THENASTYBITS (30 page)

The central irony of a subject already overloaded with ironies is that the market is, perhaps, beginning to come around full circle. Cult hero-to-chefs Fergus Henderson of London's offal-centric St. John just rolled out a widely touted new edition of his classic
Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
cookbook, and was feted by Alice Waters in San Francisco, Charlie Trotter in Chicago, and Mario Batali in New York. A posse of chefs, including Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, Mark Ladner, Gab-rielle Hamilton, Patti Jackson, Mary Sue Milliken, Maurice Hurley, and Kerry Heffernan (as diverse a mix of modernists, traditionalists, Francophiles, and Francophobes as one can imagine) gathered to eat tripe and cassoulet and talk about a shared love of the old school with Henderson. Pork belly is now a "hot" menu item on both coasts. Duck confit has permeated menus across the nation and "house-made" charcut-erie is everywhere.

Does this mean that Le Veau d'Or will suddenly find itself "hot" again, after all these years? Will air-kissing trendoids in little black dresses and loud-talking yuppies with beeping cell phones flock to their doors, looking to experience calves' brains in
beurre noir}

I kind of hope not.

They might have to hire another waiter.

DIE,
DIE
MUST
TRY

my
first
time
in
Singapore, I hated it.

The heat punched me in the chest every time I stepped outside, a thick, penetrating humidity made worse by relentlessly broiling sun. Three-shower-a-day, change-your-clothes-at-noon kind of heat; yet, whenever I ducked inside for a beer, the bars were refrigerated, with locals happily sipping Tiger beers in their T-shirts in the bone-chilling, meat-locker cold. R.W. Apple Jr. has referred to Singapore as "Disneyland with the death penalty," and for good reason. The list of things you
can't
do (spitting, littering, gum chewing, jaywalking) is as endless as it is hard to believe, and the government's mania for relentless social engineering and development has left much of what you and I would find charming replaced by ultramodern rabbit warrens of interlocking shopping malls. They censor the Internet, you do
not
want to get caught with drugs within its borders, and yes, technically, even blow jobs are illegal (though thankfully, readily available.)

But now I love it. And I go back whenever I can.

Because Singapore is probably the most food-crazed, lunatic-eater's paradise on the planet. We're not talking about "gourmets" here. Singapore's "foodies" are nothing like the annoying, nerdy, status-conscious variety one finds in New York, chattering about Jean-Georges's new place, or how such and such a restaurant lost a star. Singaporeans do not collect dining experiences like stamps, to be discussed or bragged about later.

Singaporeans are not gastronomes. They simply
eat.
And living in a country where Chinese, Malay, and Indian cuisines are equally (and proudly) represented, they are accustomed to eating well. When they talk about food they tend to know what they're talking about. They are not snobs and are far more likely to gush about a bowl of noodles at a Mom-and-Pop hawker stand than to be concerned with the new "hot" place.

I learned this the hard way, when addressing a black-ti gathering of well-heeled Singaporeans in a swank hotel's ball room. There was a question from the floor, a fan wanting t know my preferred spot for the local specialty, chicken rice When I sheepishly admitted that I had not yet tried it, the entire room of five hundred people erupted in loud (if good-natured) boos. This was followed by near anarchy, as the crowd then began arguing passionately among themselves over which of the hundreds of chicken-rice places they should recommend to the pathetically ignorant American chef-author. Chicken rice, by the way, in case you didn't know, is, basically, boiled chicken and white rice. It is to Singaporeans what chopped liver, pastrami, or pizza is to New Yorkers. Everyone has their favorite. Discussing the subject, people tend to get enthusiastic, even contentious. The question of who's got the best could very easily lead to a fistfight—were fighting not illegal (and therefore unthinkable) in Singapore.

The next morning, I called my friend K. F. Seetoh, the "guru" behind the
Makansutra Guide,
a sort of
better-than-Zagat
guide to Singapore's hawker stands, eating houses, and street food. Eateries are graded not with stars or numbers, but by rice bowls signifying "good," "very good," "excellent"—and the Singlish "Don't try, regret ah!" and the ultimate accolade, "Die, die must try!" Seetoh pointed me to Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, a closet-size food stall in the bustling Maxwell Road Food Centre, generally accepted as serving one of the very best versions.

