Monthly Archives: March 2023

In many respects, Bangkok is locked in a rivalry with Singapore, but it’s one that Singapore doesn’t really know about. It’s like the rivalry between the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals, or between me and Martha Stewart — one side constantly pushing, pushing, the other side going “who?”

So it makes sense to view Singapore with a little bit of trepidation, especially since it’s the one buzzword that every single official in Bangkok’s government chooses when asked about the “vision” for a future Bangkok. When Thais claim to want Bangkok to turn into Singapore, what they mean is “orderly streets”, “clean sidewalks”, “rule of law”, and an obliging, compliant populace. You and I both know that this is never going to happen in Thailand (the ban on online porn alone is impossible). Yet the officials continue to bang their Singapore drum, clearing out the low-hanging fruit, like mobile vendors…(uh, that’s it because no one wants to make the effort to fine litterers) on a quest to one day, some day, be like Big Sis SG, wildly divergent GDPs be damned.

Singapore is often the brunt of jokes from other Southeast Asians. “Disneyland,” sniff some, and “sheep,” decry others; “They stole all our dishes,” claim the Malaysians, who have a case. Yet the evidence is clear — Singapore is a beautiful city, run very well, even if wealth and power are all centralized and the whole system vulnerable to a Singaporean Trump who can ruin everything. The restaurants are good, the parks are lovely, and the hawker centers are well located and clean. It’s little wonder that visitors who view the chaos and arbitrary nature of Thailand and Cambodia as frightening find refuge in the logic inherent in a place like Singapore…even if the service still, even now, kind of sucks.

I can say this because my husband, once again, was miffed after a server bearing a tray laden with soups shouted at him to get out of the way. This was at Ng Ah Sio Bak Kuh Teh, a longtime favorite of the family and much looked-forward-to by a person who professes bak kuh teh, pork ribs stewed in a peppery broth with rice, one of his favorite dishes in the world. Our server was nicer after, with typical Chinese straightforwardness, he noted, “Oh, you ordered a lot.”And we did: there was also three kinds of tofu, and pickled cabbage, beef liver, boiled peanuts, deep-fried crullers, and a smattering of greens. “It’s very light,” he reassured us, noting my stricken face on seeing the crowded tabletop.

The verdict? Honestly, meh. The meat clung to the bones like Bangkok officials to a Singapore map, victim to too few hours in the soup pot. I told my mother-in-law that she made a better bowl, and I meant it!

That evening, when everyone else was celebrating the end of yet another leg of the cruise at a beautiful venue with too little food, my husband and I met our friends Khim and Galen at Chin Chin Eating House, famous for its Hainanese chicken rice, which is one of Singapore’s national dishes (even though it’s from Hainan?) We got there at 7pm during a torrential downpour, and no chickens were hanging in the window, prompting a mini-panic attack from my husband. “Quick, reserve one!” he said, prodding at my arm, but I was adamant that we would be fine, since the flood of people seated after us would have seriously revolted if left without chicken on their tables.

Because Galen and Khim might have felt bad for being a bit late, they ordered EVERYTHING: half a chicken, four bowls of fatty rice, sambal-laced morning glory, dou miao (a kind of Taiwanese sprout, seen on every table), a smoky char guay thiew, a mountain of prawn mee, and most intriguingly a “pork chop” with gravy and peas resembling the dish found at Thai cook shops, first started by Hainanese chefs in Bangkok many decades ago.

Unlike in Thailand, the pork chop is served with the tomatoey gravy on the side, so that the pork retains its tonkatsu-like crispness. I have to say, it’s a great idea.

As for the chicken rice, well, both Malaysians and Singaporeans make a much bigger deal over the taste of the chicken and the quality of the rice than we Thais do. Yes, indeed: chicken rice is made by steaming the chicken and cooking the rice in the fat that drips off the flesh, yadayadayadayada. Thais only care about the sauces, and here at Chin Chin? You mix your own. I’m not sure whether to be outraged or elated. My only real criticism is that they do not give you enough fresh garlic or chilies, for when you really want to go Thai on a chicken rice’s ass.

