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| Hainanese Chicken Rice |
Found myself in Singapore again this year, this time for the Singapore Grand Prix. It is a wonderful experience, and a proper bucket list item, I believe. The event is so well-managed, the venue definitely scenic, and the entertainment lineup is megawatt-powerhouse awesome: Pharrell, Spandau Ballet, Maroon 5, and Bon Jovi. It is an F1 race and a music festival all rolled into one. That is why, despite my squeamishness about air travel, I am so glad I agreed to go. Also, I am quite smitten by the Singapore food scene.
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| Food stalls at the Marina Bay Circuit |
The food choices in Singapore are so diverse. But I am always always drawn to the hole in the wall restaurants and hawker stalls. I never remember the names of the places we go to, but that does not mean that the food is not memorable.
We get to eat a lot of duck in Singapore. Duck dishes are a lot more common and cheaper in Singapore compared to Manila, and even the hawker places offer them. In fact, the best ones, I am told, are sold by hawkers.
Come to think of it, it's primarily the reason why I wasn't able to try Hainanese Chicken Rice in Singapore on my first trip there. We were so mesmerized by the multitude of duck-based dishes that we absent-mindedly ordered duck meal after meal. This time though, I made sure I had at least one chicken rice meal. I ordered it from a street-side eatery which we noticed, on the way to Marina Bay Circuit, to be quite popular. But I still did get my fair share of duck noodle and country-specific McDonald's menu like the Ebi Burger and full-on Western food fare at Morganfield's.
Singapore is a "walking city," and this recent trip I think we walked even more than the last time. I never took the train this time and we hardly took a cab. Honestly, I was pretty wasted every end of race day. The good part about it though is that we got to see a lot more food places and this made our meals so much more interesting- like a food treasure hunt, it was.
There was this dimsum place we always pass by on the way to the circuit that was always packed, a line of people waiting to be seated way into the wee hours of night. So we decided to go there at 2AM. No more line, but still a considerable amount of clientele, at 2 in the morning imagine. But, yeah, truly amazing dimsum right there. Mara liked to order Milo Dinosaur in an Indian cuisine eatery just around the corner from our hotel. The mound of Milo they put in that thing you will not believe.
What helped me wake up every morning though was the coffee that little sister gets for me from the food court just beside our hotel. It came in an unassuming styro cup made easy to carry by a plastic sling. It was cheap but is so rich, almost like hot chocolate, that it perked me well enough to face another day at the races.
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