Location: 36 Purvis Street #01-02, Singapore 188613

Taste-type: Italian

Price: Mains between about $25 and $50 SGD.

How to get there: MRT to City Hall, then a quick walk just up and across from Raffles Hotel.

Contact: 65-68371468

It is my last night in the Lion City and I am practising my listening face. I am eating and listening – or, to be more exact, presenting the façade of aural attention – and also, because I consider myself the Perfect Ninja and thus more capable of multi-tasking than mere mortals, thinking a little on the side. I am thinking about Garibaldi, one of the new breed of slickly Western fine dining establishments to germinate in Singapore’s urban centre, thinking about what has happened – is happening – to the country in which, once upon a time, a little Ninja was born and bled. I am thinking and listening, afraid of what I might hear.

I listen to the food, and it saddens me. All I hear are lacklustre echoes of some pre-packaged, streamlined vision of an Italy which might have never existed, bland lashings of sauces as a sort of stylish afterthought, meats and fish cooked out of their saving juices. And food is but a symptom of greater things. When I perch atop the tallest industrial parapets of the city, I hear a perpetual hum of teetering excitement, the whine of fast cars and trills of fashionably dressed women. I hear the screams of progress on the winds.

Where has the old Singapore gone? Was it ever real, or just a hallucination etched into a few steel girders and the concrete slabs beneath the Merlion? I cannot call this my country with any justice, and I cannot say for sure. All I can do is listen, to taxi drivers who prophesy the decay of the once-deified ruling class, to hawkers whose grief-drawn eyes belie their smiles and raucous laughter. I am told that sometimes when people listen, they weep.

Instead of shedding tears, I seek out the taste of a hallucinatory past in an empty shopping mall, a simple finish to a whirlwind mission. It may be as fake as everything else, but it still tastes good.

Verdict: I like kaya toast.

]]> http://theninjareview.com/2010/05/garibaldi-and-kaya-toast/feed/ 5 http://theninjareview.com/2010/03/328-katong-laksa/ http://theninjareview.com/2010/03/328-katong-laksa/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:11:27 +0000 The Ninja http://theninjareview.com/?p=794

Location: 216 East Coast Road, Singapore 455210

Taste-type: Singaporean/Peranakan

Price: Laksa S/M/L: $3.50/$4.50/$5.50. Lime Juice and Otak-Otak around $1.50 each.

How to get there: Taxi. The fare should be around $6-7: one taxi driver tried to hoodwink us and was dealt with.

Contact: (65) 97328963

In a city of great renown not so very long ago, there lived a humble man whose ancestors had invented noodles. This man too had the gift of his bloodline, and soon became the most popular noodle-seller in all the world. But fame came with a price, and many individuals of nefarious purpose pursued the humble man without relent, desperate to drain the secrets of his blood and assume his ancestral mantle upon their selves. The humble man spent his last days in fear, running from the world which loved his noodles until he slipped in a pool of radiator fluid and fell 73 floors to his untimely and well-videotaped death. His is a story of humility, and sacrifice, and critical levels of viscosity in radiator fluid. It is not today’s story.

Today’s story is about a small laksa stall in the East of Singapore, which for many years battled several rivals to establish its claim as the Best Laksa in Singapore. After calling in a team of ninjas to recalibrate the establishment’s  feng shui and execute some well-timed slayings, the owners of 328 Katong Laksa saw themselves triumph over their main rival 49 Katong Laksa, in sales if not originality of name. The homely hawker-eatery has now gained worldwide fame amongst ninjas, mercenaries and civilians alike, and I have finally received the opportunity to make my pilgrimage. It is an opportunity I do not wish to squander.

I meditate at the table, lime-juice at my side and ready to cool my senses. I breathe in the noise and taste the air, sharp with the far-off rumble of a monsoonal afternoon. The lime-juice ripples in the wake of the gentlest of breezes, and I take a quick sip of tart sweetness to still for a moment my densely-beating heart.

