The Bizarre Truth

by Andrew Zimmern

  We had thirty-six courses, and finally, at 2:30 in the morning, I needed to be thrown in a wheelbarrow and rolled back to the hotel. I was the first to arrive and I was also the first to leave. Despite the warnings to slow down and not eat it all at once, I pushed the pedal to the metal. You have to pace yourself. But of course, how can you pace yourself when the first thing you taste is lamb braised in chutney, with fresh plums, lime juice, and spices. It tasted unlike anything I’ve had before, and I probably will never experience it again. Holding back is way too tall an order for someone like me.

  I can also have a hard time when people are drinking all night long and I don’t drink at all. I’m okay after the first round of stories, and I’m just fine when the voice volume increases. Usually, I’m good for the second go-round of the same stories, but when you’ve heard the story so many times you could tell it yourself, it’s time to head home. And so I wandered out to the streets of Delhi looking for a cab, desperate for a few hours to lie down to try and digest this amazing meal. Nobody loves lamb more than I do, but the next day, sort of like a tequila hangover, I swore to myself, I am never eating lamb again. I had lamb fat coming out of my pores for days. Of course, with such an amazing array of lamb dishes available in that city, it was only a matter of time before I caved on that one.

  Mary’s Corner

  The Quest for the Best Laksa

  in Singapore

  ew Yorkers, Chicagoans, let’s face it, really most Americans, think that they know what characteristics make for the best hot dog. Some say it’s all about the sauerkraut or relish. Others think it’s Heinz ketchup and yellow mustard. And then there is that group of people who believe one drop of the fancy red or yellow stuff completely ruins a tube steak. But at least we can all agree that encased ground meat served on a bun is the foundation for a basic hot dog.

  Well, Laksa is to parts of Southeast Asia what hot dogs are to America. This dish is one of the most popular soups served in that region, especially Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. There are many different styles of preparation, and everyone has an opinion about what makes one bowl better than another. Laksa is a spicy noodle soup that originates from the Peranakan culture, a heritage often referred to as Baba or Nonya. As a group, the Peranakans formed when the Malay Indians merged with the Chinese in the eighteenth century. Many different dishes symbolize Peranakan culture, most notably otak-otak, a sausage made of ground and seasoned forcemeat and steamed in thin portions in bamboo, banana, or other edible leaves. It can also be grilled or baked. To some people this is the most popular and iconic of all the traditional Peranakan foods, but my favorite regional dish is Laksa.

  To understand this dish is to understand two things: One, it’s an easy, cheap meal in a bowl, with lots of noodles and shellfish in the broth. Malays, the Singaporeans, and Southeast Asian food freaks argue about what makes for authentic and honest Laksa. To me, that sort of culinary dialogue often misses the point. You can argue about whether or not crispy shallots belong on top, or whether little strings of cold omelet should be julienned and stirred in, or how thick the broth should be, whether it should be thin and sour (as it often is in Thailand), or thick, rich, and creamy with a sturdy foundation of coconut milk. And let’s not even get started on noodle options. To me, these are all specious arguments. Who cares? All those soups belong in the Laksa family. It’s like arguing over pizza. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s from a grocer’s freezer or a neighborhood wood-fired-oven joint, it’s all pizza as long as it tastes good to someone. I’ve often thought that what propelled Laksa to such incredible heights can largely be attributed to the jump in American tourism over the last forty or fifty years, where gobs of foreign visitors came back to their hometowns raving about the best meal-in-a-bowl. The obsession with this high-energy, big-flavor dish reached staggering proportions because the combination of flavors is just simply off the charts. When it intersected with a large enough group of new diners-well, let’s just say that a tipping point was an understatement. Any traveler who goes to Singapore and doesn’t have a bowl of Laksa might as well call the trip a waste of time. Once you have tried it, you become consumed with it, scouring foodie chat rooms and Web sites to discover who has the best Laksa in town, and not just the one where you live. We all have our opinions. I certainly have mine, but we’ll get to that later.

