11/25/12 - Best Mexican Food in Singapore

I know I've made this complaint before, but its worth repeating.  You just can't seem to find great Mexican food over here.  We're about halfway down the path of doing our due diligence on the subject before I can make a final conclusion so perhaps consider this a mid-way checkpoint.  El Patio in Holland Village is good. Cha Cha Cha in Holland Village, meh.  North of the Border in Rochester Park is good, even if they are trying to call themselves an Arizona restaurant - who ever heard of such a thing?  There are a variety of Senor Taco's around - they're OK, but have essentially the type of taco or burrito you would get if you turned an 8 year old loose in the kitchen.  Rumor has it there is a Baja Fresh in the Tanglin area, but we haven't tried it yet.  Baja Fresh in the US though, was in my opinion, OK on a good day, mediocre on an average day and then there was always the occasional unpleasant surprise on the real off days.

So what did we do to finally combat this issue?  Made some Mexican food at home!  I mean, the ingredients aren't exactly found in the exotic location of the grocery store.  Even if they were, aren't we living in the exotic section of the grocery store?  We had to attack this in a two prong approach.  Lots of expats living in the Holland Village area so Sarah stopped at the Cold Storage there on her way back from school.  She was able to find tortillas, the familiar Ortega Taco seasoning, some black beans, cheese, lettuce and even chips and salsa.  Apparently the salsa was from Mexico.  I guess that's what happens when you are importing everything.  I think we had only had Archer Farms Salsa for the past 3 years, so not a bad change of pace.

Per usual, I crossed the street to the market to see what I could hunt down.  This is the part that still bewilders me (although maybe it really does mean there isn't demand for this type of food) almost everything you need is grown in region.  I was able to find some great fresh tomatoes, peppers, onions, limes and avocados.  Of course I was talked into some of the tiniest bananas that I have ever seen that also turned out to be sweetest bananas I've ever eaten.  Almost had a citrus taste to them as well.  Made for a healthy dessert.

Anyway, we reconvened in the kitchen (which is finally getting used for a little more than making coffee) where we already had some rice on hand as well as our "meat."  We still haven't crossed the Rubicon in terms of meat purchases at the grocery store....maybe next year.  Besides, Sarah had found a recipe for lentil tacos that we wanted to try.  It took the lentils a little longer to cook than browning meat, but we had to wait on the rice cooker as well, so not a big deal.  Can't really argue with the end result, right?  Especially when you can help yourself to "thirds."


We only had Asahi - giant cans seem to be perpetually on sale for $8.95 and you get about 4 beers out of them. A Corona at the restaurant would have been $9.  So not only was the food better than we have found to date (don't worry - we'll keep looking and reporting) but it cost about 1/4 of what we would have paid to eat out.  Ah, we had leftovers too!  Which as we all know after just going through Thanksgiving is almost as important as the meal.  Its like the encore after a good concert.