After having gone for a student exchange for one semester and having interacted with others and telling them about Singapore, I am now more aware about my country and what I like about it.
The one thing I like most about Singapore and what I think is the most unique... is food. You go into a food court, and you can find so many different kinds of food from the different ethnic groups, AND from around the world.
Food courts/Hawker centres
In one food court, it is possible to find different stalls selling things like local noodles (like Bak Chor Mee), Chicken Rice, Duck Rice, Pig innards soup, Nasi Lemak and Biryani. Then the international part: Japanese food, Korean food, Western food (although this may be a local twist) and Indonesian food.
Where else can you find such variety in one place?
Variety of local food
When you think of Italy, what do you think of? Pizza and pasta, probably? When I think of Singapore food, the list just goes on and on... For snacks, I love nonya kueh (like ang ku kueh), 'butterfly', kaya toast, ice kachang and glutinous rice balls (tang yuan), just to keep the list short.
For the main course meals, I love Pig innards soup, Curry Chicken, Hokkien Mee (and there are 2 kinds in Singapore to my knowledge), Hainanese Chicken Rice, the Yong Tau Foo at NUS, Laksa, Duck Rice, Nasi Lemak, Bak Kut Teh, Oyster omelette, Satay, Roti Prata, Mee siam, Kway Chap, Chilli Crab and Char Siew Siew Yok Rice. This is just the list that comes to mind at the moment.
I think you'll agree with me when I say that we have a great variety of local food here, and this is something I can proudly say that I love about Singapore. My reason is not just skip deep (that is, there are so many different kinds of food), but also because it shows how the people of Singapore have interacted with each other and incorporated different spices used in different cultures and adapted to others' tastes, such that we have such a variety of great food that may be considered unique to Singapore.
Fast food heaven
While you might not think that this is good, it just came to mind recently how diverse the fast food in Singapore is (from all over the world), and I was honestly quite impressed! I was talking to a friend from Germany not too long ago, and when he mentioned that he liked Burger King fries, I started to talk about the different kinds of fries... and therefore the different kinds of fast food restaurants.
I told him: "To me, there are different kinds of fries... First, there is the Macdonalds/Burger King kind of fries, which is relatively normal... Then there are the really crispy fries, which is from Long John Silver. There are the really fat fries from MOS Burger. My favourite ones are from Carl's Jr, where the skin of the potatoes are not removed. And of course, there are variations of the standard fries like cheese fries from KFC and chilli cheese fries, which are basically fries with minced meat on, which I like to eat at Superdog."
He was absolutely stunned. He had never heard of MOS Buger or Long John Silver... Or Superdog. And his response was: "Next time I come to Singapore, I want to try the crispy fries."
I agreed, and then the topic changed. However, somehow the topic got on sauces, and then on salsa sauce, and I didn't realise what I said after I said it: "I LOVE Carl's Jr's salsa sauce! Not the paste kind, but the ones that have got diced tomatoes in them."
I then got the tag of "Fast food queen".
And then even more recently, I commented about this revelation on facebook, and my dad immediately replied: Fast food... AKA Fried Food AKA Junk Food. And I rebutted: Not really... Not all are that bad. Yoshinoya, for example?
And those I've mentioned does not even including the whole range of other fast food restaurants that we have... Like those for fried chicken. There's the typical KFC, then there are others like Texas Chicken and Popeye's. And then we have a range of Pizza fast food restaurants as well. And what about those that recently opened like Wendy's? And...... I think you get my point so I shall stop here for now.
Festivals
We have so many different kinds of festivals here, and the Singaporean's love for food has also led us to calling some festivals by the iconic food instead of the actual name. For example, The Duanwu festival is the 'Dumpling festival' and the Mid-autumn festival is the 'Mooncake festival'. I'm glad that the 'Lantern festival' hasn't been called the 'glutinous rice ball festival' yet... That would be quite a mouthful.
Okay, enough about food.
I can talk more about other things like the language of Singapore that I find so utterly unique and revealing about our history and culture, but I will stop here for now, lest this turns into a 2000 word essay.
While there are many things that I find Singapore unique for, the food culture here in Singapore is probably the best aspect of Singapore that I love.
If you're not Singaporean and you decide to come to Singapore one day, do look out for all the great food! You'll probably run out of places to see before you finish trying all the different kinds of food ;) And trust me, they're good.
Signing off... ...
Craving for durian and pig innards soup now... Separately, of course.
