Singapore Food Nation

Singapore clearly is a nation of foodies.
As the locals claim it with a deserved pride, their two favourite activities are shopping and...eating

With this bold statement in mind, there was no question that my blog was going to dedicate many posts to the national foods, and I hope it will entice you to try all of them!

Singapore Food Classics

Start your day in the city-state with a rich Kaya Set
Nothing is more singaporean than the classic Chicken Rice
Go healthier with a Yong Tau Fu
Revive your senses with a Roti Prata
Get comfortable with an easy-going Nasi Goreng Ayam (Chicken Fried Rice)
Play with your taste buds with the Sarawak Kolo Mee

Nasi Lemak, Laksa, Mee Rebus, Carrot Cake, Beef Rendang, Chili Crab, Black Pepper Crab, (coming soon)

Articles in French
Mee Goreng
Beef Hor Fun
Satay

Read also

Weird foods from Singapore
Hawker heroes VS Gordon Ramsay
Can Hipsters revive Hawker culture?

Where to Eat, Shop, Drink and Party in Singapore? Insider map to local lifestyle

After 4 years in Singapore, I believe I have visited many places and have enough benchmark to make a decent selection!
So here it is, a list of my favourite places in Singapore, from coffee shops to fine dining restaurants, bars and activities worth trying, etc...

It is publicly available at this adress on Google.

This is meant to be a living database, so your comments and personal suggestions will be most appreciated in the comments section below!

Singapore Food Classics - Chicken Rice

The Singapore Chicken Rice is a legend in its own right and it is probably one of the few dishes that a newcomer, tourist has to try upon arrival...
It will also be a safe haven, when anything else seems foreign, a real comfort food for your tastebuds.

What possibly could be exciting in having chicken & rice?
It is an on-going debate, but it might have to do with the fact that, when properly made, the rice has been cooked in a fragrant, chicken-flavored, slightly herbal broth, making it delicious on its own.
The chicken will be served steamed or roasted, but will have conserved in its full juicyness. The true amateur will dip the chicken pieces in a chili/soy sauce mix, giving it a spicy pop. 
The vegetables, served on the side, usually Kai Lan with Oyster sauce, will bring a satisfactory green goodness to complement this meety dish.

Ask any singaporean about where to find the best chicken rice, and you will realize how much locals love this staple hawker food, but also how much they value food in general, because they will certainly have their own opinions about where to go.

My go-to chicken rice place would be Wee Nam Kee, at Novena, which is more like a restaurant than a stall, but even without the hype and recommendation, I have to say I could really taste the difference.

What do you think of the singapore chicken rice?

Locals and residents, where is your favorite chicken rice place?

Please share in the comments section below! 
And check our best spots in Singapore
 

Singapore Food Classics - Kaya set breakfast

There are not many things that are more singaporean that this breakfast set, served at all beverages stalls of singaporean foodcourts, but also constitutes the central piece of the menu at Toastbox and Ya Kun Kaya Toast, and Killiney Kopitiam, 3 well-established restaurant outlets...

It comprises in its basic form:
1 medium-sized coffee or tea
You can have a standard "kopi", which in singapore is a coffee with condensed milk (very strong, very sweet and very milky). "kopi-C" is the same thing with a slightly evaporated milk, making the beverage slightly lighter and less creamy. "kopi-O" is a sweet black coffee. If you want less sugar, add "siew thai": Kopi-O siew thai. 


2 soft-boiled eggs
A soft boiled egg can be quite an adventure for the faint-hearted. The egg is cooked for a short 2 minutes, so its protein-packed half has just turned white, and the yellow is very runny. Because this is pretty much like eating a raw egg, you will be strongly advised to add pepper and soy sauce like the locals do (I always add a dash of salt as well, if salt is available...). Then you will stir your eggs until it turns into what you see in the above picture. Although I put too much soy sauce in that one, it will almost always look damn ugly, but past the initial bewilderment, you will probably love the jelly-like texture and the addictive goodness of eggs in the morning. Watch out for cholesterol though, as 5-7 eggs per week should be your maximum... 

2 kaya toast
Kaya is a long-standing favourite ingredients, an eggy (yes, as well) coconut jam with pandan leaf juice, spread on toasted pieces of white bread. It is very fragrant, quite fatty and delicious. Unless you ask "kaya only", you will also be treated by a 1/3-of-an-inch thick brick of fresh butter in your toast, thus exploding your fat counter for the day.

Morning love from your Kaya toasts

It is simple, tasty and cheap at SGD$ 2.5 and 4, which is highly competitive in this expensive city.
And... you are now eating like a local.

Other variation replace the kaya toast with peanut butter, chicken or pork floss, ham & cheese, french toast, etc...

It is definitely one of my favourite foods in Singapore, having it at least twice a week!
Other must-try singapore classics are the chicken rice, the mee rebus, satay, nasi goreng... 

The Most Beautiful Sound In The World

This soundscape recorded at Kubah National Park in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia, has been voted the most beautiful sound in the world.

What do you think?

Personally, I  totally agree.

My Top 20 Albums from 2013

Here is my selection of the best albums of last year. 

Some are obvious choices, maybe most of them are, but I still hope you will find something new! I do not pretend to cover all genres...

I have included some songs from these albums in my Locks of Love playlist, available for you to download.

Arcade Fire - Reflektor

The canadian's band return to sonic business cannot disappoint... I will likely please your indie tastebuds, and have you shake your bum at the same time. This band has the capacity to take you and immerse you into their sound, maybe because it is so "panoramic".

