We spent a day and a half in Singapore on our return trip back to Australia. Having Google'd the top things to do in Singapore and not being overly spoilt for choice, we decided to focus on one of its primary selling points which is its claim to be the "Food Capital of Asia". I'll let my stomach be the judge of that!
In hindsight, we suspect that 1.5 days isn't long enough to get a true impression of what Singapore is capable of. Whilst we had a good time, we weren't blown away by any aspect of it and that includes the food.
We were lucky to be visiting during July as this is when the annual Food Festival is held. From what we saw though, it seems eating food is a local passion all year round anyway so the festival didn't seem to influence it much. We started the culinary adventure at the Lau Pa Sat 'hawker centre' (food hall). Basically a huge number of food stalls, tables, plastic chairs and menus getting thrust in your face every 10 seconds trying to coax you in. The festival satay stalls were the highlight (see the video below for more on that).
Other highlights were Black Pepper Crabs at the Jumbo restaurant in the East Coast Seafood Centre, Singapore Slings in the Long Bar (Raffles Hotel) and sinking ice cold lager in The Penny Black pub at Boat Quay to counter the humid sweat-attacks.
By Darrell Grundy - visited on 16 July 2008