Having travelled quite a lot throughout South East Asia, I’d never been particularly bothered about visiting Singapore, expecting it to be rich and westernised and lacking the exoticness of countries I’ve been to like Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos. I had however, heard that the food was amazing so thought it’d be worth a short visit to see what all the fuss is about. 

Some old Singaporean architecture - it's not all the modern gleaming skyscrapers that I expected

Luckily my reservations were completely wrong! I was staying a little bit out of the city in an area called Geylang (which also happened to be the red light district!) and it was full of the hustle, bustle and smells that I love about South East Asian cities. And it’s true – the food is AMAZING! It also happens to be very reasonable – you could easily eat out every mealtime for a little over £5 per day which is funny for a country that has a higher gdp than England.

Singapore doesn't really have its own cuisine (unless you count Malaysian cuisine of which it used to be part of) since the majority of the population are born of immigrants that settled there in the early 19^th century from China, India, and Malaysia. So, the majority of the food is Chinese, Malaysian, Indian and sometimes a fusion of these things. It’s a bit more complicated than that though. ‘Chinese’ food is not just ‘Chinese’ food. When Chinese people emigrated from different regions of China they brought with them their distinctive cuisines so the dishes found can be Hokkien, Sichuan, Hainanese or Cantonese to name a few types.

A typical hawker centre stall (this one selling Indian food). The longer the queue the better the food!

To add a little extra to the mix is Peranakan cooking. Peranakans are the descendants of the first interracial marriages between local women from the straights of Malaysia and traders from China and India as early as the 15th century but it is specifically a cultural term rather than a racial.

One of the things for which Singapore is renowned are hawker centres. These centres were forcibly introduced by the government in the 50s and 60s to solve the problem of unlicensed street food vendors and poor hygiene practices. Hawker centres are massive covered areas with seating and at least 50 individual stalls selling a huge range of different foods.

On the lower level of the centre there’s often a ‘wet’ market selling meat, fish, vegetables, dried spices, dried fish and all manner of interesting looking ingredients.

 
Not for cooking despite being relatives of ginger and turmeric, these roots are said to have medicinal properties to cure all manner or ailments ranging from the common cold to cancer and infertility

I’d been given a list about as long as my arm of ‘must eats’ in Singapore so diligently tried to eat 4 meals a day in order to sample the best stuff. Very kindly showing me round was a Singaporean (and also Peranakan) lady called Sandra Ang who happily explained all about the different foods I tried and gave me lots of fantastic advice about Peranakan cooking.

 
Sandra and Fiona, my Singaporean food mentors! ; Sandra's herb garden including pandan leaves, fresh kaffir lime, and laksa herbs

There are lots of the above mentioned hawker centres dotted around Singapore. Many of them house a mixture of all types of cuisine but depending on the area can have a more Malaysian, Chinese or Indian influence. My favourite was Geylang Serai which had a high concentration of Malaysian muslim food stalls.

Like Thai food Malaysian food is a delicate balance of salty, sweet, sour and savoury. It also relies heavily on fragrant herbs such as laksa, pandan leaves lemongrass and kaffir limes leaves (hence Sandra having her own herb garden). Fresh spices are used more than dried and common spices ones include galangal, tamarind, garlic, ginger, lots of chilli, turmeric, and a special type of lime called a calimansi (which tastes a bit like a cross between a lime and a clementine). Belechan (dried shrimp paste) along with fish sauce and various size dried shrimps and fishes provides the savoury, unami element to Malaysian dishes. Peranakan cuisine has many dishes in common with Malaysian cuisine

 
A Malay/Indonesian dish of Assam Fish (fish cooked with okra in a sour tamarind sauce) ;
Nasi Lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk served with an array of sides - including the black stuff at the bottom of the plate which is deep fried lung!)

Possible side dishes to go with your rice (all freshly made in the morning). The top shelf is fried goodies - fish, lung, potato cakes. Next row various vegetable dishes including tempahin chilli sauce. Bottom row is different curried dishes and sambals

 
Singapore Laksa from the shop that beat Gorden Ramsay in a Hawker challenge ; Rojak - pineapple, cucumber, fried tofu topped with tamarind sauce and peanuts

And so onto the Chinese food! Chinese food uses much less spice than Malaysian but there's still plenty of delicious treats to choose from. Plus the Chinese food from Singapore tends to have been tweaked a little to appeal to the locals tastebuds - nearly every dish comes with a side of chilli sambal!

  
The chef who cooked the duck rice and wouldn't tell me his secret sauce recipe (the ducks are immersed and cooked in a sauce made from soy soy, sugar and various fragrant herbs and spices. The same sauce has been on the go for 30 years and keeps improving every day!)

 
One of the most famous hawker foods - Hainanese Chicken Rice Set (poached chicken served with rice cooked in chicken stock, the chicken broth, steamed greens, ginger sauce and chilli sauce). Look out for this one as a spring world kitchen kit next year! ; Hokkien Mee - a mixture of rice vermicelli and egg hoodles (traditionally fried in pork fat) served with kalimantan and chilli sambal

Miscellaneous food! Misc food no. 1 -  Kaya - this is a 'jam' made from coconut, eggs and sugar that's flavoured with fresh pandan leaves and served for breakfast spread over thickly buttered white toast. Sandra showed how to make it, it's kind of like making a thick sugary custard. Misc food no. 2 - Durian - I've heard many good and bad things about this infamous South East Asian fruit which you can now buy in the UK. It's a large spiky fruit sold on street side stalls with a soft inside that's eaten in various stages of ripeness, it smells pretty bad (it's banned from being carried on public transport in Singapore). I wasn't brave enough to go for the full on fruit experience so went for durian ice cream (tasty) and a durian puff instead (not so tasty). I think the puff was more in line with the actual taste of the fruit - somewhere in between an over-ripe mango and raw onion with a hint of cigarette ash is how I'd describe it. Each to their own!