9/29/2013 - Sultan Jazz Club

The island hop from Penang to Singapore is relatively short, a little more than an hour down peninsular Malaysia and next to the Straight of Malacca.  What to do to occupy your time during the trip is always a bit of a mystery.  The flight isn't really long enough to take anything electronic out, by the time you have your laptop fired up you're already descending.  There's always the ever popular nap option, but you know those SilkAir flight attendants are going to wake you up at some point and offer you food you have about a 2% chance of eating.  This past week I opted for my copy of the Singapore Straits Times to catch up with what was going on in the little red dot.  Due to the size of the country, this is always a hit or miss item as well given the dearth of national news. For a change I hit paydirt, not in terms of a newsworthy item, but for a fun new weekend activity - Sultan Jazz Club in the Arab Street area.

We had been to Arab Street once before and had come away pretty impressed with the atmosphere.  Much like Little India, you suddenly feel like you have left mainstream Singapore behind. Carpet shops, hookahs, Middle Eastern cuisine - it just has a good vibe to it.  We decided to try out dinner at the Beirut Grill before the show started.  The one drawback to the Sultan Jazz Club on Sunday is the music doesn't start until 9 PM.... or keeping with jazz musicians laid back vibe, closer to 9:45 as we would later find out.  Our prior experience on Arab Street had involved an inadvertent 2 1/2 hour meal due to the speed of service.  Thinking we better arrive early, we erred on the other side only to see our hummus, grilled lamb and chicken come flying out of the kitchen.  The food was outstanding, probably because it was so fresh, so it didn't last long on our plates.  Even our second pot of mint tea couldn't cause us to linger longer, so we decided to wander down some alleyways in search of dessert.

I can honestly say, of all the places I had considered setting foot in on this Sunday evening, the Fika Cafe, a Halal Swedish bakery was so far down the list it might as well have been in Sweden.  This turned out to be great find #2 for the evening.  Huge cappuccinos (which yes, did keep me up too late) really dense coconut covered chocolate balls, kind of like no bake cookies, and chocolate brownies with ice cream were our reward.  I half expected the Swedish Chef to come running out so we could thank him, it is quite difficult to find a good cookie in this town that isn't horribly dry.


Sufficiently wired and sugared up, it was off to find the Sultan Hotel.  A block of Chinese Shop Houses had been converted and quasi merged into one building to create the hotel.  This left a lot of open, airy walk ways throughout the place that fit in well with the neighborhood.  The jazz club itself was on the 2nd floor, so up the stairs we went, only to be greeted by a wonderful little whisky bar.  It really did seem like it was going to be our lucky night.  We cozied into our seats at the back of the room and waited for the Marrakesh Express to show up - with a name like that, you're either a kicking jazz band or Nolan Ryan's cousin from a different continent. Once they did get started the trio was quite good and for over an hour they kept bringing up a variety of local talent to play with them.  We left after the first set since it was a 'school night,' but with new restaurant finds and a fun new Sunday hangout with free music, I'm sure we'll end up in this neighborhood again.