The next day, we walked through Tiong Bahru Market, which hosts a fairly famous food center with not one, but TWO Michelin-starred vendors. There were no Jay Fai-level lines, and no hysteria about getting your food before everyone else, unlike at popular food places in Bangkok. It’s sedate enough that I might even be able to take my mother — that’s how orderly I think it is.

It would make sense to sit down and enjoy a meal there, but the real objective of our trip was just down the road, at De Golden Spoon Seafood. Famous for its crab bee hoon, this restaurant sits right in my sweet spot: old, mostly empty, delicious.

But crab bee hoon (crab with rice vermicelli in a gravy) isn’t the only thing you should order here. There’s also black pepper crab, thick enough to stay under your finger nails, and crab swimming in a lake of tomatoey curry, roe-studded crab parts barely visible above the murk. There are razor clams stuffed with glass vermicelli and garlic, and Chinese kale, stems shaved and served in a thin hoisin sauce. And there is chicken fried rice, for your son who eats nothing.

What transpired was my favorite meal in Singapore, in a fairly rundown restaurant resembling the eateries you find next to the gas station on the highway in Southern Thailand. Cooks were wildly generous with the crab roe, the crabs themselves enormous enough for us to suspect they hailed from Australia instead of Sri Lanka. My only complaint is that I did not have enough space in my stomach to eat it all.

I can’t believe I truly thought it would be possible, but I really believed that I would be able to maintain — perhaps even lose! — my weight on this cruise. Well, every remaining shred of delusion I might have had when it comes to my weight has been ripped away by my experience in Vietnam, where every second of my visit was taken over with thoughts about what I was eating at the time, and when I wasn’t eating, then thoughts about what I was about to eat. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been to Vietnam before, but did not spend every second of my time planning my next meal. Whatever was I doing?

The truth is that I’ve come to appreciate Vietnam over time; it’s not a “love at first sight” kind of thing like I’ve had with Istanbul or Tokyo. My first visit to Hanoi was in the early 2000s, when Karen and I stayed in a hotel where ants roamed freely over our morning baguettes. The meals we had were a total blur, and my most vivid memory of that trip was of Karen purchasing a bottle of snake wine for her brother-in-law, only to have it break open in her suitcase, permeating her clothes with its unique smell.

So I’ve always thought I was fair-to-neutral on Vietnamese food … that is, until this trip. Because I’ve had my head blown off daily by what I’ve been eating, even when it’s vegetarian, even when I’m already full, even when it’s 100 degrees outside and I shouldn’t be hungry at all. Even when it’s in Northern Vietnam, where I believed the food was more, shall we say, “gently flavored”. Even when it’s a place where Anthony Bourdain once ate. Vietnam has blown me away, and I think I am truly in love.

Our first meal was at a place paradoxically named “Pho Thin”, in Ha Long Bay (Só 125, Du’òng 25/4, Ha Long). Although everyone in our party was determined to have some good beef pho (which was really good, don’t get me wrong, see photo above), I felt like doing a little stroll on the wild side by pointing at photos and gesticulating wildly, a method that made me super popular with our bemused waiter. I honestly don’t know what I ordered, but I know what I got: a rice dish that came out of a giant vat looking like this:

The rice dish, which I STILL do not know the name of, came with stir-fried slices of beef mixed with pickled vegetables.

The other dish, which I believe was pho xeo, or “stirfried noodles”, was an entire platter of stir-fried noodles, soft and pillowy, with another platter of stir-fried beef with garlic on the side, both enough for a Thai family of four.

Set at each table was a battery of accompaniments, including fish sauce, pickled garlic in its juice, fresh limes and chilies, an entire container of MSG, and THREE different chili sauces. Interestingly, none of these sauces were like the American-style Sriracha sauce; two, however, were similar in flavor to the Thai kind. Everything was good enough that I didn’t notice until after the meal that one of the sauces I had been using liberally was months past its expiration date.

