Foodstall in Chinatown

Nonya, or Peranakan food developed from the Chinese settlers in Singapore, Penang and Melaka who in turn integrated with the local Malay peoples and shared each others cooking styles. The result is a fabulous combination of Chinese technique with Malay spices. The fundamental flavours of Nonya cooking are lemongrass, chillies, candlenuts, shrimp paste, turmeric and garlic, though not for the faint hearted, delicious nonetheless.

With the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea on its doorstep Singapore is renowned for its abundance of seafood and its signature dish; black pepper or chilli crab followed closely by the classic fish head curry. As in other South East Asian countries you can find huge prawns, thick chunks of snapper or meltingly tender baby squid cooked in styles to suit your palette.

Indian and Malay cuisine feature prominently in Singapore, the latter brought the much loved satay; strips of skewered meat char-grilled and served with peanut dipping sauce and wedges of onion and cucumber and a flattened rice cake known as ketupat.

Across South East Asia you will find food served on the streets, small vendors selling regional specialities at next to nothing prices and Singapore is renowned for its hawker food. In keeping with the governments desire to portray Singapore as an Asian country with modern European food hygiene laws many of the hawker stalls have now been brought together under a single roof known as a food court. Here the stall- holders cook traditional food under the legislative eye of the government with each stall given a grading for hygiene standards, these are posted on the front of the stall for the customers (mainly tourists) benefit with ‘A’ being the highest, ‘B’ very good etc. This is a great (and cheap) way of sampling any number of Asian dishes and some of my most memorable meals have been in hawker centres. Open all day they are perfect for picking up half a dozen satay as a snack before a fish curry on banana leaf or Korean hot pot for supper.