When we two and a half years ago left Singapore for France, we hardly thought of returning. After having closed the credit cards and claimed the credit points we had accumulated during our 5-year tenure on the tiny island we ended up having quite a few Singapore Airlines miles. When the miles started to expire this Spring, we thought why not pay a visit to that small island to revisit the sites we liked before they will be gone, and to see some new places that have emerged since we left. So, we booked the flights and 12 nights at an Airbnb apartment in Tiong Bahru. We came back to home like we had never left.

Yummy goodness

Let’s start with the most important issue that is also our biggest loss in the move, food! French cuisine is meat-oriented and quite uni-dimensional — at least in the region we live in — compared to the variety of kitchens, ingredients, and types of food widely available in Singapore and for very affordable prices.
OK, Grenoble has Middle Eastern, North African, and Indian restaurants (plus some East Asian), but the food they serve is bland — The French apparently do not like spices of any sort. This was very evident on the SIA flights in which we had ordered Indian vegetarian meals for both directions. On the outbound flight from Paris the food was absolutely tasteless, but on the return flight very tasty and flavorful (and hot pickles were hot!).

Here is a taster of Singapore cuisine we enjoyed. Our apologies for the photo quality — then again, most dishes were from regular eateries, not fine dining, and not much attention was paid to presentation.

Korean BBQ at One Fork Two Sticks Kitchen.The food was good, and kimchi extra juicy (according to Tomi), but the fact that the server spent the whole time at our table cooking our food was a bit annoying.

De Classic Golden Spoon. On a rainy night we found this very Chinese seafood restaurant in our immediate Tiong Bahru neighborhood. They cheerily welcomed us — perhaps they don’t usually get many western customers. The place was clean and the service prompt. We had chilli fish head curry with two veggie sides, broccoli and kai lan.

Paddy Hills. After a walk in Haw Par Villa we enjoyed gorgeous and tasty salads at this trendy coffee shop where used to be a popular Teochew duck rice place.

Vietnamese stall at Lau Pa Sat. Beef noodle soup with Tiger beer.

House of Peranakan Petit. This place situated in Tiong Bahru is the smallest restaurant in the group.
After pork belly paus and coconut beans we had pork and duck dishes for mains (we shared everything of course). Again food was good and the service excellent.

Aji-Ichi. We didn’t have any cash, and the few restaurants open in Pulau Ubin did not accept cards, so we ended up in this Japanese place in Changi Village. We chose dry ramen noodle and tonkatsu chicken curry sets, and potato salad.

Poteato. This new place in Tiong Bahru specializing in potato dishes of all sorts was probably the only true disappointment. We had mashed potatoes with chicken and baked potato with cheese sausage. The quality was no better than in a school cafeteria.

Madura’s Restaurant. It was still early for lunch, and we were the only patrons in this place in Little India. We had chilli paneer for a starter, and then butter chicken masala, and aloo mutter for mains. The photo did not turn out well, but the food was good.

Bollywood Veggies in Kranji countryside. We had warrior chicken curry (like in all our former visits) and a veggie platter with lemongrass drinks. The portions were quite small, and thus overpriced, but very delicious.

Cheng’s @27 Hainanese home cooked cuisine. This family owned and operated restaurant is another Tiong Bahru icon. Per recommendation, we chose crispy chicken with ginger, sweet and sour sliced fish, and chilli French beans. We finished with Chiffon cake gula melaka w/organic coconut oil. Empty plates say it all!

Long Phung. We were looking for a Vietnamese restaurant and found this place in Geylang. We chose a couple of beef noodle dishes, which were spot on on this rainy and cool day.

Ikyu. This small Japanese restaurant is also in our neighborhood in Tiong Bahru. We had their four-dish set menu, which included tapas, starter, main, and dessert. We did not get any nice photos of the other dishes but this macha ice cream dessert.

Casa Verde. This bistro in Botanic Garden’s visitor center used to be packed on weekends — and it probably still is. This time we had a luxury of visiting it during a weekday for an early lunch — no lines, no noise. We had laksa and bak kut teh, our first bak kut teh ever.

We did not have means to make coffee in our airbnb apartment. But no worries! There were several good coffee shops around for us to get our morning cuppa. One of the places stood out, Plain Vanilla Bakery. Their long black was just awesome. Oh that smell and yummy goodness of early morning brew!