Chilli Frog and Kway Teow at Geylang

Some of my most cherished memories of Singapore are associated with Geylang, the city's largest red-light district. After the thumping success of our first visit, I found myself acting as unofficial tour guide to the area, so strong a curiosity did it evoke in my friends. My second trip there was especially memorable. This was quite some time ago, nearly two years. (So why didn't I write about it earlier? Difficult to say.) My friends Lakshmi and Wangui were winding up their stay in Singapore, and we thought a visit to Geylang would be a good way to round things off.

Actually, there was more to it. We all of us were keen to try out frog, arguably Geylang's best known speciality. And that's chiefly why the trip was so memorable. It was the first time I tasted frog. So we met up at Geylang directly, and lost little time making our way to Eminent Frog Porridge and Seafood at Lorong 19, certainly among the most famous if not the most famous of frog-porridge outlets.

A word of explanation here: Conventionally frog (in its various iterations) is eaten with congee or rice porridge, hence the name 'Frog Porridge'. We were in no mood to fill our stomachs with semi-solid rice. So we went straight
for the meat. The "Eminent" menu had an interesting price structure. The base price was eight (Sing) Dollars to a frog, but there were two "special offers" advertised. Buy-two-get-one-free (at sixteen Dollars or S$ 5.33 a frog) or buy-three-get-one-free. Even though this offer was priced at twenty-two dollars (or S$ 2 less than the normal twenty-four), the price per frog came to S$ 5.50, marginally more than the three-for-the-price-of-two offer. Clearly they needed to revise their math a little. Both "special offers" were fake, incidentally. I have seen them being advertised without the slightest alteration right through my two years in Singapore.

We ordered sixteen Dollars' worth of chilli frog, also iced tea and some sweet-and-sour chicken. The tea was good, if a little too lemony for my liking. The chicken wasn't so bad either. The frog came doused in a thick sauce and covered with spring onion, inside a steaming, slightly sooty claypot. The claypot is a cooking vessel with a distinctive stubby handle and made of unglazed ceramic. It absorbs water well and is capable of withstanding very high temperatures. Both these characteristics are critical to the cooking process. The pot is first soaked in water for extended periods. Next, the raw materials are arranged inside, and a lid placed on top and sealed. Then the whole thing is placed on very high heat. The absorbed water turns into steam and ensure that the stuff being cooked retains its moistness throughout the process; this combination of moisture and high heat is what imparts to claypot cooking its distinctive flavour.

That said, we didn't find the frog all that great. Oh, it was edible all right, that is, once we got over our inhibitions (I managed to photograph Lakshmi struggling over hers). The meat was soft and tender, and didn't smell at all contrary to what we had assumed for some obscure reason. On the other hand, it didn't really taste of anything much. The sauce was nice, hot, sweet and gingery-pungent at the same time. Nice and fresh the spring onions were. But the meat itself was curiously, well, bland. The second reason we remained unimpressed - it was too bony. Too little flesh, too many bones (and sharp also). All in all, it wasn't too bad, but not the culinary revelation I had thought it would be.

On this trip I had another agenda. I wanted to take some pictures of the girls who worked here, something I hadn't dared to on my last trip. The problem was, how to go about it? Finally I thought of trying the most obvious strategy. On an adjoining table I saw this guy sitting with two girls skimpily dressed and festooned with blingy ornaments. I went over to him and said I was a tourist from India and could I take their picture, please? He took one look at me, another look at my camera (I had an inexpensive point-and-shoot those days), looked back at me, smiled, and said, "Umm, sure, go ahead!" So that was all there was to it.

We were still hungry, though. After some deliberation, we decided on the famous Beef Kway Teow stall at Lorong 9. This was another first for me, even though I had heard so much about it.

The walk down to Lorong 9 was pleasant enough itself. Geylang is one enclave of Singapore that never seems to lack for life. And not just of the seamier sort. You get pretty strange shops out there. (On another visit there, I once came across a shop that sold nothing but soya milk in a bewildering variety of flavours. I tried out some almond-flavoured milk. A waste of almonds it turned out, sadly. Then there's this other shop that sells herbal infusions. Herbal as in Chinese herbs, none of whose names made sense to me. Many of these infusions were being sold chilled in small plastic bottles. Out of misplaced curiosity more than anything else, I chose a purplish bottle which claimed to be refreshing. It was worse than the soya milk.)