Otak-otak tantalises my palate with its svelte home-made thinness, making up for its lack of photogenic elegance with the chewy-gooey fish taste that ninjas would sacrifice contracts for. Without love, sweat and banana leaves, otak-otak cannot reach such heights, much like nasi lemak and banana trees. I nibble at my portion, then nibble a bit more, until the wafer-block of mashed fish is entirely gone.

And then it arrives. There is no fanfare of trumpets and virginally-clad sexy women, no elaborate flourish of a maître d’, no chopsticks. This is Seafood Laksa as it was in the days of humble men and blood-tradition, laksa which pulls no punches with quantities of coconut milk copious enough to slay an army of weight-watchers. This is laksa where the seafood is searingly fresh and you only need a spoon because the silky white-noodles have been diced in a labour of love. This is laksa as it was meant to be. I ladle mouthful after mouthful of taut prawns, slim noodles, spicy-creamy-velvety laksa broth down my throat until I can take no more. Then I order a second round.

As I quench my hunger with the speed of my spoon, a well-dressed woman walks into 328 Katong Laksa holding a bowl. She offers it to the staff, they fill it, and she totters serenely away, makeshift takeaway-container slopping precariously between her hands. This is not something you expect to see in the Singapore of today. But 328 Katong is a relic of another time, when recipes were in the blood and people fought each other face to face, with swords and not with papers. The first raindrop falls. It’s time to move.

Concluding Remarks: Book your flight now. If you don’t, you may well miss the best laksa in Singapore – and possibly the world.

Location: 30 Victoria St, Singapore 187996

Taste-type: Contemporary Japanese

Price: Hokkaido Ramen $17, Salmon Pink Dragon Roll $14.80

How to get there: MRT to City Hall. CHIJMES is opposite the emblematic Raffles Hotel, just next to Raffles City Shopping Center. The restaurant is on one side of the grassy lawn near the church: look for a sign outside a small doorway.

Contact: (65) 63363166

This was once a house of God. Now, it is a house of inebriated clamour, consumptive decadence, and God. For all its renovation and secularisation, the CHIJMES Hall still retains the church that was once the raison d’être of the place itself, a broodingly melancholic spire walled in by various restaurants, bars and other institutions of exorbitant leisure. CHIJMES stands for Church of the Holy Infant Jesus…Music and Entertainment Space, according to at least one exasperated taxi driver, and it is hard not to sympathise with the house of worship’s awkward plight. However, sympathy can get you killed or embroiled in a case of Stockholm Syndrome, and I am hungry.

Sun Japanese Dining fits the bill of a typical CHIJMES establishment: polished, unctuous, highly expensive. The discreet interior oozes modern-minimalist charm and has more smooth surfaces and shiny curves than a sexy robot, a thought infinitely more gauche than anything inside the restaurant. There is movement in the shadows of the entrance but I put this aside and slide into my seat, cautiously optimistic about the fare.

I just love noodles, and the Hokkaido ramen is a satisfying – if relatively pricey – specimen of one of my traditional favourites. The thick broth’s tart edge and lack of oiliness spruce up an otherwise typical dish, while each pork slice has been seared appetisingly before being layered atop the noodles. My only gripe is against the slightly starchy noodles which clump together like gawking teenagers at a Sexy Robot competition. I hear many sighs around me, of love or slit throats I cannot be bothered to discern. Sun’s atmosphere is a balm to my senses, dulling them enough for me to relax.

Unfortunately, the Salmon Pink Dragon Roll is little better than average, with little flavour to the salmon and crabmeat that comprise the majority of each petite roll. The only redeeming factor is, in my opinion, the vagueness of intention that accompanies the lemon slices atop each roll. To daintily remove, or chew up with the rice? I do both and conclude that the acidic crispness of the rind adds zest to this otherwise bland concoction.

I pay, bow, leave, and behind me the block containing Sun Japanese Dining bursts into sudden and radioactive flames. I am flung to the ground by the blast, suit seared like the pork eaten barely minutes ago. This is not my doing, nor that of any ninja. Slowly I clamber to my feet and look around, baffled as to who might take so much offence at this establishment to customarily irradiate it. There is nothing except the lick of flames and the church, staring blindly down upon me in stony silence as if to say this is your carelessness, Ninja. Atop one scorched cobblestone lies a tattered skullcap, with a small blue star on one side.