 

La Femme - Psycho Tropical Berlin

French rock got a serious freshening fix this year thanks to La Femme's original composition, mixing rock, pop and older "sous-culture" influences like cold wave and post punk. It has also some good rock & roll bursts, elegantly topped by liberated feminine vocals. A really good album for lovers of unique atmospheres, synth-pop, and french lyrics :)

 

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

Another haven of good music over their various albums, Daft Punk has once more created a truly unique piece of work, pioneering a return to more analog creativity and sound, though still orchestrating them with electronic precision. Although I did not like the album at first listening, it did grow on me rapidly, and now I understand why. It is just too well made.

 

Thee Oh Sees - Floating coffin

The first guitar riffs of the first song set the (furious) pace for the entire album to follow. A newcomer to mainstream rock audience, Thee Oh Sees deserves full attention with its furiously weird garage rock. With lyrics a bit on the dark side, it is simply great to find from time to time, a few moments of ethereal serenity set by voices chorus that seem to fly over fragile melodies. Soon enough though, brutal riffs and heavy drumming come back to exude primal energy. Unpolished precious stones of a record like this one, dont get dug out so often these days.

Moderat - II

Modeselektor + Apparat = the best of german engineering. Modeselektor's beats, allied to Apparat's electronic onirism creates a near-perfect electro/hiphop  indie record. It's both groovy and highly poetic. Really love that one, at anytime of the day.

Stromae - Racine Carrée

Much talked about in Belgium and France, Stromae (i.e. maestro in verlan, france's syllable inversion slang) embodies the probable future of mainstream pop songs 'a la francaise' (although in all truth, he is belgian). A record where influences are elegantly blending, from french rap to african rumba and traditional french chanson 'melodies'. His witty phrase is delightful to dwelve into. Add to this a real sense of show, dancefloor killer hits, and arty low-budget video clips, and you understand why Stromae deserves the hype.

James Blake - Overgrown

I find the minimal, crepuscular atmosphere of James Blake's Overgrown absolutely captivating. It's like a soundtrack designed for a nostalgic spiritual train journey on a rainy day in a beautifully gloomy countryside. Track after track, this album manages to capture the best of last years' electronica arrangements and pair it with a Blake's beautiful voice. Not an easy thing to do, and to my knowledge, no man has done it so well since Thom Yorke.

Arctic Monkeys - AM

If there is one thing that the agonizing MySpace social network did and did well, is that it propulsed Arctic Monkeys to the front of the music scene, and very deservedly so. The apes' 5th album is simply a great rock album, one that you will probably still love to listen to 15 years from now, and you probably won't need to hear it twice to reach this conclusion. Absolutely great.  

 

Foals - Holy Fire

Ah, Foals.

What can I say about this band? Love them. They deserve love. In fact their work is all about love: the broken ones, the joyful friendly ones, the raging ones. With this new LP, Foals has reached a new dimension in my appreciation for them as artists. The dimension in which a band has now defined its identity as a maker of jumpy indie rock songs with a twist, able to deliver beautiful progressive jewels such as "Late Night" ending in eargasmic, ethereal guitar riffs. But this dimension wouldn't be achieved without re-invention, which I think transpires throughout the whole record. Love them, because they are here to stay.

Daniel Avery - Drone Logic

If you have a feeling for minimal and deep electronic music, well, i strongly recommend you let the logic of the drone govern your listening... This album will take you on a journey that does not need your active hearing. The kind of music to which I can focus on my work at the same time, and feel like typing at 130 bpm.

Chance The Rapper - Acid Rap 

A groovy and clever first LP from the young chicagoan, who got known through his free mixtapes posted online. Another gifted child from the freemium generation. What seduced me most was the creativity in its flow, venturing far beyond the average listen-to-my-ballsy-protein-powered-voice-bitch and the relaxed, varied instrumentals used. A really pleasant record to listen to, from start to finish. Chance The Rapper made me do it. 

John Talabot - DJ Kicks

The DJ Kicks compilation series keep on delivering, issue after issue, and this mix by spanish DJ producer John Talabot lives up to the hype of his 2012 album "fin". I loved several songs on this album at the time, and I must say I love both the song selection and the way they are mixed on this K7! record. A deep, eclectic, hypnotic set of tunes.

Also worth mentioning: 

Suuns - Images du Futur: a rather well-made ambiant, experimental rock album, with some psychedelia inside.  

Disclosure - Settle: A UK dance record that consistently delivers, in the era of no tomorrow hit singles.

A$AP Rocky - Long Live: again, the kind of hip-hop record that is varied enough to listen from start to finish, without getting bored. 

Danny Brown - Old : a solid hip-hop record, with no thrills urban beats and mercyless flow.

King Krule - 6 Feet Beneath the Moon: you can be a pale skinny brit redhead in your teens and still affirm your style. A disruptive sum of strange arrangements that make a interesting record. 

The Child of Lov - the Child of Lov: a low-fi, laidback album with a funk infused voice, but that voice isn't too naively happy about everything, which gives a specific cloudy sunset colour to this record.

Kanye West - Yeezus: One must recognize that Kanye pushed the boundaries once more for its instrumental: ultra-saturated basses, outer space bleeps and undergound atmospheres. 

Kelela - Cut 4 me: A forward-thinking R&B album, going far beyond the constant "whaling" that usually gives its limitations to the syle.

What do you think of this selection? What are your favourite? Do you have any recommendation?

Please let me know in the comments section below!


You should also check the Most Beautiful Sound In The World, by recordist Marc Anderson a frog in the malaysian rainforest :)