At Lorong 9, we asked for three servings of Kway Teow (we were still that hungry), and some stir-fried mushrooms and broccoli. Then we settled down for a longish wait. At this stall, they process each order separately. No doubt this contributes to the excellence of the final product (and we weren't complaining one bit!) but, well, it's not exactly fast food.

I decided my camera and I needed a walk. Leaving Wangui and Lakshmi wasn't an issue - Geylang must be one of the safest red-light districts in the world. Ended up taking several nice photos that night. One of a Durian seller, taken handheld in ambient light, is a favourite.

Further north along Sims Avenue, I came across a table occupied by a couple. The girl was very pretty, didn't look like a "working girl" apart from her horrible tinsel-y clothes. Her companion was elderly, clad in a crumpled, not too clean white shirt, briskly fanning himself with a tattered paper fan, altogether nondescript. Till he asked me in a deep baritone, "Yes, and what can I do for you?" - British accent, grammatically flawless, not a trace of Singlish - I was impressed and surprised. Perhaps this was what education in Singapore used to be once upon a time? I launched into my usual "harmless tourist" spiel. The gentleman thought a moment and said, "A tourist? Hm, all right, then." If I had more time on my hands I'd have liked to talk to him a bit more. Notwithstanding his appearance, there was something about him - a magisterial air - that intrigued me.

By the time I returned, the food had been served. Three steaming plates of er, what? Kway Teow? Like as in flat, ribbon-like noodles, right? Not this stuff - if anything, it looked like like some sort of dismembered lasagna floating in a thin brown gravy. But then, that was hardly cause for complaint. The portions were plentiful and with lots of meat in them and, most important, the concoction smelled pretty good! Wangui and I opted to split a beer, Lakshmi the abstainer settled for her usual lime juice. Then we began to tuck in.

I am not exaggerating a bit, the noodles were nearabouts the finest thing I've ever eaten in Singapore. The noodles were al dente, as the Italians call it; the meat was succulent and oh-so-soft. Simple though the preparation was (meat, noodles and very little else), it seemed to contain several secrets. One was the quality of the raw material used. The meat was easy - fresh, good quality beef - but apart from flour, what in hell did they make the noodles out of? Then the cooking method. This is just speculation, but I think the juiciness of the meat is due to some special technique they use. Lastly, how do they achieve that unique flavour of the meat. Do they marinate it in ambrosia? Rarely in my experience has a foodie adventure been so successful. Lakshmi's expression in the accompanying photo says it all!

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Autonson Soup - II

[Continued from Part I]

The area where I live (officially named Abhinaba Bidanasi, though everyone calls it CDA) is dull even by Cuttack standards. Once, on a rare occasion when I had nothing to do, I explored the western fringes of the colony towards the outskirts of the city. It turned out that the entire stretch, spanning over at least three square kilometres, did not have a single market! Though I am fortunate enough to have two market complexes within walking distance, my foodie choices are predictably constrained. And even the shops that do exist in the area do not believe in giving customers much choice. The local roll guy, though competent enough, has so far declined to expand his repertoire beyond four items.

So, while returning home one evening, I was pleasantly surprised to see a new roll joint had come up not far from the old one. It was an ambitious venture - a largeish shack made of bamboo and leaf-matting (and set up on illegally occupied land, but that's beside the point). It even had seating space for about eight people, a rarity among roll joints. And a menu too! Nine roll joints out of ten don't bother with such sophistication (given their somewhat limited bill of fare, menus do come across as superfluous). The remainder simply tack on a notice on the wall. This one was different. The moment I entered the shack, the number-two picked out a printout from a stack and shoved it into my hands. I understood why it was necessary; the outfit boasted no less than three items over and above the usual, with yet another one added with pen later.

Sadly, the promoters' ambition and enthusiasm somewhat exceeded their ability to spell. Before I could order, I had to sit and decipher the text. Choumini (chowmein) and tootcon (sweet corn) soup were easy. But autoson soup had me baffled, completely - I had no clue at all what it could be. I asked the boss what it meant. He couldn't say anything much, so contented himself with repeating the name a couple of times. However, when rendered in his characteristic Oriya lilt (AWWT-onsOWn) it seemed to ring a bell somewhere. The third time he said it I caught on, finally. And then I had to take a second or two to wince, recover my breath, and stop clutching my temples. I felt so sorry for the lot that I asked if I could proofread the menu, which offer they accepted with alacrity. Only after I finished this little task was I able to turn my attention to the food.

