SEA 2023 (17/17) – Notable Eats in Singapore

Last post of this trip report! Wow! It had been a seriously fun vacation.

Kaya Toast

A popular breakfast item in Singapore was kaya toast, a sandwich with kaya (coconut jam) and butter between toasted bread, often served with runny eggs. It tasted sweet and rich. We made a point to sample a variety of this stuff within our limited time on the island. Xuan particularly enjoyed it. On the other hand, Ting couldn’t care less and opted to focus on just the eggs.

YY – I loved this place for its traditional coffee house appearance and family business operation, compared to the restaurant chains that looked like western cafes. Its kaya toast was a hilarious loaf of Hawaiian bread. While it was more filling, it was messy to eat as a sandwich
Toast Box – our collective favorite was this modern, trendy, and brightly-lit chain. Its kaya toast was the least interesting in the sense that it looked exactly like how we’d imagine a jam-and-butter sandwich – made with the standard-sized sliced bread found in supermarkets everywhere, with a thick layer of kaya spread and properly melted butter. Comfort food shouldn’t get too creative, though, and this is exactly how we preferred it
Ya Kun – found as smaller operations with limited seating in underground food streets, Ya Kun had the kaya toast for people on a diet… its bread was thinly sliced, heavily toasted, and bound together with a thin layer of kaya. Crunchy and gone in two bites, it resembled an Oreo as much as it did a sandwich
Heavenly Wang – we got an a la carte order at the airport to quench the craving for one last time. Its kaya toast construction was somewhere between Toast Box and Ya Kun. It stood out with a pandan flavor in its kaya, but Xuan didn’t appreciate it, so that was that

YY, Toast Box, Ya Kun, and Heavenly Wang

Kopi (Coffee) and Teh (Tea)

Even though Singapore and Thailand were geographically close, they had very different coffee cultures. Whereas the Thai cafes mostly focused on espresso-based drinks with Italian names, the Singaporeans brewed theirs the old-school way as passed down from British colonial days. Their coffee and tea, in fact, were very similar to what people in Hong Kong made. Both were filtered with a large net (“sock” in Singapore and “pantyhose” in HK), and both included sweetened milk by default.

The Singaporeans had an extra layer of sophistication with a specific code for each modification of these drinks. For example, Teh O Kosong was just tea. Teh O added sugar. Teh included both condensed milk and sugar. They worked on a subtraction logic, whereas we usually thought of tea as a plain base that we could add stuff into. I’m not sure it’s super useful to know, but it’s fun to read about the naming conventions of kopi and teh.

Cone Dosa

Aside from being slightly more firm and crispy, the cone variation wasn’t much different from the regular dosa. We had never seen it in the US, though, and I had only tried it once in Penang. Therefore, it was a fun thing to order when we saw it on the menu.

Grilled Stingray

This stuff seemed quite popular at Newton Food Centre. Grilled and served with a generous layer of spicy sauce, this fish was tasty.

McDonald’s Nasi Lemak Burger

Mickey D’s in Singapore seemed to love special menu items. Unlike the Himalayan Tea from our first trip, though, this Nasi Lemak Burger actually tasted good. The combination of fried chicken, fried egg, sweet sambal, and maybe some other condiments worked really well together. I’m not sure I’d been able to guess nasi lemak because there was no rice, but the flavor was unmistakably Malaysian.

SEA 2023 (17/17) – Notable Eats in Singapore

Kaya Toast

Kopi (Coffee) and Teh (Tea)

Cone Dosa

Grilled Stingray

McDonald’s Nasi Lemak Burger

Southeast Asia 2023 – Index

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SEA 2023 (4/17) – Bangkok: Grand Hyatt Erawan – Peter's Blog

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