Singaporean Food – Text for reading comprehension
Let me give you a little introduction to Singaporeans and food, because you can’t separate one from the other! I think all Singaporeans are foodies and we love eating so much that we eat 5 times a day. We often greet each other by asking “Have you eaten?” I sometimes still do that, even after 25 years away from home!
Singaporean cuisine is a mix of all the cultures that live in Singapore. Indien, Chinese, Malay, Eurasian and Peranakan, which is a mix of the Chinese and Malay cultures. And the best place to try these dishes are in places we call hawkers centres. We have over a hundred of them in Singapore! These are places which have individual stalls selling everything from fresh fruit juices to coconut jam (kaya) on toast, chilli crabs, noodle soups and fish head curries!
They are also the places where you often get the best, yet really affordable meals in Singapore! And with the health campaign that pushed the vendors to omit MSG from their cooking, it has become quite healthy too. As they cost between 2 to 5 euros per dish, it’s no wonder that many families will buy their daily meals home from these centres. When I go home with my family for a holiday, we take all our meals from these hawker centres!
2 of these hawker centres have even won the firsts Michelin stars awarded to this type of establishment! It is I can safely say, the cheapest Michelin star meal you can have in the world, at around 4 Euros a dish for the famous chicken noodle dish from the Hong Kong Soya Sauce noodles and rice stall! But you’ll have to start queuing up early in the morning for at least 2h, as they don’t take reservations!
As they say, the early bird catches the worm…although they don’t sell worms in the hawker centres… yet.