The weather was too hot for soup (which begs the question, what were they doing in the bill of fare in the first place?). The spellings didn't inspire much confidence either. I decided to play it safe and stick to chiken [sic] rolls. The price had been scribbled over with a pen, so I asked (specifically) how much the double-egg version cost. Number-two said eighteen apiece. I was impressed enough to order two - this shop undercut the old one by two Rupees, pretty decent considering their slender operating margins. Chef du jour then sets about beating the eggs and heating the rotis, and all this while number-two maintains a running commentary on how novel the rolls are, how the special masala blend adds a mysterious something to them, something the chef learned in Calcutta so you won't get it anywhere else, not in this city for sure.

By the time the rolls arrived, I was curious but not exactly slavering with anticipation - in the past I've had several encounters with bombastic purveyors of street- and other food. Predictably enough, the rolls tasted exactly the same as what you get at any other stall or pushcart. Still, not bad for eighteen bucks, I thought. Actually no, number-two demanded twenty-two.

I was really taken aback. I pointed out he had said eighteen earlier. Which launched him into another rigmarole about how he had meant single-egg when he said eighteen, and double egg sold for twenty-two. I reminded him I had specifically asked him about double egg and he had said eighteen. He fell back on the time-tested tactic of ignoring my question and reiterating the price list as if it had been sent down from heaven with the other ten commandments. I certainly was not going to stand around there arguing with that moron for a few measly Rupees. But nor was I exactly overflowing with goodwill for that lot either. In fact, I was irritated enough to do something I generally refrain from indulging in. I dug out a hundred and then, while number two was counting out the change, quietly abstracted the proofed copy of the menu and slid it into my pocket. Chef caught on, and said "That's the corrected version!" I looked him straight in the eye, and said "I know." Poor fellow didn't know what to say, so I quietly walked off.

And if you haven't guessed by now, it's hot-and-sour soup.

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Autonson Soup - I

A lot of things happened since my last post. I shifted back to India, spent a little time in Delhi and Hyderabad, then took up a job teaching law in a university in Cuttack, Orissa. And each of these places has contributed to my sprawling backlog of foodie adventures I want to write about but cannot for lack of time. Cuttack also joins Hyderabad, Bangalore, Istanbul, Kota Bharu (Malaysia) and Tanjung Pinang (Indonesia) in the list of places I've visited recently, but not written about so far.

Cuttack as a city is difficult to characterise. "Moribund" describes it well. I'd say this moribund-ness itself derives from a curious reluctance to identify with either the past or the future. And to this can be attributed many of its unique, often contradictory characteristics. For example, it claims continuous inhabitation for upwards of a thousand years. Looks like it too, particularly those spooky, winding lanes in the heart of the city. But nobody seems talk about the secrets they hold, the events they witnessed over the ages. If the city's denizens are passionate about its lore, they sure don't let outsiders like us know.

Yet their tepidness towards the past is just that, tepid. Cities like Delhi exhibit what I once described as a "strange, savage violence perpetrated by the present on its own mute past." But then Delhi is a city on the move. Protected buildings and ruins are viewed mostly as impediments to unbridled construction, to be circumvented through creeping encroachment and bribery. That is, vestiges of its past amount to little more than hindrances to its frenzied, unregulated future growth. None of all this apply to Cuttack. It does not treat its past with hostility and resentment, at least overtly. Nor does it perceive itself as a "happening" city; that title was ceded to neighbouring Bhubaneswar a long time ago. Bhubaneswar boasts all that one can wish for in a metropolis - malls, multiplexes, multinational fast-food outlets. Cuttack's concessions to glamour stop with a Big Bazaar and a solitary Cafe Coffee Day outlet (housed in the same complex, incidentally).

