Sin Swee Kee in Singapore -- Once More, with Feeling

When I started this blog in 2010 (gee, time flies), one of my early posts was about Hainanese chicken rice in Singapore.  

Sin Swee Kee in Seah Street was where I had my first encounter with chicken rice and where you could say I fell in love with the dish.  

I haven't had chicken rice in years because shortly after that time, I turned vegetarian.  

Recently though,  I have gone back to incorporating some meat in my diet -- but only when I am traveling and only if the experience is so iconic to the place.

On this last trip to Singapore a week ago, I decided it was time to go back to Sin Swee Kee and see how it had fared these past years.   I don't see it mentioned as a top chicken rice place, but this was where I had my first taste so I knew I had to try it again.
I wondered if it would be as good as I remembered it to be.

The place seemed to have been spruced up and an open kitchen is now on the premises.  There's a fresh coat of paint on the walls and even the logo has been modernised.

From where I sat,  I  looked out on Seah Street and people watched.  

There wasn't  much of a crowd on this weekday night --  it was almost 9 p.m. and Sin Swee Kee was just  about ready to close.

Naturally, I ordered the Hainanese chicken rice with a side order of my favourite prawn fritters.  Renovations and upgrades notwithstanding, the food looked, smelled and most importantly -- tasted pretty much the way it did four years ago -- when I declared it to be the best ever chicken rice in Singapore.  

Sin Swee Kee's unique crushed ginger sauce was as bright green and fresh as it used to be and I asked for an extra portion.

 Nothing can go better with Hainanese chicken rice than freshly made chili sauce -- mixed with a hint of lime,  some piquant grated ginger plus a finishing drop of salty-sweet thick soy sauce.
Once more with feeling ... Sin Swee Kee is still  SHIOK, lah!

11 Reasons why I agree that Changi Airport is the Number One Airport in the World

Although it's not my favourite airport (that would be Schiphol),  Changi Aiport in Singapore is ranked number one in the world.  Here are the reasons why I agree with that ranking:

1. There are live flowers and plants all over the place!  What can be more soothing to a tired traveler than a gorgeous garden,  growing right in the middle of an airport?

2. The decor are just impressive and amazing.  Each season, Changi takes the time, effort and yes, the expense -- to put up massive themed installations like this gigantic horse set up in time for the Chinese New Year.  

3. Every effort is done to provide travellers with a relaxing and soothing ambiance.  This mini oasis right in the middle Terminal 1 has potted trees, sofas and comfortable chairs on a gleaming hardwood floor.  Curl up and relax while you wait for your flight.

4.  Airport food is almost always dreadful but Changi has a 24 hour food court with kiosks from popular  hawker centres.  So, the nasi lemak, the wonton soup, fish ball noodles, Hainanese chicken rice, bah kut teh, prawn mee  are all authentic -- and yes, all are very good.

5. The food court has a branch of my favourite kopi house -- Killiney Kopi Tiam!  And here's the plus, it's manned by two friendly and efficient Filipinos.  

6. The nasi lemak from the food court is just perfect.  Kopi C and otah  care of Killiney Kopi Tiam!

7. The few times I catch an afternoon flight, I can sit and have a beer at the bar.

8. Aside from the 24 hour food court, there are many choices -- would you like a Burger King or how about some Peranakan cuisine?  You can even take those local delicacies to go.

9. Bee Cheng Hiang's gourmet bakwa and pork sheets are great for last minute pasalubong.

10.  Shopping is just so easy --  even during peak hours, you won't feel crowded or claustrophobic.

11. And finally, Changi has my favourite brands which makes it doubly hard not to shop every time I fly out.

Nyonya & Baba -- Peranakan cuisine at Vivo City, Singapore

A quick trip to Singapore a week ago was all work with no time for sneaking out except for a visit to Vivo City on the evening I arrived.  Singapore malls are not the best places for finding good food but I had no choice.  It was dinnertime and I was hungry.

I wasn't about to eat at any chain restaurant and the huge food court was full and noisy.  What luck that this restaurant had empty tables!

Nyonya & Baba is a peranakan restaurant that serves old time cuisine of the Nonyas.  Peranakan food is a blend of Chinese, Malay and Indonesian influences and is very popular in Singapore.

 The meal started out with a complimentary basket of kropek and a dish of assorted spicy hot, tart pickles. The pickles were very flavourful.   The chili sauce came with half of a calamansi to add more zip and zest to the meal.

These spicy sweet sambal prawns were quite hot -- and needed more rice than usual.

I would have preferred what they serve at Banana Leaf Curry along Little India but this Assam Fish Head Curry was a more than passable substitute.  The hot curry had a hint of tangy tamarind which made for a nuanced spicy taste.