Concluding Remarks: Not too bad, but overpriced and over-rated. Even without the radiation, I would not recommend this spot except for those in love or with money to burn. Respect the church.

Location: Adam Road Food Centre -  2 Adam Rd, Singapore 289876

Taste-type: Malaysian

Price: From $2.50 to $5; Full House set $4.00

How to get there: Taxi. Try a bus if you feel lucky.

Contact: (65) 98434509

We arrive at 1300hrs by means of skydrop, taking stock quickly of the numerous locals flocking towards our insertion point. I have been ordered explicitly not to engage, but rather observe the goings-on within the open-air dome that is the Adam Food Centre. Our spies in the area have reported odd, seemingly narcotic-related behaviour amongst the locals, and when I examine further the source becomes clear to me. I move in, sneaking past somnabulistic Singaporeans, trying to get closer to see just what it is these minions worship. I reach the front of the queue.

Warm rice with the tender fragrance of paradise. Dulcet chicken-wings matched with piquant sambal, the colour of over-oxygenated blood and just as intoxicating. A fried egg, bulging at its membranes. Cucumber. And lithe smoothness of coconut rice slithering all over my tongue, filling my arteries. My titanium core bathed in coconut milk. I swoon.

Some time later, I awake. After rehabilitation with the aid of ancient Japanese herbs and the butt of a spear, I regain coherence. I can report on the quixotic monikers of each set of Nasi Lemak offered by Selera Rasa, or give a brief insight into the royal pedigree of this humble hawker stand’s migration into the modern age of coffee connossieurs and malls multiplying faster than their patrons. I can wax lyrical on the owners’ rowdy charm, or the small marvels of their highly efficient supply chain, or even the lacklustre performance of their neighbours which puts them in even higher worship. But when I report finally to my shadowy superiors, all I say is this:

Selera Rasa’s is the crack cocaine of nasi lemak.

And that is why we return to get ration-packs.

Concluding Remarks: The epitome of nasi lemak, Selera Rasa’s coconut rice has achieved the elusive equilibrium of coconut taste and texture. All other ingredients – the spicily juicy otak-otak, the freshly fried chicken, even the heaty-sweet sambal – play second fiddle to the rice. An addiction hard to break indeed.

Location: 50 Dunlop St, Singapore 209379

Taste-type: Indian

Price: Full Dum Biryani (Chicken or Mutton) $6, Lime Juice $2.50

How to get there: MRT or SMRT shuttle-bus (from Dhoby Gaut station) to Little India, then a quick walk.

Contact: (65) 93827937

The streets are quiet, as though sucked devoid by some monstrous food blogger with an appetite for counterfeit goods and immigrant workers. From a slatted colonial window above comes music, swaying with a spicy infusion of trance and old-Bollywood. I edge slowly down the road like a balaclava-masked gunslinger of the dusty West. I can sense my target somewhere close.

Healthiness is not something normally associated with Little India, the melting-pot of ghee and fried samosas that simmers away endlessly in the midst of Singapore’s slicked-back buildings. To find a biryani restaurant proclaiming such qualities is, without a doubt, an aberration. I set up a perimeter and secure the near-empty building, calmly anticipating the test of this strange mélange of healthiness and tastiness. My hand strays to a throwing-knife, wary of some hidden Vegan trap.

My suspicions are unfounded: the Dum Biryani’s delicate texture and fine Basmati rice-grains form a simple pillow beneath the chicken drumstick and curry that top off the dish. Each grain of rice separates in the mouth, bringing to mind a sheet of tasty carbohydrates as one slowly masticates in grave deliberation. The pappadum is also nice. My only complaint is directed against the slight dryness of the rice, partially rectified by the chicken curry but at the cost of overpowering the tasty-carbohydrate-sheet taste. I believe the solution to be a bucketload of lard, but dare not propose this lest I be swamped by a sea of immigrant workers and counterfeit goods.