On a tour excursion to a Zen monastery the following day, we lunched at a vegetarian restaurant housed in a sort of park that sought to recreate the Vietnamese village experience, but with $300 agar wood bracelets and knick knacks. Even in the midst of this Epcot Center nonsense, I was delighted. Our guides literally showered us in food, a near-unending parade of dishes so numerous that our table couldn’t hold it all: lotus roots with goji berries, two types of soup, a scrumptious eggplant stir fry, veggie tempura, imitation baby clams on a giant sesame cracker, more veggie stir fries, etc. A particular favorite of mine were the mushrooms cooked in coconut juice and plated in an empty gourd.

The next day, we alighted on Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the streets are mobbed with tourists and rickshaws pulled by porters shouting “beep beep” at you every 10 seconds. In spite of all this, I absolutely loved it. Registering our interest in banh mi, our guide dutifully took us to the extremely packed Banh Mi Phuong, made famous from Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” show. Of course, his visage was featured prominently on the wall, as well as on the sandwich wrappers. While our guide recommended the “mixed” banh mi, my favorites were the cheese with onion, as well as the cheese with garlic (I’m basic when it comes to banh mi).

After Hoi An, we headed south to Ho Chi Minh City, where on yet another tour excursion we were generously invited to make pork-and-shrimp dumplings. It will come as little surprise to discover that I am not very good at making my own dumplings. I am, however, good at eating them.

Besides the wontons (they wisely fed us with the ones they’d made, because we would have refused to eat our own), deep-fried with a sweet chili dipping sauce, they gave us bowls of the wontons with shrimp in a clear pork broth, as well as the pork meat used to make the broth itself:

Needless to say, I enjoyed myself yet again, and did so on the next day as well, when, post-tai chi routine in the park (done to stirring music, with enormous fans), we visited a vegan restaurant called Ba Xa, which roughly translates to “my wife”. To our amazement and delight, we were told we could order one of anything we wanted, but no one else on the tour wanted to coordinate and share our orders (too much like socialism?), so my daughter, sister-in-law and I each made a mini-meal: the “wife holding hands” noodles, the “wife salad” (version 1), and deep-fried spring rolls.

The dishes were genuinely good — so much so that it was not until halfway through our meal that I noticed that the stuff I was seeing on the TV screen on the wall was genuinely bonkers: an Asian woman who dressed up in various different outfits complete with detailed makeup — as a red-headed white man, as a black woman, as an older white man dressed as a leprechaun — exhorting the benefits of veganism and condemning meat eaters to die in the flames of hell.

Unwilling to stop our marathon of Vietnamese food and just waddle back off to the ship, we continued on in town, opting to walk to our next stop: Mama Pho, thankfully air-conditioned, and again outfitted with Thai-style Sriracha sauce. Even with our tummies bursting, we ordered a bowl each: the standard Mama pho, in a broth of beef bones, ginger, burnt onion, cardamom, star anise and cinnamon, all boiled for 18 hours; a pho in a beef stew broth; and a “dry pho” of mushrooms and tofu, which in Thailand is basically “nam yak”, or the broth served separately in a different bowl. This one was my favorite, which was lucky because it was my own order (sharing is socialist!).

It was after our second lunch, and only then, when we deemed ourselves ready to go back to the ship. Completely stuffed, we managed to run to catch the waiting shuttle bus without throwing up. We boarded the ship on time and without incident.

Back at the room waiting for me were three banh mi sandwiches, brought back by my husband. Of course, I ate them.

Julie and Michael from Taipei are probably our closest friends on the ship, if forced to categorize that kind of thing. Because we are Asians, we bond over our love of food, and of our respective cuisines. Aware that we were actively looking to have delicious Taiwanese food in Taipei, Julie and Michael took us under their figurative wings, deciding not to leave us to our own devices, but to treat us to a bona fide good Taiwanese meal themselves.

Now, we have been to Taiwan — and even Taipei — before. But we have never been to a meal in Taiwan with actual Taiwanese people. Just like how Thai people order Thai food differently from farang, we were the farang to Taiwanese couple Julie and Michael. They would be seeking to appease our basic tastes — xiaolongbao, beef noodles — while at the same time showing us something new.

