5/26/13 - Singapore Dining Old School/New School

The first month we moved here I happened to catch an Anthony Bourdain 'No Reservations' rerun about Singapore.  9 months later, I can't say I remember too much about the episode, but the final scene has stuck with me the entire time.  After making his way through the usual local experiences of a variety of restaurants and meeting people, Tony sat down with 4 or 5 retired men (likely in their 80's) at a hawker centre to get their take on longevity and Singapore life.  Essentially these men made it a habit to get together 2 to 3 times a week at different hawker centres, eat their favorite food and drink beer together.  Brilliant!  I've been meaning to recreate this since I saw the episode, especially because its one of the few ways to eat and drink for a reasonable price on the island, but as usual, there hadn't been enough time..... until now.

After spending half the day in the office I made the 10 minute walk to the Maxwell Hawker Centre.  Embarrassingly, this was my first time eating here and it is one of the larger, more well known food places in town.  Travelling had kept me from catching up with a good friend, so we now really were set for an Anthony Bourdain recreation.  We scored a perfect table right in front of a Thai food stand and about 15 feet away from a beverage vendor.  5 minutes later we were enjoying plates of fried noodles, phad thai, garlic kai lan (need your daily vegetables) and of course, some Tiger Beers in frosted mugs.  We've been staying away from Tiger recently, but it seemed fitting in this setting.

One of the fun parts about these places is they keep your empty bottles in front of you, its almost their way of tracking whether or not its time to give you the boot.  Luckily Sarah showed up to help us out later in the afternoon so the damage was pretty reasonable.  Plus it was a good excuse to get some boiled dumplings as a late afternoon snack to share.  Beer, noodles and dumplings, I highly recommend it as an afternoon activity in Singapore.  Just remember to bring along some change for the restroom if you're going to sit there for 5 hours.  All the change I had been accumulating during taxi rides to and from the airport finally got put to good use.

We woke up Sunday morning to sunlight streaming in and the birds providing their usual morning wake up call.  Thinking we were finally going to get some quality pool time in we actually got up and moving right away.  We've been meaning to hit up a Singapore brunch for some time as well, so we headed off to the PS Cafe in Dempsey Hill.  Many of the restaurants and shops are in the old British military colonial buildings, but this one seemed to be half old/half new.  The window didn't quite reach the ceiling and you realized you were essentially sitting in the ruins of a white brick building with a new roof and windows.  Kind of a weird style, but it worked.  After many previous weekend breakfasts of fruit and granola bars, a cappuccino and eggs benedict followed by a monster brownie and ice cream (it was the weekend after all) was outstanding.

Successfully checking off some old school/new school experiences for the weekend we hopped on the bus with the intention of getting some reading done by the pool and then this happened... foiled again by a rainy Sunday.  It'd be great if it was going to rain it did it in the morning so at least it would be a little darker in our room and might keep the birds silent a little longer, that's our request for mother nature for next weekend.