Kopi Si Ngapore

It’s been a couple of weeks in Singapore and the more I think about the food I have eaten here, the less I am drawn to it. Don’t get me wrong, Singapore is by far the largest congregation of Asian woks, vapours and flavours this side of the universe and it has been a pleasure walking from stall to stall at the many hawker centres, food courts and random institutions searching for an appropriate meal while realising that what you really wanted was at a food court a few MRT stops away. While I haven’t really sampled the Chilli / Pepper Crab yet, I’ve been hooked to the Hainanese Chicken Rice at the Wisma Atria Food Court, the Bak Kut Teh at Hong Lim Square Hawker Center, the Indonesian Padang at Bugis and that Beijing Dan Mian at Lavender Food Court. While fellow Bangaloporeans Dibs, Maya and Bawla have tried hard and long to push me in the direction of a little more intense gastronomic exploration, it hasn’t been easy being on a low-carb diet while the chicken rice lady is dousing the rice you didn’t ask for with a whole lot of thick oyster sauce. While my diet-discipline has been rather commendable, I’m convinced that I really haven’t done justice to the majority of the epicurean joo here and Singapore deserves another looksie.

There is something here, however, besides all the other stuff already mentioned, that deserves more than a mouthful.

The local coffee. Now, I can’t claim to be a coffee connoisseur in the same vein as the distinguished gentlemen named Amya and Chungates, who select each bean on the basis of precise dimensions, colour, roasting temperature and weather patterns near Chikmaglur before grinding each bean individually in an ivory-toothed mill and brewing the mix in a gold plated Bialetti Mocha Pot that’s got oil residue from at least a 1000 previous brews and then sipping on the resultant caffienejaculate by a window with a view of a Victorian garden. But I do like my coffee and I wouldn’t be caught dead with any of that instant coffee nonsense, even that Davidoff stuff that folks spend a bomb on at airports. I too have specifications, mainly around viscosity and strength and like it a little thinner, aromatic and not as loud as the non-chicory South Indian version. I’m still curing my Bialetti after Chungates melted the first two, but I’m getting there and my brews are getting some serious mojo.

In Singapore, as is the case in most of the coffee drinking world, coffee is of utmost importance. You don’t just walk in to Ya Kun Kaya Toast and ask for a “Coffee”, you need to be more specific. Break it down by the exact combination of different volumes of coffee, sugar, water and evaporated or condensed milk summarized in an easy to remember name, then and only then do you have the barista’s permission to order. The first few times I went, I got some dirty stares and was forced to drink a cup of Kopi Gau until I finally settled onto my very own favourite, Kopi Si Kosong. Brewed in a large muslin sock that I’m sure is far from being the best way to brew coffee, it provided me that little joy in life that Starbuck’s tried to shower with a twelve dollar caramel macchiato. That cup and a couple of slices of Kaya Butter Toast (kaya being a coconut and egg jam type thing) had in the early evening happened to be one of the many indulgences I looked forward to all day. 

There was this other thing I did eat, or was made to eat at the Old Airport Road Hawker Centre, specifically Blanco Food Court’s World Famous Pig Part Soup. Unfortunately, they were out of trotters so I had the broth with a mix of pig parts. Intestines, heart, kidney, face, ear and something that kind of looked like a starfish.

The joke going around is that there aren’t too many parts of a pig that look like a starfish.

 I ate it all anyways.