Cuttack's inhabitants are exceptionally nice. Within weeks of our moving to our present house, the landlady more or less adopted us. From occasional cups of tea sent up, to spontaneous "Join us for lunch!" invitations; now we are regarded as an integral part of the family for all ceremonies organised within the extended clan. The exception: tradesmen and especially auto drivers - among the surliest I've encountered anywhere. Even this is of a singular nature. The Delhi shopkeeper regards you as an impediment and nuisance; he could have served so many customers and made so much money if only he didn't have to attend to your imbecilic queries. So he shouts at you. His Cuttack counterpart's rudeness is not impelled by any such misbegotten entrepreneurial spirit. This guy is indifferent to sales and customer goodwill alike. Possibly both interfere with his contemplation of the infinite.

Similarly, the Delhi auto driver is out to rook you for all he can get. So the bargaining begins. He first demands a preposterous amount (the feeler, to see how new to the city - hence gullible - you are); you explode in indignation ("Dude, I'm local!"); he wilts a bit, bleats on about how difficult it is to earn a living these days ("Do you know how much rent the owner charges from me these days?"); you stand firm ("Look, if you don't belt up I'm looking for another auto"); and finally you arrive at a figure you both think reasonable, which could be anything between 10% and 40% over and above the metered fare. This holds true of most other cities - Hyderabad, Bangalore (auto drivers follow the meter more closely, but now and then they ask for something extra), even Bhubaneswar.

In Cuttack, the process runs in this fashion: You hail a free auto; he stops (invariably at least twenty yards ahead); you run up to him; he quotes his usual preposterous fare; you point out he's demanding more than twice the "correct fare" (i.e. what you usually pay - till date I've never seen a Cuttack auto with a meter installed); so he haughtily turns away and drives off, while you keep standing there feeling slightly stupid. This process repeats itself about five times. The sixth either quotes the "correct fare" first time off, or proves to be more reasonable in his expectations. You quickly come to a bargain and set off with him, having wasted about half an hour - sometimes more - on this silly charade. Even though Cuttack auto fares are at least at par with, if not more than, what you get in larger and more prosperous cities.Come to think of it, I've never managed to find out what happens to the auto-walas who drive away. Do they regularly manage to snare dupes willing to pay such inflated fares? Unlikely, given that Cuttack is not exactly the richest of cities. So is it that they don't need to earn a living, or at least feel the need to do so?

What I have described above might help make sense of two features I found deeply characteristic of the Cuttack food scene. The first is a general paucity of eateries. To be sure they do exist, but not anywhere as thickly clustered as they do in other cities. Take the area our university is situated, a nameless stretch along the Mahanadi between Chahata and Gora Kabar so devoid of landmarks and other reference points it's impossible to direct autowalas to it. One cannot get within a kilometre and a half anything resembling a square meal. The nearest tea-shop is at least a kilometre away, so is the nearest provision store. The stretch, by the way, is utterly beautiful. In any other city, it would have been clogged with chaiwalas, chaatwalas, and other junk-food sellers. Thankfully this has not happened, and the stretch has retained its pristine beauty so far.

Even areas that ought to sustain greater demand (such as Ravenshaw University or the railway station), contain far fewer eateries than one would expect. Fewer, and drab. That is the second characteristic, a lack of variety. Exceptions exist: Royal serves a mean 'Stick Kabab' (more or less what we in Delhi refer to as Chicken Tikka); then I have seen a place advertising authentic Oriya cuisine. But by and large, Cuttack's eateries can be classified into three categories. Close to the top of the pile lie a bunch of nondescript family-style restaurants. All have rickety air-conditioning, and a more or less standardised multi-cuisine menu - some Mughlai items, some Chinese items, a few (not many, only one or two) typical Oriya dishes like Dalma and Mutton Kassa. Then come nondescript dhabas and other low-budget places. They range in size and decrepitude, but they are all marred by hygiene issues. And rude service. Nonetheless, they make for an interesting alternative because their food is better and much more varied.

The third type comprises what can be considered fast-food outlets. If dhabas operate from hovels, these These operate out of anything from push-carts to bamboo-and-tarpaulin shacks to proper shops. But regardless of these differences, they have near-identical menus with very little variation in prices. A half-plate of chicken chowmein sells in the range of twenty Rupees (usually seventeen or eighteen), chicken rolls for fifteen (single-egg) to twenty (double-egg). The marginally larger establishments extend to things like chicken pakora and chilli chicken (anything between fifty to sixty for a full plate). That's it.

