BEST CULTURAL FOOD

A CULINARY ONSLAUGHT

By Hilary Prendini Toffoli

Going Asian Fusion bananas in Singapore with Cape Town’s former culinary queen, Elsa van der Nest. 

She fixes me with a beady eyeball. I better not be thinking of abandoning my chopsticks and retreating in the face of the culinary onslaught, even if my stomach has shrunk after the previous few days’ restricted diet in Cambodia. I was so terrified of getting avian flu I became a vegetarian. 

‘You just sit there and 
the different platters come to you’

No, Elsa tells me, there’s no avian flu in clean, hygienic-conscious, well-managed Singapore. 

Everyone still very much enjoys the whole range of culinary delights this small city-state offers, even the OTT bits you and I might find a tad gristly and grisly. In fact, I’m about to discover that eating is as popular a national pastime here as it is in Italy. 

Except that in Singapore, because of the range of cultures, you have a far more diverse selection of cuisines, generally extremely affordable, especially in the ubiquitous food courts where you buy food from stalls.

 

‘There are a endless amount of pleasant hawker centres
where you can eat surprisingly well for surprisingly little’

“Singaporeans take their food very seriously,” says Elsa, who’s no slouch herself in this department. She’s had two restaurants in South Africa, as well as the Elsa van der Nest Culinary Academy that she ran for seven years in Cape Town, training chefs who’ve gone to restaurants all over the world. 

Now the mother of small twin boys, married to the Singaporean lawyer she met four years ago in a Hong Kong art gallery, she’s taken to the Singapore food scene like a duck to marinade. She teaches at Shermay’s Cooking School in Singapore, in between a host of consultant jobs, and has just finished the third of her three cookery books. 

‘Elsa has taken to the Singapore food scene
like a duck to marinade!’

While her husband Yo-Hann restricts himself to what he jovially calls ‘braais for my Free State boeremeisie,’ and can barely cook an egg—probably as a result of having spent eight years in Britain, doing his law degree and articles. Elsa knows exactly where to get which ingredients, and what restaurants and hotels have the best food, although ‘best’ is always a point Singaporeans will argue over.

These food-mad Chinese, Malays and Indians have been here ever since their ancestors started drifting down and settling on this muggy little island. This was in the days when it was establishing itself as a free-port trading post, assisted by thriving piracy, somewhere round the 1300s.

Such a diverse bunch brings to the Singapore table very different culinary mind-sets. So along with all the fabulous international-style restaurants, there’s a mouth-boggling range of Asian food for the visitor to sample. This includes the unique local hybrid Peranakan that blends Malay sauces and spices with Chinese ingredients.

Elsa’s coffee table boasts several books on the beautifully decorated terrace houses built by these descendants of the Chinese immigrants who settled here and married Malay women. She’s mad about their intricately embellished, colourful porcelain, and was given a set for her 40th birthday by her Singapore ladies’ lunch club. It’s known as Nonya porcelain, from the word Baba-Nonyas once used to describe these people, after the Peranakan word baba (male) and nonya (female.)

Right now she’s serving us from her beautiful Nonya serving dishes at the family table—on the long balcony of her spacious apartment. 

It’s in a garden estate complex aptly named Arcadia, and we’re surrounded by jungle greenery—both outside and inside in pots. Above are hanging Yo-Hann’s wickerwork bird cages and the antique metal lanterns Elsa found in Jakarta, where she was recruiting Cordon Bleu students—another of her current career hats. 

Most of this mouth-watering feast has been specially cooked for us by Helen Tan, Elsa’s mother-in-law, in her own kitchen on the other side of town. Mrs Tan is an elegantly turned out woman. Like most Singaporeans, she speaks fluent English, and manages, in between running a domestic staff's agency, to shop for the fresh ingredients she needs for the meals she makes for her husband William, an ex-hotelier and restaurateur.

For a bit more, you can sample the whole range of traditional Singaporean food in the luxurious environment of Straits Kitchen, the Grand Hyatt’s newest restaurant, just off Orchard Road. Choose whatever you fancy with the help of the cooks, from a huge and enticing selection of hawker food across the spectrum. Wander from one live kitchen station to another, each of them pools of light in the large low-lit dining area. The weekday buffet lunch is about R150 but I guarantee it will rate high on your list of ultimate Singaporean eating experiences. 

Nor should serious diners miss Singapore’s newest and hottest food emporium, The Line at the Shangri-la Hotel. It takes its name from the black lines in the striated white marble floor, and it’s an extraordinary all-white designer temple to the culinary arts, both homegrown and international. Worth the bucks, just for the status mileage you’ll get back home among the foodies. Wear your designer outfit. 

The Singapore chef closest to Elsa’s heart is Chef Chan, the unassuming master chef whose Udong Noodles were brought to her to eat in the clinic by friends, after she had the twins. “Chef Chan’s restaurant serves the most original and delicious food in town, in terms of authentic Cantonese flavours,” she says. “This shy humble man is the best Cantonese cook in Singapore.” 

He has a standing invitation to attend South Africa’s Gourmet Festival when he eventually decides his English is good enough. Meanwhile his motto, on the cover of one of his award-winning cookbooks, is ‘Dam dai, sum sai—be brave but be careful with the details.’ 

We visit his restaurant opposite Raffles with Elsa. It’s a showcase of the antique Chinese furniture he’s collected over the years since leaving Hong Kong and working in three of Singapore’s top hotels.

This time the eating orgy includes Szechuan spicy baby calamari, chilli beef with stems of ginger flower and black pepper sauce, steamed fish Hong Kong style in rice wine and soya sauce, and baby Chinese spinach with ginger and garlic. The piece de resistance is Chef Chan’s signature roast chicken, as delicious in its delicately fine shiny golden skin—which Elsa tells me has been air-dried—as Helen Tan’s king prawns. 

It’s amazing how much you find yourself 
being able to eat in Singapore. When it’s all as good
as this, you just don’t want to miss out
on any new taste sensation …