The reason why I think that Julie and Michael are good guides to Taiwanese food is because they can be stank-ass beyotches about it — even when it comes to their own food. When discussing the charms of the culinary scene of the south, where raw green-red tomatoes are cut up and served with a sauce of dark sugar syrup, powdered sugar and ginger, Michael makes a disgusted face. “The Southern food is too sweet,” he says. “It is food for children.” (Incidentally, the combination of these ingredients gave, to me, a hint of sweet Kansas City-style barbecue sauce flavor).

No, if we were to eat Taiwanese food, we would have to do it under their tutelage, which is exactly the way I would do it if a friend came to me for Thai food guidance. So, having ditched our tour group at the National Palace Museum, we took a bus to Julie and Michael’s selected Taiwanese eatery, Dian Shui Lou, which was only 15 minutes away. Once there, we see Julie and Michael already ensconced over an enormous menu, strategizing with a waiter.

We greet them with enthusiasm, especially since we have already seen all the food photos from the menu during the wait for an elevator. We saw pickled crab eggs, and all of seven (!) types of soup dumplings, and whole steamed fish, all of which we excitedly relayed to Julie and Michael. They listened politely, took some of it on board, and, as all good editors must do, discarded the rest. Their order was precise and focused, yet still enough to make us stagger out of the restaurant at the end of the meal.

There were two types of xiaolongbao on the table: pork with crab roe, colored orange from carrot juice, and a streaked red-and-white one containing mala-flavored beef. We had a concise selection of other dim sum to start, including soft rice rolls stuffed with deep-fried “patongko”-like fritters, and plump deep-fried chicken wings for my son, who hates everything. There were Peking duck pancakes, already rolled after showing us the lacquered, cooked duck, followed by a remarkably fragrant soup stewed from the bones. There was even a flat sesame pancake, stuffed with what Michael could only describe as “a very special green”. We might never find out what this green was, but it was delicious.

Then came the second half of the meal, which included another crowd-pleasing soup of spinach and century egg, accompanied by the lightly-fried side of a freshwater fish and simply sautéed fresh spinach. After that, a veritable vat of stewed beef flavored with the tongue-numbing Sichuan pepper blend known as “mala”, coupled with hearty, hand-cut wheat noodles made to “stand up to it all”.

This was then followed by a thin rice vermicelli in a clear beef broth, in the style of one of my favorite beef noodle vendors, Luk Chin Anamai. Now, this is the type of dish that Thais would normally damn with faint praise terms like “delicate” or “subtle”. But it was actually refreshing after the pugnaciousness of the mala beef, heavily redolent of the sweetness of deep-fried shallot.

“Now the beef noodles will come,” said Michael. “This chef is famous for his beef noodles.”

“Huh?” we asked. “Didn’t we just have two beef noodles?”

But no, those dishes are not what Taiwanese people mean when they say “beef noodles.” “Beef noodles” is an important dish, created by Sichuan soldiers who fled to Taiwan (to the south, it must be said) and felt nostalgic for a taste of their homeland. The beef is often stewed for hours, until the meat is tender enough to cut with a spoon.

I will have to say that, even if this dish was created originally in the south, Julie and Michael’s endorsed version in northern Taiwan was probably the best I’ve ever had. The hearty handcut wheat noodles were back, perfectly al dente in a deep mahogany broth blessed with the clarity of the South Polynesian sea. The meat, dull Chinese spoon-tender, thick with fat. On the side, a bowl of pickled vegetables to add acidity to the whole heady mix. What could I say? Fleeing homesick refugees really hit the ball out of the park on this one.

After lunch, we said our goodbyes to Michael and Julie and toddled off to another bus, dangerously sated enough on our way back to the pier to fall asleep for the entire 45-minute ride. We didn’t speak Mandarin and they didn’t speak Thai, but in our limited way we had managed to communicate enough that we could have great meals together, and bond over our appreciation of them. Good friendships have been made over less.