[Continued in Part II]

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Dorm Cooking 01: Chicken Curry for First-Time Cooks of Non-Veggie

[Guest-Post by Anita Dixit]

1. Take down from the supermarket shelf the smallest available pack of chicken drumsticks. Look at it with some trepidation. Replace. Take down again. Replace. Repeat three times. Finally, cross fingers and buy.

2. Take home and announce to unsuspecting spouse 'I have bought chicken drumsticks. I'm going to cook them myself.' Ignore his look of panic. Also ignore his pleading look as he says 'will you also take off the skin yourself?' He's trying to make you say No. Don't say no - you're going to do this all on your own!

3. Open packaging. Take final, scared, look at chicken. Then grasp firmly. Let out a sigh as you find that it does not feel slimy, or ooze blood onto your hands, or any such disgusting thing.

4. Remove skin. Correction, attempt to remove skin. Chicken will resist having its skin removed and tenaciously cling onto it. Do not give up. Continue to pull off skin.

5. After two drumsticks have been skinned, start swearing fluently under your breath. This makes the skinning easier. A sentence like 'saale, tu kya, tera baap bhi niklega!' is extremely effective. Preferably, swearing should be done in one's native tongue. However, take care to keep the volume down, to prevent spouse offering to help again. You DID want to do this yourself, didn't you?

6. After skinning four drumsticks, start contemplating philosophical issues: why would a dead chicken be so attached to its skin? what use does it have for it? is this a sign that consumerism is moving from humans to chickens - a form of reverse bird flu? or is it evidence that the soul exists even after death and resists dispossession of what it considers its own? Such philosophising will enable you to get through the last two drumsticks.

7. Finally get through last two drumsticks. Wash hands and knife thoroughly, they're totally sticky and slimy by this time. Give chicken one last baleful look. Then proceed to make several deep cuts in each drumstick. Resist temptation to attack it with the knife as if you're trying to murder it. Remember, it's already dead, no point giving vent to your anger through violence.

8. Now you're in your element! All you have to deal with is spices and herbs and cooking, and you know how to do that! Smile. Then proceed to marinate the chicken with yoghurt, salt, turmeric, and red chilli powder. Mix thoroughly, make sure drumsticks are properly covered. Let it sit for 2 hours.

9. Slice onions fine, make a paste of ginger, garlic and green chillies. Saute onions in about 3 tablespoonfuls of cooking oil. When they start turning golden, add garlic-ginger-chilli paste and saute a bit more.

10. Add marinated chicken. Let it cook till most of the yoghurt gets absorbed into a thick gravy. Don't worry, it WILL get cooked, and in a reasonable time. Just because it's not a vegetable, that doesn't mean that it's uncookable. You can make the gravy as thick as you like.

11. Remove from fire, garnish with lots of coriander leaves. They taste good, and they look very good too!

12. NOW you can complain to spouse about the tenacity of the chicken in holding onto its skin. He will tell you that there's a right way of doing it. Doesn't matter now, since you've proved that you can do it all on your own, you can take help now. Give sheepish grin, and say 'Yes, I'm sure I was doing it all wrong, you show me next time.'

13. Ladle onto plate, cross fingers hard. Voila, it's cooked! And tastes good too! Look tentatively at spouse. He's licking his fingers. He turns around and says, 'accha banaya hai!' with a big smile. Way to go, baby! You finally cooked chicken! A world of endless possibilities is open to you now...

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Dorm Cooking 00: Prefatory Note

Another new series, and this one marks a fresh approach for the blog. So far I have resisted posting recipes. Like I mentioned in the recent policy update, the blog was envisaged as an attempt to understand food, particularly street food, in its larger social and economic context. Recipes tend to do the very opposite - their purport is to detach preparations from their origins. That is what they achieve when they instruct the Peruvian how to cook Tagine, or the Japanese the right way of making Borscht. Often they suggest how ingredients difficult to procure can be substituted with easily available alternatives; this has the effect of further distancing the dish from its roots.

Of course, it can be argued that recipes serve to bridge cultures; the Tagine recipe may well constitute, say, the Peruvian's sole exposure (no matter how tenuously approximate) to Moroccan Culture. My simple response is that true or not, this has little to do with what the FoodScapes blog has set out to do. It was started with an express remit (namely, to understand food in its context), and publishing recipes goes against this.