  I’ve been dying to get to Singapore for as long as I can remember, and finally had my chance in 2008. On most trips, the first glimpse of a country comes as your plane prepares for landing. Sometimes it’s what you see through the window; other times it’s what you hear over the intercom. This is especially pertinent when landing in Singapore. It’s not your polite “Please fasten your seat belt. Thank you for flying Delta Airlines.” Instead, it’s a kindly auditory welcome mat stating, “It is 98 degrees Fahrenheit, 34 degrees Celsius this morning in Singapore. Please mind overhead compartments, as luggage items may have shifted during flight. And please remember that swearing, spitting on the ground, or the use or importation of illegal drugs, even for personal consumption, is punishable by death.” It’s the kind of thing that makes you gasp the first time you hear it.

  The city-state of Singapore is certainly a unique place. It’s a very small island, roughly four times the size of Washington, D.C., with about four million inhabitants. Singapore is one of few city-states in the world. There is Monaco and the Vatican City, which is certainly rarefied company. Singapore, which boasts a gorgeous natural harbor with very deep water, is strategically positioned in the Pacific Ocean among the low-hanging Southeast Asian countries. Take a look at a map and you can see why this was the perfect place for the British East India Company to send one of their most aggressive agents, a gentleman named Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. He set foot on the island in 1819 to create a British trade port, intending to compete with the Dutch, who were Europe’s big trading force in the region. It was founded as a British Colony in 1819, but joined what’s called the Malaysian Federation of States in 1963. Currently, Singapore is predominantly populated by people of Chinese extraction, who make up 76 percent of the total population. About 15 percent are the indigenous Malay people, and about 8 percent are Indian. I was shocked to discover Indians made up such a small percentage of the Singaporean population, given that Indian culture is so vibrant in Singapore and quite predominant when it comes to the local zeitgeist. You can’t turn around in the street without seeing the wide swath of Indian influence in Singapore. Considering the country’s diverse cultural makeup, it’s easy to see how—and I admit, I hate this term—one of the world’s most famously original fusion cuisines was born here. English, Dutch, and European influence on a Chinese and Malay culture, with free-flowing Indian exposure, spices, food styles, curries—this is the stuff that creates the ultimate hybrid food palette.

  Eating has become a national pastime in this modern, bustling country. People eat all day long, and so my first job was to find out where most people do their chowing down. My priority was to check out the hawker centers, and I do love me some street food. I think it’s the best way to eat, because you have so many options. Some stalls are more like restaurants, offering five or six dishes, while others specialize in one dish, like barbecued ribs, stewed mutton, or otak-otak.

  I was ecstatic to visit People’s Park, which boasts hundreds of stalls. I also checked out the Zion River Food Side Center and Adam’s Road Food Center, which is in a Muslim neighborhood, so all the food there is Halal. People’s Park is the one that I returned to on several occasions, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s right in the center of town. Many Americans get flustered in hawker stall environments in foreign countries, freaking out about whether or not they’ll be hovering over a toilet for hours after having a few bites of street food. I wouldn’t stress too much about that in Singapore. These hawker centers are spotless. Singapore has a deservedly well-earned reputation for strict laws (I mean, they outlaw gum, for Pete’s sake), so the extreme cleanliness of the country is not surpr
ising. This is a country in pursuit of excellence. They want to be the best when it comes to a hybrid food culture. They want to be the most crime-free country on the planet. They want to be the cleanest city in the world. Given some of the places I visit and the things I eat on Bizarre Foods, it might surprise you that cleanliness around food is extremely important to me. Not just from a visual standpoint—I actually get concerned about my well-being when I see a lot of filth and degradation. That’s no environment to be preparing food in. Sadly, that’s how much of the world operates—including the United States, which is ironically one of the filthiest food countries with respect to kitchens. Everybody hems and haws about what to eat while traveling, but I’d be more concerned about picking up a bug from something at a giant American chain restaurant than at a Singaporean hawker stall.