My Brush with a Celebrity (Buffet) ... 1 Market by Chef Wan in Plaza Singapura, Singapore

Late November last year,  I found myself back in Singapore for the year end budget meeting.  These  annual events are bouts with high levels of stress and anxiety and the only antidote is a good meal right after.

A colleague from Singapore suggested that we recuperate from the rigours of budgeting with a buffet meal at 1 Market at Plaza Singapura. This is  the latest venture by TV personality and celebrity chef Redzuawan Ismail, more popularly known as Chef Wan.
I enjoy Chef Wan's shows on the Asian Food Channel so this was a good chance to try out his cooking (although I knew that as a celebrity chef, he was certainly not going to be in the kitchen, slaving over the hot stoves).

1 Market labels itself as the BIG Buffet but once inside, I realised it is definitely smaller vis a vis our local buffet standards.

This cut out of Chef Wan would be the closest I would get to him today!  

Prices are slightly higher for dinner and on week-ends.  These are not hawker centre prices but still seemed quite affordable, since it is a buffet after all.

The ambiance is very casual and despite the fact that it's a week night, the rather large restaurant is quite full.  Servers are a bit harried and not always up to speed in keeping up with diners' demands.
I see tables left uncleaned and  used dishes stacked up on top of each other.

Lest you forget that this is his restaurant, Chef Wan has his cookbooks, copies of newspaper reviews and photos spread out on the counters and shelves.  Talk about merchandising!

There are various stations for different kinds of dishes -- but mostly they seem to be heritage favourites from the main cuisines of Malaysia ...  Chinese, Indian and Malay. There is also a small station for a limited number of Japanese dishes but these are mostly shrimp and vegetable tempura.

I make a beeline for the appetiser section that has a lot of savouries like samosas, spring rolls, tofu, dumplings and fish balls.  How can you go wrong with anything that's deep fried?

The Indian station featured my favourite lentils and boneless chicken tandoori.  Sadly, the lentils had  been sitting out for too long and had turned cold and lumpy.

I glanced over at the hot dishes section where I saw rendang, satay and other meat dishes.  1 Market is a halal establishment so they do not serve nor do they cook with pork or pork by-products; there is just beef, lamb, chicken and seafood.

There are prawns, blue crabs (alimasag), clams and mussels on ice -- which you can have cooked, any way you want.

 This is what my plate looked like -- grilled prawns and squid on skewers,  roti chanai with cheese, fried noodles and vegetarian samosas.  While some of the dishes were quite good -- the grilled squid was perfectly cooked as were the samosas  -- most of the buffet items were not good examples of how these culinary classics are supposed to taste like.
Unfortunately, my celebrity buffet was a bust!
I dislike posting negative reviews on this blog but after experiencing 1 Market, I have 1 piece of advice for Chef Wan ... please spend more time in this kitchen!

Duck and Yam Rice at Yu Kee and other pleasures of Liang Seah Street

I was in Singapore for a meeting two weeks ago and as meetings go, it had been a long day.

It was 9 pm and I had yet to have dinner.  I was meeting an ex-colleague  who was sitting patiently in the lobby of the Stamford Hotel about to have a lackluster sandwich.  Snatching it out of his hands, I marched him out of hotel food hell and out into the humid Singapore evening.

Down by North Beach Road, just a ten minute walk away is Liang Seah street.  Right across Bugis Junction mall, this short alley has become a favorite late night destination for locals who want good, fast, cheap meals.  The street is lined with restaurants on both left and right sides but since we are both famished, we settle on the first one we see.
Right at the corner is Yu Kee Duck Rice, my Singaporean friend says it's been around since the 60's and is a very popular place.

Since it's way past 9 pm, duck aficionados have come and gone and we have the restaurant pretty much to ourselves.  There are no menus save for a well lit board that lists the specialties -- basically, it's just duck, duck and more duck.  I mentally say a temporary good bye to sticking to my vegetarian diet for tonight.  

The tables at Yu Kee practically hog the sidewalk -- the formica tables are sticky from accumulated duck grease.  Plastic stools are perched precariously at the edge of the sidewalk.   I must be careful or I'll fall right into the street.

The duck kway teow and the mixed plate of duck, tofu and boiled peanuts are all awash in a dark sweetish gravy.  I was expecting a drier cantonese roast ala Hong Kong and was not prepared
for duck soup!  Perhaps I should have asked for the sauce on the side.

