Food. Glorious food.

I woke up feeling refreshed, energized and most importantly happy. For once I actually want to just sit down and write – an urge I have not felt for a very very long time.

Anyway I was hungry and waiting for some food to arrive (read: Robby was out buying food. haha..) and as always it took me a while to decide what I want to eat. It’s funny how I always feel so strongly about my food. I must must enjoy every meal I have. It’s always been that way since as long as I can remember. I must savor each bite, enjoy the aromas, the textures, the flavors, the combination of different ingredients and dishes I have on my plate. These things I find really interesting and I love getting something different with each bite. For that reason too I hardly ever order things like fried noodles or fried rice or even a big slab of steak because I then feel each mouthful is the same / there’s hardly any variation.

Thinking about this makes me feel like writing what I generally look for / enjoy in my meals and beverages:

Unmasked Flavors / Textures. I love tasting food at its natural state or as close to it as possible. Yes I definitely enjoy raw salads and even meats – all kinds of sashimi (fish, seashells, red meat). But I’m not such a carnivore that I eat bloody raw red meat all the time lah. Hahaha.. It’s more like I prefer cooked dishes that do not add unnecessary coatings like batter, or too much cream, or crust. So I’m not into anything deep fried in batter (katsu and the likes with the exception of fried chicken and very light batter that enhances the natural flavors of the food like a good tempura). Even when I do enjoy good fried chicken like Popeye’s chicken, I don’t feel like having it too often – once every few weeks or a month or two is enough. I like cream of spinach but much prefer fresh spinach in salads or lightly stir-fried or in soups. I can enjoy a curry puff once in a while but much prefer having the curry without the “hindrance” of the puff pastry. You get the drift…

Light & Refreshing. I’m not one for oily and very creamy food. Instead of cream soups I prefer soups with clear, clean broth. None of those specks of fats and stuff floating around with large oil globules on the soup surface. I appreciate it when cooks take the time to skim off the oily and murky layers at the top while cooking, then put it in the fridge and skim off the solidified layer of fats before finally using the broth to cook dishes. The resulting clear soup is so lovely to look at and tastes flavorful on my tongue, with not much “distractions” from all those fatty and “dirty” particles. I can enjoy good cream soups too but… it’s just different… like I can’t keep drinking cream soup the way I do clear soups.

Spicy & Well Balanced Flavors. I can appreciate strong flavors, in fact I love spicy dishes. BUT all the spices used must work well together to create a good dish. If the spices don’t marry well with each other it’ll taste unbalanced and not very palatable. For that reason I do not like one-dimensional flavor that goes overboard like: very salty things like some potato chips, very sweet desserts, very sour lemon / lime juice without added sugar and very spicy things like chili oil that numb my tongue to other flavors of the food. So for example, strongly spiced things I love include good Indian curries, Vietnamese dip for their rice paper rolls, authentic Thai Tom Yum soup (both the red and clear tom yum), a well-made Mee Siam and of course loads of Indonesian dishes.

Unique Textures. This means I enjoy things like cartilage, tendons, ears, tongues, brains, eyes, skin, intestines, stomach, kidney, liver, heart… you name it I probably like it. And that’s also why even though I love meat I don’t go for a slab of steak. Instead I’d rather go for the more interesting oxtail, beef tendons or mixed beef soup, mutton soup, bone-in chicken pieces. And yes I do love the variety of textures that vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains offer too.

Absence of Sharp, Pungent Smells. This includes Chinese parsley / cilantro, raw onions, raw garlic, raw spring & green onions, garlic shoots. I have a rather sensitive nose and can detect even the most minuscule speck of cilantro in my food. Haha. And while the following smells are not pungent, I also dislike the smell of hot milk and herbal medicines. So Taiwanese herbal soups are definite no-go for me. And while I grew up enjoying lots of durians, I now sadly simply can’t stand the smell anymore.

Fresh Food. I honestly do not enjoy fast food very much. I can enjoy burgers when it’s from places like The Burger Bar from Fat Boy’s or even Carl’s Junior’s burgers are pretty good too. Subway is another place I don’t mind visiting more “frequently” (read: once every few months rather than almost never. Haha..) But for the most part I hardly touch any fast food place. So I’m glad I can easily get freshly-cooked food in hawker centers and foodcourts in Singapore, though even then there are only certain stalls I go to repeatedly because the others may not satisfy my previous requirements. That is why I’m so happy when I find stalls near home or the office that fulfill all my requirements.

This is not meant to be a food review / recommendation post but I just want to give some examples of the kind of dishes I enjoy from around my home and office locations and who I think make them quite well.

From the hawker center at Marine Parade Central: I love the Popiah stall, Fish soup stall (the one quite near the popiah stall), the Neptune Dim Sum (authentic Hong Kong dimsum at very reasonable prices), Seremban Beef Noodle stall, and for Chinese economic rice there’s Xin Long even though there are days when I find their dishes get oilier than usual, fruit & juice stall.

From Food Republic at Parkway Parade: duck rice & noodle, beef soup stall. From Food Republic at I12 Katong: Yong Tau Foo, Fish Ball soup.

Far East Plaza (because I go there daily for my lunch due to my office location): Susan Chan (zhi char), Malay food at 4th floor, Hainanese boneless chicken rice at 5th floor. Fruit & juice stall at 4th floor, Singapore rojak at 5th floor. Food Opera at Ion: Fish Ball soup, Vietnamese rice paper rolls, Qiu Lian ban mian, Beef soup stall.

I mentioned fruit & juice stalls at Marine Parade Central and Far East Plaza but have yet to write about beverages! Ok so here it is: I dislike sugary, carbonated, thick drinks. So typically I’ll go for…. water. Yes that’s what I drink most of the time. Room temperature (or warm because my office is always too cold). I also enjoy unsweetened teas of various flavors and aromas. Next I love fruit juices, but not the overly sweet ones. So I regularly enjoy fresh watermelon, starfruit, carrot, orange juices. (On a side note: I have tried all kinds of fruit juices from the supermarket and find most of them too sweet to my liking. In fact the only juice carton I’ll buy is the Florida orange juice – most pulp one. Love that.)

For some reason I seldom eat fruits. Not that I dislike them but I don’t find them very interesting. Hahaha. When I do eat fruits, I enjoy watermelon, starfruit, pineapple, mango (especially harum manis), rambutan, cherries, blueberries. I love champagne grapes and rock melon when combined with cheeses, otherwise I find them too sweet.

And desserts? I’ll pass. I’m born without a sweet tooth and never craved for any desserts. Hahaha. I do enjoy semi-sweet dark chocolates and coffee/tea-infused dessert items simply because I enjoy the aromas of good chocolates, coffees and teas. But if I find them too sweet, then I still won’t enjoy them. And when I do get a bar of dark-chocolate for example, it may literally take me a month to finish it!

Same goes for savory snack items like chips. In fact I bought a bag of doritos chips last week and I’ve been eating and eating and eating it 5-6x and I still have some left! Gaahhhh…. I’m getting really really bored of it already. Like I said at the beginning I love variety in between bites. So even though I may get the urge to buy a bag of chips once every few months, eating chip after chip after chip is for the most part very boring to me. Hahaha.

Ok what else… I think that’s it.

Basically I love variety, well-balanced, interesting meals because I fully enjoy the experience of eating (and drinking). And I’m always in the lookout to try new things, dishes from new places, things I’ve never tried before. So if you live in Singapore and need a makan buddy, feel free to reach out to me! Haha..