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SINGAPORE
Food &
Drink
Along with shopping, eating ranks as the Singaporean national pastime.
An enormous number of food outlets cater for this obsession, and
strict government regulations ensure that they are consistently
hygienic.
The mass of establishments serving Chinese food reflects the fact
that Chinese residents account for more than three quarters of the
population. North and South Indian cuisines give a good account
of themselves too, as do restaurants serving Malay, Indonesian,
Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese
food. The closest Singapore comes to an indigenous cuisine is Nonya,
a hybrid of Chinese and Malay food that developed following the
intermarrying of nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants with Malay
women. Several specialist Chinese restaurants and a number of Indian
restaurants serve vegetarian food , but otherwise vegetarians need
to tread very carefully: chicken and seafood will appear in a whole
host of dishes unless you make it perfectly clear that you don't
want them.
By far the cheapest and most fun place to dine in Singapore is in
a hawker centre or food court , where scores of stalls let you mix
and match dishes at really low prices. Otherwise there's a whole
range of restaurants to visit, ranging from no-frills, open-fronted
eating houses and coffee shops to sumptuously decorated establishments.
Most open 11.30am-2.30pm and 6-10.30pm daily.
Singapore's burgeoning bar and pub scene means there is now a wide
range of drinking holes to choose from, with the Colonial District,
Boat Quay and Orchard Road areas offering particularly good pub
crawl potential. With competition hotting up, more and more bars
are turning to live music to woo punters, though this is usually
no more than cover versions performed by local bands. Clubs also
do brisk business; glitzy yet unpretentious, they feature the latest
imported pop, rock and dance music, though don't expect anything
like a rave scene - Ecstasy isn't in the Singaporean dictionary.
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