Soup and Salad
I'm a soup fan and Singapore has lots for me to choose from. $4 should get you a large bowl at a soup stall.
Today we walked up to the Hawker Centre for lunch with a friend - being a week day her 7 year old daughter was at school and couldn't join us. I spotted Lotus Root and Pork Rib Soup - This is something I've been meaning to try for a few weeks. As far as I can tell it's lotus root, pork ribs and fresh peanuts, boiled together to make a mild clear brothy soup.
That's sliced lotus root in the picture below. It's some sort of a root vegetable. It has a crunchy texture like a sweet potato/yam/carrot, but tastes more like a potato or a bamboo perhaps - Hard to explain. I used chopsticks to get the lotus root and ribs out. It was a little difficult to eat the 2x2 inch pork pieces with their thin rubbery bones. I liked the soup. It's simple and mild. There's homemade chill sauce if you want to spice it up; there's always chili sauce.
When the girls get themselves French Toast, I head for the Yong Tau Foo Soup stall. Pick a minimum of 7 ingredients to have boiled into soup (noodles, veggies, mushrooms, various meats). They boil it while you wait: $4 and 4 minutes. I love it! You choose whether to have it served wet (with broth) or dry (no broth). I always get the broth. Chili sauce at every stall as I mentioned.
Corn Soup is the first soup I tried in Singapore. It's basically chicken soup: chicken, carrots, and thin circles of corn-on-the-cob in clear chicken broth - no noodles. It makes me wonder why I ever cut corn off the cob for soup - Never again. Try it, you won't go back. Depending on where you get it, the corn-on-the-cob pieces can be up to a few inches long. Ms.I loves this one too; Mostly she wants the corn.
Asia doesn't seem to be big on what we would consider breakfast food in North America. It's more what I would consider lunch and dinner food anytime of the day. I'm not much of a breakfast fan myself, so it's pretty cool.
Above is a typical buffet breakfast when we were at the hotel. It was the same at a different hotel we stayed in too. Soup, fruit, coleslaw/marinaded salad, green salads, a potato dishes, grilled veggies, chicken sausages of assorted types (no pork here, so as not to exclude anyone), and asian dish of some sort (none shown above). There were also cereals, breads, muffins, waffles/pancakes, but I can't eat those, and eggs. Coffee, tea, and juice. Anyone who looked local skipped right over the potatoes, waffles, and baked goods every time.
I still do salad for breakfast many days at home - with chopsticks.
My advice:
- Eat soup. It will cool you down and taste familiar.
- Go for a hotel with a buffet, and just pay for it. It's expensive. But when you don't have a clue what to eat for any of your meals here, at least you will be starting out your adventure well fed.