However, there does exist a genre of cooking that transcends context, so to speak. And for good measure, it is a genre which we ourselves, my friends and I, regularly add to. Most of us are either grad students or young professionals in academic or semi-academic streams. Money and time are both prized commodities, and yet we appreciate good food as much as, and may even more so than, the next person. In the face of such onerous demands, something or the other has to give way, and usually it is adherence to convention that is a casualty. Let's face it, our cooking is not conventional. It is dictated likely as not by what is convenient, what the local department store is offering a discount on, what is left in the fridge, and whether it'll fit into the microwave. Not conventional, as you can see, but boy, are the results good! I've gained quite a bit of weight in the last year, despite subsisting largely on nuked vegetables.

Incidentally, I find this genre of cooking has garnered some wider recognition even. Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks blog recently featured an article on "dorm food ideas". Apart from anything else, that resolved the issue of what to call this genre. "Grad Student Cooking" didn't sound right somehow, not the least because many friends and potential contributors are no longer students. For that matter, even yours truly might gain a respite from studenthood within this week! "Dorm Cooking" sounds better - it conveys a feeling of haste, a bohemian disregard for conventions, a freewheeling lifestyle marred only by looming deadlines. And let's face it, that's mostly what both grad-student-life and early-professional-life are all about.

This series also represents another break with convention. So far I have been the only one writing on this blog. We start the series, however, with a guest post by Anita Dixit on chicken curry. More posts as and when. As usual, this prefatory note also contains a list of posts in the series.


List of Articles:

1. Chicken Curry for First-Time Cooks of Non-Veggie (guest post by Anita Dixit)
   

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Thaksin Beef Noodles - II

[Continued from Part I]

The first time I went there was soon after I had shifted to Gillman Heights, a few bus-stops away. My then-flatmate Mainak and I decided to go there on the spur of the moment. It was a cold, damp evening; had rained almost throughout the afternoon. Neither of us had cooked anything, or was inclined to do so. And so we decided we could do with something hot, spicy, filling and, most important, cooked by someone else.

Actually we also wanted something dryish by way of noodles, not soupy or overly gravy-laden, and that's where we messed up. The Signboard had two pictures - one soupy and the other dry - and we didn't know which was which. (Like I said, this was in my comparatively greenhorn days.) We tried asking the ladies manning the stall, but they had only minimal English, only slightly more than I had Malay. So we finally asked for the beef noodles and, sure enough, we ended up with the soup! I mean, it was bound to happen.

We had opted for $4 bowls. This gave us a substantial amount of broth containing lots of noodles and a fair amount of meat, and topped with large cilantro leaves. The Travelling Hungryboy reports the $5 version is garnished with garlic, which makes an immense difference. Also, apparently, its broth is far superior to that used in the $3.50 version, though he wasn't able to understand how this could be so. I am yet to try either version, so am unable to comment. So let me say only that the broth in the $4 version tasted just fine!

In his comment on Part I, my friend Soumya asked how this Thai Muslim version is different from the non-Halal soup sold on Thailand streets. He also mentions the Thai food he'd tried in Singapore's Lau Pa Sat was noticeably sweeter and less spicy. I have never been to Thailand myself (about the nearest was the Tom Yam I had at Kota Bharu, Malaysia, just south of the Thai border). Nevertheless, my guess is that the Thaksin version (at least, in stock form - pun fully intended) was milder that what one gets in Thailand. There are many Chinese who have no stomach for spicy food. At the same time, the soup was not exactly bland; it had its bite all right! It was also mildly sour, but the taste that stood out was the umami of the meat. The meaty broths and stews I've had so far have all been thick, usually creamy. This is the first time I have come across a broth that is thin and so markedly meaty in its flavour. The usual Thai seasonings went into it - one could discern lemongrass and a good deal of coriander. And of course the ubiquitious chilli. Like I said it was comparatively subdued, but certainly made its presence felt.

The meat was the best part of the experience - fresh, of excellent quality, and minimally seasoned. As the notice promised, it had not been marinated using tenderisers or vinegar. Neither had it been sauteed or braised to get rid of the stink most meats have. And yet it was neither hard nor stinky. It was soft and juicy, and the lightly marbled fat imparted a feeling of substance. And they were pretty generous with the meat too.

