Singapore, Day 1

So I woke up on Thursday morning and went in search of some food.

I decided on eating at this place more or less arbitrarily.

And I ordered a shrimp noodle soup and a cup of coffee. The broth was quite tasty, and the noodles were ok (not bad, nothing super special). The coffee (not shown) was served with sweetened condensed milk rather than sugar and cream. After that, it was off to the hockey rink for our first game of the day.

After the hockey game, I got a bowl of beef noodle soup (nio/ nan/ mian\), but I forgot to take a picture of that. Then I wandered around the shopping mall there. This was a stand that had all sorts of dried fruits (as well as some gummy bears and similar candies). This picture shows the fruit section which was mostly Chinese-styled dried fruits (e.g., salty dried sour plums).

There was a soya milk stand, so I got myself an almond soya milk, and a "crispy pancake." The crispy pancake was more like a crepe (but firmer, hence the "crispy" part of its name), and the inside was smeared with red bean paste. The crispy pancake was only so-so, but I liked the soya milk.

In the shopping area adjacent to the mall with the ice rink, there were a whole bunch of these food stalls. It's sort of like a food court that you'd see in a mall, but you just order at the stand, tell them your table number and sit down. When it's ready, they'll bring the food to you and then you pay them. I didn't discover this until after I had lunch already, so we'll get back to this tomorrow.

This is just one view of a couple of the stalls. There were a ***lot*** of stalls. Most of them served some form of Chinese food, but there were others including Muslim Chinese food, Thai, Indian and Malaysian food.

Another fun choice was the fruit stall. Lots of fresh fruit (I think the picture has watermelon (top), papaya, watermelon again, pineapple, and then lower quantities of other assorted fruits like apples, kiwi, dragonfruit, mango, etc.). I got a chunk of pineapple and one of papaya, both very good.

A dessert stall selling various Asian desserts with sago, grass jelly, corn (mmm, everyone likes corn for desert!), etc. I didn't get anything here either; I probably should have. For dinner that evening, we went back to Clarke Quay where our hotel is, and ended up at some restaurant where I got a steak (so not too interesting for photo-documenting). But before that, we stopped at a bar where I ordered something at random from the menu whose name I probably couldn't pronounce, and now I certainly don't remember.

It was basically a bunch of small anchovies (or other small dried fish) fried up with some soy and chili sauces. It actually tasted decent, but it's a little too much to eat in one sitting.

Singapore, Day 0

[The non-food posts can be found on my old blog.]

After checking into the hotel, we wandered around a couple of blocks, but didn't find anything to eat. So I just asked some cops, and they pointed me to a 7-11. Across from the 7-11 however, was a little shop that seemed to be in full swing with hungry post-partying partiers (this was at about 3am or so).

I ended up getting some sort of noodles. It had some fish balls (dish cake in little spheres instead of slices), mushrooms, and maybe a piece of fried bean curd.

I asked for only a "little bit" of spiciness. Maybe it was just the heat and humidity down there, but boy was that making me sweat. Good thing I picked up a can of Pocari Sweat at the 7-11 as well.

It's a Dog-eat-dog World

If you are squeamish about eating anything that is not a vegetable, cow, pig, chicken or fish, you might want to skip this post. Given that warning and the subject, you can probably guess where this is going...

So, despite Koreans being (in)famous for eating dog meat (gehgogi/게고기), this is actually a fairly uncommon thing for most Koreans to eat. I'm under the impression that most Koreans, if they've ever even had gehgogi, have only had it a small handful of times. I think this might be due to a combination of it being relatively expensive these days, easy access to other meats (esp. pork and chicken), concerns about Korea's international culinary reputation, and pressure from animal rights groups.

In any case, gehgogi is part of Korea's culinary heritage, and so I still felt I should try it out to better experience what this country has to offer. That being said, here's the restaurant we went to last Tuesday night:

Funny note: the restaurant next door with the blue sign is for "Fugu" or blowfish which is a very (in)famous Japanese food (which can be lethal if not properly prepared). Another interesting thing was that the menus we got made absolutely no mention to dog anywhere. It actually said "beef" in several places, or sometimes just the generic "meat." This is to just avoid trouble with squeamish foreigners who are not accepting of eating dog meat. At first, I thought this was kind of funny, but thinking about it more, it actually makes me kind of sad. It's really a result of the traditional Korean culture being attacked by western customs and practices. Every culture has foods that other cultures find to be weird/gross/bizarre/unfathomable, but it's all just a matter of what we're used to. We don't eat dogs in the West, Indians are known for not eating beef (although there are plenty that do), and kids don't like vegetables. I don't think that really makes any of those food items any more or less acceptable. Ok, enough of the soapbox and let's get on with the doggies.

