodles taste alive. When done in a bad way, they disappoint.
The superior stalls will serve up a plate as oily as may be, yet (preliminary to greasiness) never greasy. The flavor of every bite is heavy, intensive and slightly addictive. Once you start scraping the plates, you will be scraping at the end of the table, even when you swore that you were full.
Laksa: A Bowl That Heats and Burns
Thick noodles made of rice in coconut curry soup. It is a creamy and fragrant soup and flavored with chili and dried shrimp. Topped with prawns, fish cake and cockles. There is a dollop of sambal on the side just begging you to mix it in.
The Reason It is Different
Laksa is sloppy. It spills, it leaves stains, but it is as soothing as few dishes. Chinatown vendors usually sell derivations that are not too rich but hot. It is noisy in a local place, tourists struggle to cope with it, and they all end up with a sweaty smile.
Satay: Smoke, Skewers and Sauce
Meat is grilled on skewers. Spicy chicken, spicy beef, spicy young mutton, burnt around the edges–all good and bloody. The peanut sauce is gooey, sweet and a bit spicy. Include cucumber and rice cakes, and you have a plate that goes like the wind even before your eyes.
Satay is an evening menu. The smoke unfolds in the high, the neon lights are reflected over the stalls, and the game becomes festive. It is more than a food; it is theater.
Oyster Omelette Delicious, Duke it out, Colossally Addictive
It is a mysterious dish that does not seem attractive to a foreigner, yet it is very popular among the locals. Eggs, starch and oysters are fried and become crispy outside but soft in the middle. The richness is tempered, or a chili sauce is spread to balance the flavors. The chewiness is loved by some, the crunch by others. In either case, after the first bite, you will miss it.
Dim Sum and Dumplings
The small bites also count in spite of the fact that Chinatown is synonymous with the big plates. Vapor dumplings, buns stuffed with barbequed pork, and siu mai brimming with shrimp. They come fresh in bamboo baskets steaming hot, and their aroma will not allow anyone to taste a single one. Match them to tea, and in an instant you have lengthened out a mere snack into a lazy meal.
Carrot Cake, Not What You Think
This is not SOP. Chopped and fried radish cake with garlic, egg, and preserved radish is called radish cake. There are two varieties–white (there it is crisped but not with sweet soy) and black (there the sauce caramelizes into sticky sweetness). They are both cult favorites. Most stalls do both, but you can order a combination and make your own choice.
Bak Kut Teh–Peppery Comfort
Racks of pork that had been cooked in broth with pepper in it. Rice and fried dough sticks used as dipping accompaniments to the soup are flavored with garlic. The lighter, pepper-dense variety is often served in the stalls of Chinatown, and it cleans your nasal cavities and warms your chest. It is easy, down-to-earth and perfect on rainy days.
Desserts That Are Worth the Calorie Count
Food here is incomplete without a sweet thing.
Chendol
Mounds of shaved ice with coconut milk, palm sugar syrup and green pandan jelly. It is a strange-looking dish to the first-timers but refreshing and indulgent.
Ice Kachang
An ice mountain that was soaked in colorful syrups, beans, corn, and jellies. It is silly, dirty and strangely enthralling.
Beverages That Need to Be at the Table
Miss not the drink stalls. Fresh-squeezed sugarcane juice, kopi (local coffee), strong and sweet, and teh tarik tea that is pulled between the mugs until it is frothy. Just to look at the pouring out is fun. The beverages counteract the fat, dense food and keep you powered up to take another round.
Hints to Eating the Best Food
To avoid the longest lines, go early.
Carry cash. A lot of stalls opt for it.
Share dishes. A quarter of the fun is to sample several plates.
Sharing of tables is not a taboo. It is in the culture.
Ask the people on the spot what they would suggest. There will be many times that you will find the stalls that were not explored by the tourists.
