Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A tale of Singapore food

We listened to the sweet young thing tell us of her business trips to various cities in China. What she loved about the place, what she hated, what she missed.

Food, she declared. I miss Singapore food! Everything in China came in huge portions and were too oily and too salty.

Yes, we thought! She's one of us! She loves her food. She knows her food!

So, we asked, you headed straight for food the minute you touched down?

Yes! came her gleeful reply, I headed straight to Newton Circus for macaroni!

Newton Circus? Macaroni?

She's supposed to say mee pok dry, char kway tiao, Hainanese chicken rice, something like that. And at any of the many old name hawker centres!

Not macaroni at Newton Circus!

She may love her food, but there is definitely a huge gulf between her idea of real and worthy Singapore food and ours.

ps I never clarified what she meant by macaroni, because what came to mind immediately was macaroni and cheese a la Kraft. It was later that I thought she must mean bak chor macaroni soup. So maybe she is half way to qualifying as a foodie of Singapore food.

9 comments:

wildgoose said...

I always think of macaroni soup as children's food. hardly something to rave about. Definitely not in the same league as hae mi!

Aelgtoer said...

ha ha I usually don't think of Macaroni as in the Mac & cheese version. But still always had rather insipid memories of bland macaroni soup.

Nothing like the sinful but glorious hokkien mee or hae mee hehe.

LuLu said...

Definitely a generational gap here haha

sinlady said...

wildgoose + aelgtoer - yes! hokkien hae mee definitely qualifies!

lulu - and a cultural gap too :(

dancingbunny said...

I head straight to alexandra village for BBQ stingray and duno where for the chay kway tiao after i came back from states....ok, there is a generation gap!
my husband thought macaroni is for sick pple

sinlady said...

bunny - good choice :)

looks like nobody thinks macaroni is worthy of mention...

Anonymous said...

please ... no macaroni for me unless I am down with something. I had heaps of that during my growing up years. Coming back from Oz, I immediately loaded up on bak chor mee kia (with extra chor), chicken rice, fried kuay teow, hae bee hoon ... the list was very long and I also gained weight in the process. Macaroni was far from my mind. SYT could have had macaroni at home anytime - so easy to cook!

Anonymous said...

haha. different tastes different palates!

sinlady said...

anonymous - so agree with you :)

edpj - yup