  Hawker Centers are government run in the sense that the government owns the space and leases the stalls. This allows them to keep the place clean and well-managed. Fortunately, the government understands that they have no business cooking food. Let the artists, the chefs, come in there and do their thing, and let them do it in an environment—the physical space—that the government maintains. The centers have tables as well as lovely little gardens where you can sit down and enjoy your food. But first you have to decide what to eat. You claim a numbered table, then walk around to the stalls that stretch for half a mile in a series of indoor and outdoor courtyards in People’s Park. You order, and let the hawkers know your table number. Once your grub is ready, a runner will ferry the food to you. Pretty sweet, huh?

  I was fortunate enough to dine at People’s Park the first time with Violet Oon, the Julia Child of Singapore. She was an absolutely fabulous host, and she knew her way around the Singapore food scene and was game for trying everything. I immediately developed a serious food crush on her. We ate fantastic frog porridge and slurped pig soup filled with all the different parts of the pig: liver, heart, lungs, and so on. Grandma is in the back of the stall, stirring ten-gallon pots filled with a generations-old family recipe. I know it sounds overly romantic, but that’s truly what it is. The pig soup broth base was top-heavy with sweet spices like cinnamon and star anise, ginger, lovely braised greens, and a hint of fresh lime juice to lighten it up. The soup also incorporated melting bits of braised pork rib, shoulder, and paper-thin slices of the pig heart, tongue, liver, and other effluvia. I know that might not be up everyone’s alley, but don’t knock it ’til you try it. We picked some dishes from a duck stall where you can get wings, tongues, split roasted heads, and sliced duck breast. We devoured the classic Hainan chicken, which is a steamed bird that tastes like no other chicken you’ve placed in your mouth. It’s the way chicken used to taste everywhere, I imagine, and the better hawkers purge and then gorge their birds on a diet designed to increase the brittle nature of the skin and the meat’s fat content. They drizzle the cooked poultry with an aged, thickened, sweet soy sauce and serve it with classic Singaporean-style fried rice. People’s Park was just a phenomenal experience.

  Violet turned us on to a place called Tian Jin Hai Seafood Restaurant. Tian Jin Hai is the brainchild of Francis Yeo, who ran a successful seafood hawker stall at the Jackson Center for ten years. When the center closed a few years ago, he went on a long holiday and decided to open in another hawker center when he came back. However, when he returned he discovered his space wouldn’t be ready for a while. This is one of the drawbacks of the government owning all the hawker centers, and it’s a fairly common story in Singapore. On one hand, they are clean and organized. On the other, bribes or cash don’t speak as loudly as connections do. And sometimes vice versa. Yeo sought out another option, stumbling upon a place at the edge of town in Punggol’s Marina Country Club. A Taiwanese chef had recently closed down his restaurant at the marina and the space was vacant. Yeo took it over and opened his restaurant a few months later. Unlike the cramped and hot Jackson Center, this dockside restaurant sprawls over a series of patios, some covered, some open-aired, with thirty or forty tables, a bar, a semi-open kitchen, and a beautiful view of the water. Instead of little stools and tables, there are lazy Susans and fancy chairs. Obviously, prices have gone up, but Yeo offers the best seafood I tried in Singapore.

  Yeo earned the reputation for incredible chili crab at his former hawker stall. Chili crab, the Singaporean national dish, features giant mud crabs with thick shells and stout claws. He offers eight or nine different varieties on his menu: black pepper, rice wine, black bean, the traditional sweet chili, just to name a few. The crab is broken apart and lightly steamed so it just holds together. It’s cooked again in Chef Yeo’s killer sweet chili sauce. It’s a great dish to pick through, spending some quality time cracking and working the meat out of the crab’s nooks and crannies. You suck on the thick, sweet chili paste that gets all over your fingers and your face. It’s probably the only time that making a huge mess is encouraged in Singapore. After I tried chili crab a couple different ways, I cleaned up with some hot towels and moved on to Yeo’s newest creation: steamed shark’s head.