My friend  ordered yam rice for me and it was perfectly color matched with the rest of the food.  Steamed, sticky rice with bits of yam and minced duck mixed in, it was surprisingly good.   I could have stayed on course with my vegetarian diet if I had just eaten this.  Such a savory treat -- so yammy! I finished every last grain on the plate!

This was our mixed duck plate -- according to the menu board, this is meant for sharing but it wasn't really a lot of food.  I could barely tell which was the chopped duck and which were the tofu skins since they were all awash in the dark gravy.  Boiled eggs and peanuts and cucumber slices came along with the dish.

I thought the duck kway teow would be a version of char kway teow, oily but dry.  

This seemed more like maki when I saw it in the bowl.  Sliced duck breast and flat noodles along with bean sprouts were floating in the same dark soy sauce based gravy.  

Across Yu Kee is the Tong Seng Coffehouse directly underneath the Ah Chew ( bless you!) Hotel where I've enjoyed nasi lemak breakfasts on previous trips.  

There is a good sized crowd at 10 pm, still chowing down on such favorites as fishball soup, laksa, hainanese chicken rice, lor mee, prawn mee, sliced fish noodles.  

Shall we have some late night laksa after that duck, I ask my friend and he laughs because he thinks I'm joking. He obviously doesn't know me very well.

We need to walk off the duck and take the long way back to Stamford.  We go from one end of Liang Seah street to the other -- the coffee shops and small restaurants are still brightly lit and the food scene is very much hopping at 10 pm!

An interesting name for a chicken rice place -- Fat Bird!  I can imagine how plump and juicy the chicken must be!

Ah Chew again -- and bless you!  This is a famous place for chinese cold and hot desserts.  The line is always long and we don't feel like queuing up just to indulge in some pomelo mango sago -- their best seller and best tasting dessert.
We walk past temptation and out onto Beach Road.
See you next trip, Liang Seah!
I have found my perfect place for late night hunger attacks!

Out of the Way at Changi Village Hotel

I always manage to have a bit of "me" time when I am in Singapore for work.  It's usually a hurried, two hour shopping spree, a late night hawker center pig out or an early breakfast at a favorite kopi place.  But this last trip the conference I attended was set far away from the city -- a S$35 taxi ride away!

Changi Village Hotel is located east of the city. It's a ten minute ride from the airport, a few steps away from the ferry terminal that can whisk you away to the outlying islands and is also within the vicinity of Changi Air Base,  the old British military headquarters and the military hospital.
The scenery is much more lush and tree lined - it seems like you're back in pre war Singapore!
Still, it's out of the way and a 30 to 40 minute ride if you seek the commercial pleasures of Orchard Road!

The top of the hotel features a roof deck infinity pool that overlooks more trees and a view of the sea. Who says the Marina Bay Sands had the first roof top infinity pool in Singapore?  This may be just 10 stories above the ground but it's still a nice place to spend a sunny afternoon in.

Since the hotel is so close to the airport, you can sit in the pool and watch the planes fly in.   I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the A380 but had no such luck!

The hotel may have been far from  buzzy and busy Orchard Road but it had a surprise going for it -- at least for me.  The whole stretch of the street that the hotel was in contained rows and rows of buildings that housed restaurants and 24 hour kopi places -- a treasure trove of foodie delights to discover!
The blue awnings over the tables and chairs that you see belong to the Old Airfield Restaurant, that includes a good number of food stalls.

Why eat the complimentary hotel breakfast when you can eat here?  I woke up early each day and snuck out of the hotel to hobnob with the locals and eat an honest to goodness Singaporean breakfast!
Mizzy Corner served a mean nasi lemak, my favorite dish!

Whole day meetings are so boring!  I kept myself from nodding off with a tall hot glass of kopi  -- check out the condensed milk at the bottom of the glass!

Lunch break and I am back outside -- again escaping from the hotel lunch buffet. A bit further down from the old Airfield Restaurant, I find the Dynamic Dining House.  With a name like that, who could resist?

This counter showcased a whole lot of indian dishes.  It's turo turo style at Dynamic Dining, pick and choose! So inexpensive too  -- rice and 4 viands costs only S$3.50!

I ask for the vegetarian selection and I get a tray overflowing with coconut chutney, a huge crisp papadum on top of my rice, fried curried carrot sticks, sauteed bean sprouts and ampalaya or bitter melon with chili.
The fork and spoon may be mismatched but the flavors blend so wonderfully together!

Dynamic Dining is full during the lunch time rush hour.  But since you choose and pick your own dishes, there is no down time at all!

I wasn't quite so alone during this lunch break.  An army of sleek black cats kept me company while I ate.

See you next time, cat -- lunch is over.  I wish I could sit and stare into space like you.
But, time to get back to work!