Editor's Note: This blog post was submitted by a reader. The original post was written by a Caucasian expat working in Singapore.
I'm very disappointed with food in Singapore. What looks like a promising slurp-worthy meal often fails to deliver, making it seem like there's always something of a gulf between the two.
Recently, I went to a hawker center and had curry with so much MSG in it, i was bed-ridden for a few days. Kidneys had to detox and I was just unwell all over.
Then a relative's maid put together some food for us in tiffin cans. When we served it up for dinner, completely salt-OD, almost spontaneously puked. It all had to be thrown out (shame as the beef was very tender). Had a can of chicken soup for dinner instead.
We had dinner at a food court, and I ordered Japanese curry with ebi (fried prawns). It came with a huge bowl of rice, curry, gravy over one third of all the rice (all absorbed), three breaded things with prawn tails lying on top. I eat the prawns, and wonder if that is what they are. The 'curry' is so lost in all the rice, it would seem to require me to be starving to want to be bothered to hack it up and eat it.
And the list goes on. What next, Carls Junior? At least their pickles add some zing to an otherwise uneventful burger.
'Mixed fried rice' (say rice + three ingredients = $3) can be nice, but is terribly oily. Chicken rice has rice that is soaking with oil.
The swill that passes as food, served at the likes of Swenson's, Thai Express, and so on. And yet the locals queue at these places like Michelin star restaurants!
The bland nothingness of Famous Amos cookies, or Bengawan Solo, neither of which have probably seen a fresh natural ingredient in the past generation.
I'm starting to wonder if there is any quality food in Singapore. Is mass-market food so poor, because the locals are unwilling or unable to pay for better? It's not like they're time poor (as in the US), as most of them have maids. It just strikes me as ridiculous sometimes that Singapore claims to be a food haven when you can't find a single thing worth eating in this country.