  This is a dish that Yeo claims he invented and, interestingly, it’s a dish that has no meat on it at all. Singaporeans, like the rest of the world outside of our country, eat from snout to tail, using every part of the animal, because they have never lost connection with the idea that they should never waste a thing. Finances dictate it, as does culinary ideology. Yeo noticed this was not the case with shark—the heads always went to waste. He experimented with the shark’s heads and ended up with a novel dish you’re not going to find anywhere else. He starts by stripping down the skin, trimming the head, and cutting out the gills. You’re left with a pointy, triangular piece of bone with thick slabs of what look like gelatinous, pale, white tendons hanging from it. These are the connective tissues that make the jaws of the animal move up and down with such mind-boggling strength. Yeo makes lateral incisions perpendicular to the bone so that all these big flaps of tendons protrude like little fingers. He steams the shark’s head in light sweet soy sauce and rice wine, which removes the pungent (and often nasty) off flavors typically present in fish heads. After four hours of steaming, those gelatinous pieces of cartilage melt in your mouth. Next, he puts this head on a platter, drizzles it with a sturdier soy sauce, and finishes it with shaved ginger and scallion. You pull off these little bits of cartilage from the head and eat them. The texture reminds me of perfectly cooked sea cucumber, yielding a slight crunch as you sink your teeth in but melting away after just a hint of pressure. It reminds me of bone marrow’s rich, buttery flavor. This is one of the most unusual dishes I’ve ever had, but trust me, it’s absolutely addictive; it sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie, but the flavor, texture, and novelty simply blew me away. It’s certainly not the type of thing anyone would ever order on their own, but it’s worth a try if you get the opportunity.

  Just across the city is a completely different food experience. I toured Little India with Anita Kapoor, a local Indian woman who works as food writer and a local TV host. She is superbly knowledgeable and understands the food scene in Singapore, especially in her neighborhood. The highlight for me was the Banana Leaf Apollo. This is an Indian restaurant that, though not responsible for inventing fish head curry, takes credit for making it globally famous. We sat down in this cafeteria-style eatery where you dine on banana leaves in the traditional style, ordering rice, some condiments, and bowls of curried fish heads. These aren’t tiny fish heads, either, but taken from giant red snapper with enough of the neck in place to provide ample meaty benefits in addition to little tasty treasures like the cheeks, eyes, tongue, and bits of skin. When cooked correctly, a fish head offers so much tender and delicious meat. Frankly, I get bored with mildly flavored, everyday fillets, so every once in a while a more aggressive fish concoction just hits the spot. The spicy curried broth loaded with root vegetables, greens, onions, and tomatoes is the perfect partner to a fish head. You scoop up bits of the fish head and the broth onto your rice and eat everyt
hing by hand. Never use your left hand at the table! Indian culture reserves this hand for more personal bodily functions.

  My food crush, Violet, and I met up for a second date later in the week. She introduced me to one of the most interesting approaches to cuisine I’ve ever experienced. The Imperial Herbal Sin Chi Café and Restaurant in Vivo City, located on the beautiful harborfront walk, specializes in TCM, or traditional Chinese medicine. The restaurant sets out to not only nourish, but cure whatever ails your body. The menu is chock-full of exotic ingredients: antelope horn, dried sea horse and cordyceps, deer penis—nothing illegal, mind you. Once we arrived, we sat down with Dr. Fu, a TCM physician. He took my pulse, examined my tongue, and checked my body by prodding and poking me all over with his fingers. He did a lot of staring at me. The consultation ended with a prescription for particular foods to cool down my body parts that had gotten overheated, warm up my parts that had gotten too cold, tone down my yang, replenish my ying … You know the drill. You aren’t required to undergo the medical examination in order to eat at this remarkable eatery, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t. I suppose many customers, especially locals, already have an herbalist prescribing food for their health, so they just go in and eat the fabulous cuisine. If you’re currently in between herbalists, check out Dr. Fu, who thought some scallops with egg white, deer penis soup, crocodile soup, and a bracing eucalyptus tonic was just the thing I needed. I’m not certain I felt much different afterward, but it was easily the best-tasting medicine I’ve ever had.