Food Central

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If you can imagine a food, it will be available.

On Friday, instead of going to Bukit Timah Nature reserve like wanted, my uncle Gab, who is incredibly unpredictable despite being a Lieutenant-General or maybe because of it, he said that we could either go to Bukit Timah OR Johor to eat. The only reason why Singaporeans go to Johore, it seems, would be to eat. OR fill up on petrol. Yes, because everything is several times cheaper than Singapore. Everything is divided by 3, which makes everything very affordable indeed. However, in order to get TO Johore, there is the small matter of the Causeway. This is a bridge, around 1 km across and it is hell on Earth. At anyone time thousands of people are crossing it. And in order to discourage people from doing things which they absolutely have to do and therefore make life unnecessarily difficult of them, the Causeway is utterly chaotic and inefficient. It is BY DESIGN inefficient. I kid you not.

However, once you have passed it, you are then home free to wherever it is you want to go to. We were heading for an Indian Muslim breakfast.... and that was less than a five minute drive from the checkpoint when we were cleared of it.


Riata- a bit of milk and salt, with veg. Fermenting at its simplest.
OK, I might as well have a rent about fermenting now.

It has irritated me TO NO END that people in the West have only somehow managed to discover fermentation when it has been going on for millennia. And while I think that cultural appropriation is a load of hogwash - walk down any street in Singapore and be dazzled by the 'cultural appropriation' that is taking place several million times a second - I do find it intensely annoying when Westerners go on and on about things which they have only just encountered and then go to town with it, as if no one had ever thought about it before, especially people from other cultures have done this quietly and gotten on with it, because it was just part of their culture and there was no need to tinsel the whole fucking thing up.

The list includes: foodies, fermentation, yoga, meditation, Bhuddism, tofu, tempeh.... you get the idea.

Take a good idea, use it, there is no need to go to fucking town with it.

There, I've said it.

The boys and Unca Gab - teh peng

Ma and Pa

Ladies fingers - fried with dried chillis
This was really yummy. Everything which was cooked was found in Malaysia. It was, in fact, locally sourced, super local in fact, but you won't hear Malaysians going on and on about that,


Paper thosai
Around the early 2000s, there was a suddenly flowering of various types of thosai, prata and naan. But thosai and prata experienced the most variations in flavours. Previously you could only have plain thosai, masal thosai which was stuffed with potatoes and rava thosai, that had onions. However, you can now get paper thosai and rocket thosai. These are mini spectacle events when the food arrives. Plus they taste amazing!!!!

This giant poori is a bratha

Later that evening i got my chaat and....Rasgulla fix


The next morning, we had roast port for breakfast

With roast duck and duck and cabbage soup

Ghin is a real Singaporean as far as he's concerned

Rocking the chopsticks

Here's the stall

The back of flats - there is something poignant about the laundry hanging out on the
galas, flapping in the wind

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