I ordered a plate from the tiny one-room stall with the head-on chickens hanging from hooks in the window and settled down to eat a heap of soft, pillowy white rice with pale, juicy chunks of

chicken piled in the center. A little cucumber, some supersticky spicy hoisin-style sauce, a little grated ginger, and a garlic pepper sauce are served on the side. You mix it all together to fit personal preferences—and they are as varied as the imagination. Looking around at other tables in the long hallway between rows of brightly lit hawker stands, I watched locals eagerly drizzling, dipping, and mixing the basic elements into personalized concoctions, no two plates the same. The dish is remarkable for such a simple thing, almost baby food for adults, a bone-deep comfort food for locals, a reassuring trip down memory lane with every mouthful. And at Tian Tian it was, as advertised, wonderful. Next time I'm asked the question, I'll be ready with a very respectable answer.

From Tian Tian, I wandered down to stall number five, an establishment called, appropriately enough, simply "Oyster Cake." The woman proprietor proudly told me she's been serving the same dish, and only that dish, for
forty-five years.
I figured, correctly, that after all that time she had to be pretty good at it. A throng of local customers, lining up for the deep-fried, Foochow-style beignet of oysters, minced pork, prawns, and batter, seemed to support this conclusion. I sat down at a center table (all the businesses share and jointly maintain the bare, bolted-down center tables), poked a squeeze bottle of spicy pepper sauce into the center of my cake, and gave it a good squirt. Pure goodness, washed down with a tall cup of sugarcane juice from an adjoining stall.

Once I got started, it was hard to stop. At a business advertising "Pig Organ Soup," a brightly colored sign offered the appetizing-looking Malay specialty,
ba ku the.
I sat down once again and was presented with a brightly colored bowl of tender boiled pork ribs in a bowl lined with greens and clear, piping-hot broth. I ordered a freshly made mango juice and happily gnawed bones and slurped broth until full.

It was tough to leave. Left untried were dozens of specialties, including an entire halal section set apart from the other stands; fried
mee suah,
sporting a tempting-sounding combination of mussels, pig's stomach, prawns, chicken gizzards, liver, and squid; and
nasi lemak,
a spicy broth of seafood, noodles, and coconut milk. There was an enormous line of people waiting for a congee-style porridge—as in Taiwan and Thailand—and everywhere I looked, there seemed to be good, fresh, brightly colored stuff, brimming from crowded stalls with proud-looking proprietors. The place was clean, organized, friendly, and informal. Each business prominently displayed its grade from the health department. At the end of the day, in keeping with Singapore's stringent food-handling requirements, all leftovers would be disposed of—every business starting the next day from scratch with all new ingredients.

This is what a food court should be, I thought, as I waddled toward the door. Imagine if there were a food court near you, at the mall, for instance, where instead of the soul-destroying mediocrity and sameness of American fast food, a wide spectrum of ethnically diverse lone proprietors—all of whom had been perfecting their craft for decades—offered up their very best. Imagine independently owned and operated businesses next door to each other, each serving one specialty as far from and different from the adjacent offering as each individual culture. Imagine—if fast food could be good food. That there were quick, cheap, delicious offerings that tasted unique to their locale, all across America. That people smiled and laughed as they ate at their brightly colored tables—as they do in Singapore—that they talked and argued about food while they ate, taking pleasure in even this small, simple, everyday thing . . . instead of joylessly chomping at paper-wrapped disks of graying beef-flavor-sprayed meat before lumbering unquestioning toward cardiac apocalypse. Wouldn't that be something?

Flush with my experience at the food court, I called Seetoh the next day and put myself entirely in his hands. "Feed me," I said, "the very best."