I leave the uncharacteristic peace of Little India and hitch a ride on the underside of a train, finding myself in an unusual mood of contemplation as I speed along to my next checkpoint. Only pockets of old-world Singapore remain intact, and even some like Little India are transforming at a frightening rate, swelling with those hungry for advancement as much as a decent meal. But I am a ninja and we do not seek to wonder, for wonderment fails to pay our fees. Why some choose to break through the heavens at any cost is of little import to us. I streak along the tunnel, not looking back at my last meal.

Concluding Remarks: Tasty but a bit dry, without any of the sticky-dirty oiliness of typical Indian fare. Good for a quiet lunch before some afternoon slaying.

The Ninja received targeting information from ieatishoot.

Location: 100 Orchard Road, #03-25 (Lobby Level, Concorde Hotel), Singapore 238840

Taste-type: Japanese

Price: Mixed Sashimi $45, Mixed Sushi $60, Tempura Udon $28

How to get there: MRT to Somerset or taxi to Concorde Hotel. The restaurant is hidden around a corner to one side of the lobby.

Contact: (65) 67322911

I am running for my life down Orchard Road when a behemoth of a thug punches out of Louis Vuitton, grabs me bodily and, with one gargantuan heave of his gold-sequined muscles, flings me all the way past three shopping malls and through a low-lying window of the Concorde Hotel. I get to my feet slowly, none too enthusiastic to return to an upright position. The thug is already lumbering downhill towards my splintered crater, two iron chains thumping this way and that as he bares his fluoride-lacking teeth in my direction and stops. A small red dot appears in the middle of his forehead. His forehead then disappears, as does most of the upper half of his body. I turn and, with plaster flaking from my balaclava, bow in recognition.

The infamous Ninja of Nogawa, sometimes known as Chef Kevin, modestly accepts my deference and bids me spar with his cooking for some time. Being already informed of this establishment’s sterling reputation for razor-fresh sushi and quiet traditional dining, I happily agree to this friendly challenge, eager to see what surprises the Ninja of Nogawa has in store.

So it begins. I cut through the Ninja of Nogawa’s famous toro tuna with precision and finesse, letting the tingling fattiness of the cut echo on my tongue before I close it off with a final gulp. The other slivers of sashimi dance with me for a time bfore I finish them off, gently crushing the sweet juiciness of the scallops and splitting each morsel of tuna so as to savour its finely-hatched creaminess. This is no challenge, none at all. I fling a shuriken good-naturedly in Chef Kevin’s direction and he deflects it with equanimity into a gaggle of over-dressed Singaporean women and their male handbag-porters.

The main assault flies over the counter and is so fresh it leaves an army of streetsweepers in its wake. I catch it with a flick of my hand, sapping its momentum and lowering it to eating-height in an instant. Each glistening morsel – tuna toro, salmon, even a burgeoning anago – seems to glare balefully at me, daring me to consume such minimalist beauty without a second thought, daring me to succumb to my barbaric impulses curtailed by years of training. I happily oblige.

A row of salmon toro and tuna nori falls swiftly despite its elegance and blossoming explosions of flavour.

The beautiful piece of uni goes swiftly too, eliciting a smile for its slightly alkaline tinge that takes the edge off what might have been a cut too sweet. Soon the succulent toro and kingfish have been swept away and I toss my head and bellow up at the night sky before carefully replacing my chopsticks on the pebble provided.

A bowl of udon presses in with its smooth and silky-fine noodles, but I threaten its crisp tempura heart and it beats a hasty retreat. I have conquered all, and I prepare to formally thank the Ninja of Nogawa for a terribly tasty duel

when he pulls out his secret weapon

The hairy crab stares at me. I stare at the hairy crab. It is cute, in an odd sort of way. But it is also hairy. And scary. And its eyes glow with a vicious hatred which exceeds even that of a Singaporean women bereft of Louis Vuitton. I run, while I still can.

Concluding remarks: slightly pricey, but worth it for the fine sushi. Quiet save for the charmingly effusive service of Chef Kevin. Beware the crab.