The official Singapore Food Festival was during the month of July. By Clarke Quay there were a lot of fun food stalls and cooking demonstrations going on. So in honor of this festival, the post is dedicated to more food I’ve tried in the past few months. (And yes, as the name suggests, I intend to have more parts to the food category!)

Chilli Crab – oh my gosh, this was AMAZING. This is probably one of the few dishes that is truly Singaporean without any influences from other cuisines. We went to a famous seafood restaurant called Jumbo Seafood near the East Coast and had a total of 7 to 8 dishes including drunken prawns in brandy, vegetables in garlic and soy sauce, salted egg yolk crab and venison. My favorite was the chilli crab though.

The sauce is a thick, sweet and savory sauce made from chilli and tomato sauce. It’s usually thickened with flour and eggs and eaten with a soft doughy bread. The whole experience of going to an outside seafood restaurant and getting your fingers messy was totally worthwhile too. I wish I had a better picture of it but this will have to do!

Roti Prata – I thought this name was interesting since roti (thinner bread) and parathas (thicker bread) are usually two different things in Indian cuisine. This, however, is a South East Asian twist on the Indian dishes presumably from Indian culture integration into the region. The roti prata is usually made from a dough with egg in it, rolled until it’s pretty thin and then folded on the sides. The dough is cooked on a flat grill until it’s super crispy and delicious! Usually served with a curry sauce on the side and customizable with all sorts of toppings inside like onions, eggs, cheese, as well as chocolate, banana etc.

Laksa – is a Malaysian dish but widely found in Singapore. It’s basically a spicy noodle soup but there are many different varities according to the different regions. It can either be coconut milk based or fish based soup with tamarind added to it making the taste sour. I’m a big fan of the one that is coconut based but not so much of the fish based one.

Ba Ku Teh – This is basically a pork rib soup, the literal meaning is “meat bone tea.” The pork ribs are boiled in a broth of spices and herbs usually consisting of cinnamon, gloves, garlic and other spices. The one I had mostly tasted like garlic though. The yellow things below are strips of fried dough which are supposed to be dipped in the chilli and soy sauce. Overall, this was ok. I think it’s a little too far out of my normal palette for me to consider it amazing.

Cream puffs – these are no ordinary cream puffs like the free ones you get after pho on the ave. These are gourmet cream puffs with flavors like chocolate almond crunch, blueberry cream cheese and peanut butter crunch filled with either a chocolate or vanilla cream. YUM!

Kaya – Kaya is a coconut egg jam. There are two types – brown or green. The green one is made with coconut milk, eggs, sugar and pandan leaves. The brown one usually is the same but no pandan leaves. It’s usually eaten on bread – buns/toast in the morning or for a snack and sometimes mixed with butter or peanut butter. I personally like the green one better since it is creamier.

Some pictures from the food festival. It was a lot smaller than Bite of Seattle or even the Ave Street Fair but still fun. This year the theme was curry. There were restaurant stalls selling all types of curries as well as stores selling actual curry powders and spices. We had some yummy Indian and Thai curries and some famous Katong Laksa. To top it off, we tried some fun flavors of gelato like wasabi and raspberry ginger!