The first place he took me was Sin Huat Eating House at the junction of Geylang Road and Lorong 35, a tired, dumpy-

looking joint (one could barely call it a restaurant) in the red-light district. The dining room—such as it is—had been taken over by a mean-faced server-prep cook who was busily peeling garlic and shallots, rarely bothering to look up. A glass-front refrigerator contained bottles of Tiger beer, and little else. We served ourselves—as the server didn't bother to offer. A few bare, unstable round tables sat outside, a perfect vantage point from which to observe the parade of lumpy and forlorn-looking prostitutes, and the arcadelike space was filled almost entirely with fish tanks, cases of beer, and Styrofoam and wood crates jam-packed with shellfish. All seafood, in fact, is kept alive and happy at Sin Huat until ordered by customers

The overlit ambiance, dirty-T-shirted staff, and stray cats who patrol near the tables were not impediments to a truly great meal. This came as no surprise to me. As I have found in my travels, a certain degree of dirtiness, lack of refrigeration, and close proximity to livestock is often a near-guarantee of something really good to eat. If you see a crowd of locals lined up to eat at a filthy-looking little dunghole on the edge of town, it is often a sign of good things to come.

Referring to chef Danny Lee, who swung by the table to say hello in white T-shirt, shorts, and knee-high rubber boots, Seetoh volunteered that, "This guy is like a lotus flower. A lotus flower cannot bloom unless it sits in a swamp. It's about extracting heaven from hell."

I don't recall actually ordering anything. I certainly never saw a menu. But what followed were seven courses of the tastiest, most screamingly fresh goddamned seafood I have ever put in my mouth—a miracle of wild, passionate, rule-breaking brilliance. I never saw a single vegetable, save a lone, half-hearted garnish of flowered scallion bulb. No rice. No sides. Every course arrived heaped with garlic, swimming in garlic, studded with garlic, or perched atop a Himalaya of garlic. Yet, each and every dish tasted distinctively, magnificently different, devoid of
any
garlic-related unpleasantness. Always, the principle ingredient (the fish) spoke loudest and most freely.

Gong-Gong,
which translates, Seetoh said, to "stupid-stupid," was a stainless-steel serving platter of fresh whelks, steamed and sauteed in garlic. We twisted the tender, buttery-light meat out of the shells with toothpicks. Next came garlic prawns heaped with garlic stuffing and quick roasted; again, the sweet flavor of the prawns (only a few minutes ago skittering at the bottom of a fish tank) shone through, somehow beating the garlic into gentle submission. Scallops with roe, still in their shells, arrived glazed in black-bean sauce, by which time I was eating with my hands and slurping every clinging streak or drop. A steamed spotted grouper arrived—on the bone, of course. The highly prized one-and-a-half-pound fish costs about a hundred bucks a pop. I tunneled directly into a cheek, which pleased Seetoh no end. We ate frogs in "chicken essence" and a single stingray steamed with scallion, which inspired my mentor to exclaim "Shiok!" and "Steam!" meaning, I gather, "fucking
good\"
in Singlish. (He explained the local dialect as "think in Chinese, speak in English" before commenting on the next course, Sin Huat's famous crab
bee boon:
"Good-ah! Hot-Hot!")

The massive Sri Lankan hard-shell she-crab had been hacked into hunks of roe-studded goodness, crisped in hot oil, and simmered with a magical mystery sauce of home-brewed soy and stock and tossed with rice noodles, chilies, and garlic. "You eat the noodles first," Seetoh advised, his eyes getting a glazed, faraway look. By now the table was a wrecking yard of prawn shells, emptied scallops, frog femurs, fish bones, and empty Tiger bottles. Blissed out on food, beer, and what had now become a warm and welcoming environment, I became suddenly nonconversational as I sucked, slurped, and dug at my crab.

"Seetoh, old buddy," I slurred, absolutely sincere, "I have eaten all over this earth. I've eaten fish most have only dreamed of. I come from a long line of French oyster fishermen. I've been to Tsukiji market in Tokyo. I've eaten two-hundred-dollar-a-pound otoro tuna off the still-quivering fish. I've had the fullpress treatment at Le Bernardin for Chrissakes! But this,
this
is the best seafood meal I've
ever
had!"

Seetoh smiled, sucked a little crab fat out of a shell, and looked up at me indulgently. "Why you wanna talk when there's good food-ah?"