Before we get to the main dishes, we got this cool sauce that I hadn't seen before. Best that I could figure out, there was sesame oil, yellow mustard, chili paste, and a whole bunch of brown mustard seeds. After mixing it together, it made for a pretty tasty paste/condiment.

Here's the pot heating up for the first dish.

This is a side dish/soup, which is basically either a thin stew or a thick soup made from dog meat. There wasn't any obvious meat in here, so I guess the stock is probably made from bones and what not. It had a very rich flavor, somewhat salty, but quite pleasant over all.

Dog meat and veggies. I'm not sure how to describe this, as it was mostly just the dog meat boiled in some light stock (maybe even just water?), which was probably a good way to appreciate the flavor of the dog without all sorts of other distracting ingredients. Overall, it tasted pretty good. Somewhere between beef and pork in texture (I think the meat was more like beef in feel/texture, but it was fattier like pork), and it had a slightly gamier or other stronger flavor.

Dog dish number three. More dog meat with veggies, but this time it was stewed in a red chili soup base. So a little spicier due to the base, but the meat tasted similar. Overall, I thought dog meat tasted pretty good. If you're not squeamish about it and you're looking for some new culinary experiences, I'd say go for it.

BBQ and Ray Ferraro

After bowling, we went to a restaurant called "Mapo Kalbi" (마포갈비) in a part of town called GangNam. It was packed, and we had to squeeze to get a whole hockey team's worth of people crammed together. The kalbi was very tasty, despite the fact that I had just had Korean BBQ the night before.

The next dish was pretty cool. It's just a "salad," which is really more like a slaw (mostly shredded cabbage), but the kicker was that it was laced full of wasabi or some sort of horseradish. Eating more than a small mouthful at a time got you a good kick in the nose. It was tasty, but take your time with it.

After dinner, we all went over to a nearby bar. We got some bar food... I ordered chicken tenders (or actually 치켄텐다/Chi-Ken Ten-Da) figuring that it would be good for sharing, but what I actually got more closely resembled chicken parmesan!

I'm not sure whether I just totally messed up the ordering process, or if something went horribly awry when the concept of "chicken tenders" was explained to the chef. It wasn't exactly like regular chicken parm either though (for one, it wasn't breaded). In any case, not what I had in mind, and not really good for sharing in a bar. It's a good thing my stomach has high capacity.

Tater tots! I have always liked tater tots, and nowadays they also remind me of the Vortex back home. Man, I'd like rare Vortex cheeseburger right now.

How Corny!

What is this, you ask? I found it in the ice-cream bin at the market. And, despite the obvious corn picture on the wrapper, it is indeed ice cream! Unwrapping it reveals:

So this is really more like a corn-shaped cone. The outer material had a consistency similar to the "cake" style "eat-it-all" ice cream cones (as opposed to sugar cones). Inside this outer corn-shaped shell was the ice cream. At first I didn't really notice it, but as I ate more, yes, I did start tasting corn as well... so it really is corn ice cream. The flavor was reminiscent of creamed corn. Eventually I even found a few kernels of corn in there as well as some bits of endosperm (the harder bit at the bottom of a corn kernel - I learned of that term from Alton Brown). Overall, it wasn't really gross, but when I want ice cream, I'm usually not in the mood for corn.

Nothing says "Pizza" like...

When you're craving pizza, nothing hits the spot like a good ol' fashioned pie... covered in sweet potato skins! (Or "skjins" in this case.) And this is at a Pizzeria Uno's! I don't know if this is simply a difference in tastes between East and West, or if there's been some horrible misunderstanding about what westerners like to put on their pizzas.

One was too hot, one was too cold, ...

One day for lunch, Sue and I tried this place that had "traditional korean healthy porridges" or something to that effect. It was actually quite tasty, although I was hungry again pretty soon afterwards (well, sooner than normal).


I got this sweet-potato porridge. It was actually very tasty. It also had some funny light dough balls floating in it (the light-colored spot in the middle of the bowl is one of them), along with a few red beans (and by few, I literally mean like maybe six of 'em).


Sue ended up getting something a bit more substantial. This is a rice porridge (like Chinese 粥/Congee) with mushrooms and oysters. This was pretty tasty as well if you like oysters (which I do). Anyhow, I liked this meal not only due to its taste, but also because it was pretty different in style than anything else I'd had so far in Korea.