Best food in Singapore
Our first destination in Singapore was Chinatown. We just missed the celebration of the Chinese New Year , which this year is the year of the Tiger. We missed the celebrations by one day, but luckily, the spirit of the festivities were still in its death throes of passion. The Chinese New Year is unique both in spectacle and in color and we found this most colorful spectacle of a tiger dancer tossing mandarins, which is a symbol of prosperity, in a street next to Chinatown. The Tiger dance is a dance with Chinese origins, it is intended to scare away evil spirits. The dancer was very good and he moved with grace, but less could be said about the accompanying musicians that blasted our ears. We could only handle five minutes of his dance because the music was literally hurting our ears.
While in Chinatown, we searched for a cafe’ called Joo Heng. Our parents always came here when they traveled and could only rave about the food and the service. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we found the place, it looked like any other plain ol’ coffee shop in Singapore. Joo Heng is Cantonese and it serves what locals call ‘Cze Char’ or better known as comfort food. Joo Heng employees skilled and experienced chefs who know how to master a wok and control the fire in order to impart the dishes smoky flavor.
Cze Char is an art-form that is dying, especially if you equate it with excellent home-style cooking. Being a chef in a Cze Char kitchen is no easy feat, especially with the high humid weather of Singapore, because to qualify as an authentic Cze Char eatery, the kitchen should have no air-conditioning. That’s how exacting cooking Cze Char style can be. So, being here, even though the place doesn’t look like much, was actually a privilege.
We started with the soup of the day, which was lotus root with pork ribs. If this soup was made any other way than how Joo Heng prepares it, it would not be soup at its best, because Joo Heng simmers the soup for 4 hours before they serve it. For our appetizers, we ordered the sharks fin and crab meat scramble, served with lettuce leaves laced with belacan chili paste and a squeeze of fresh lime. For our main course, we ordered the steamed fish head with yellow bean paste, which came garnished with spring onions and deep-fried pork lard cubes. The other dish was the steamed minced pork patties, stir-fried potato leave that comes with prawn paste chicken.
We’ve never eaten such wonderful food in our entire life, our dishes were so savory, so comforting and so fulfilling. Our parents were right, Joo Heng is a must when traveling in Singapore.
Related posts:
Leave a Reply