By the time the food came we were both famished, not the ideal frame of mind for taking levelheaded decisions. Mainak, moreover, craved something really spicy. Poor fellow, he heaped chilli flakes onto one of those little sauce-dishes, and tipped the entire lot into his soup. Thankfully I stopped myself from following his example, and remained content with a few tentative sprinkles. That itself was powerful enough for me. It got me just the right amount of bite, I settled down to a nice, pleasant dinner. And then Mainak start to glow. A fiery incandescence spewed out of his eyes: his heavily swarthy complexion was suffused through with a redness angry like molten lava. He could only gasp for breath. Perspiration saturated his t-shirt and likely as not collected in little puddles on his seat. And still he continued, in spite of my protestations. He finished the bowl, and then together we walked across to Vivocity for some Korean-style barbeque. Ultimately we had some ice cream, and that seemed to finally cool him down a little.

I went to Thaksin again a few weeks later. This time I tried out the Phad Thai. Very well cooked (the meat was tender and flavourful as always), and sprinkled over with coarsely ground peanut. True, it lacked the sheer personality of the Soup. Nevertheless, it made for a very satisfying meal, arguably more satisfying than the latter.

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Thaksin Beef Noodles - I

Truth be told, I'm getting a little bored of Singapore food. When I first came here, I was impressed with the variety every hawker-centre seemed to offer. After nearly two years here, I have come to a paradoxical conclusion - that mostly it's the same sort of variety they feature. Go to your first food court, you'll find at least ten different kinds of stalls. Very impressive. Go to the next one, you'll once again find ten different varieties of stalls, but at least six in common with the first one. Go to your third, fourth and fifth, and gradually the truth dawns on you - like an expert cardsharp the city's been dealing you the same set of outlets all along without you realising it!

Few hawker-centre stalls in Singapore rise above the average. Some exceptions have carved a niche for themselves through dint of sheer culinary excellence, and aided largely by word-of-mouth advertising. The legendary No-Signboard Seafood Restaurant has made a remarkable transformation into a chain of upscale restaurants. Some like Sin Huat Seafood Restaurant have remained true to their hawker-centre origins, though they charge heftily - a plate of Crab Bee Hoon sells for S$ 45, no less! Still others plod on with their old ways, charging reasonably, largely unknown beyond a select circle of foodie-loyalists. The beef kway teow shop on Lorong 9, Geylang still offers a near-ambrosial experience at five Dollars, but how many know about it?

These shops have all taken decades, literally, to achieve their present eminence. In contrast, Thaksin Beef Noodles is clearly in a hurry. The sheer outré cheekiness of the name is enough indication of this. Set up a Thai (to be precise, Thai Muslim) food stall and name it after the most controversial Thai around, what could be a more surefire way of attracting attention? The brazen note also finds reflection in the tagline, admittedly nowhere near so funny - "We are bullish about beefing you" (italics in original). Below the main signboard at the Seah Im branch lies a second, smaller one. This contains mention of the other branches (two others listed, and as far as I know at least one more not stated); and a gloat about press coverage ("5 Totally Independent & Unsolicited Editorials (sic) in 3 years").

Thaksin is situated in the eastern half, towards the adjoining Harbourfront MRT station. Very few Chinese outlets in this part; most seem to be Halal. Just a coincidence, or was it planned that way?

The Seah Im Food Centre is located next to Telok Blangah Road (and the elevated West Coast Highway running above it), right opposite the HarbourFront Centre.Thaksin offers a startlingly limited menu. It comprises all of two main items, listed as "Beef Noodle" and "Pad Thai Fried Kuey Teow". Both of these are available with a variety of trimmings and garnishes, but the only distinct side-dish on offer is rice! Perhaps this tightly focussed menu is part of their gameplan - targeting a (very) niche market. We can draw credence from the curious legend right where the bill of fare abruptly ends: "Traditional Thai Beef Noodle Soup served with succulent beef cooked with herbs & spices WITHOUT the use of tenderizer preservatives or added MSG." Informative, despite the idiosyncratic construction. Correction, not even very informative. Because the first time we went there we couldn't figure out which of the two items it referred to! This was of course in my days of relative ignorance.

[Continued in Part II]

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