Hawker Food & the Singapore Sling

After our short rest and a quick recharge, we ventured back out for the evening.

Our hotel sits near the bay in a street packed with restaurants. This meant running the gauntlet of enthusiastic staff trying to tempt us in the most common line being: “Happy Hour!”

I’m not entirely sure if they say that to everyone… or if they reserve that one especially for the British 😳😂

We made it through the barrage and decided on a simple strategy… eat wherever seemed the busiest.

Soon we found Song Fa Bak Kut Teh, which had a long queue stretching out the front door and along the street.

Clearly this was the place to be.

However… we were hungry, and the queue wasn’t moving particularly quickly. Perhaps somewhere slightly less busy would be a better plan 😂

As we walked past the side of the restaurant I noticed another entrance… down a small staircase… where a host was standing.

I stepped down and he asked:

“Table for one or two?”

“Two,” I replied, fully expecting a long wait.

Instead… he immediately showed us to a table 😳😂

Moments later we were handed a small clipboard with a QR code to order from… confirming that yes, this was indeed the same restaurant as the one with the giant queue outside 🤪

> Dinner

The food was excellent.

We ordered a feast of:
• braised pork belly
• braised tenderloin stew
• seafood pancake
• dough fritters
• rice
• xiao bai cai (mini Pak Choi?)

Simple dishes, packed with flavour, and exactly what we needed after a long day of travel 😋

> Dessert Time

After dinner we decided to grab something sweet and stopped by a nearby ice cream shop.

I chose two scoops:
• black sesame
• vanilla tiramisu

The clear winner was the black sesame… less sweet, slightly nutty and absolutely delicious.

> One Week of Travel

We were just about to head back to the hotel to finally catch up on some sleep when we realised something.

This marked the end of our first week travelling 😳

Surely that deserved some kind of celebration.

Perhaps a drink…

Perhaps a Singaporean drink.

> The Birthplace of the Singapore Sling

So naturally we headed to Long Bar… the birthplace of the famous Singapore Sling.

The story goes that in the early 1900s women were not encouraged to drink alcohol in public. So a bartender created a fruity cocktail that looked innocent enough 😜🍹

When we arrived there was, unsurprisingly, another queue.

So we relaxed on the veranda while waiting… watching the line slowly grow longer behind us.

Eventually we were ushered inside the wonderfully cool interior of the bar.

The place feels steeped in colonial history and also covered in peanut shells 😳😂

We were seated in the best possible place: right at the bar 🥳

From here we could watch the bartenders mixing cocktails, including a mechanical contraption that shakes several drinks at once 😳 a fascinating bit of cocktail engineering ⚙️🍹

> The Drinks

We didn’t dive straight into the Singapore Sling.

After a long travel day we were exhausted and dehydrated, so we started with non-alcoholic cocktails.

I had the East Coast - coconut water, fresh mint, nutmeg, mace and lemon juice.

Incredibly refreshing with a lovely balance of sharp citrus and warm spice.

Then it was time.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big fan of gin, so rather than risk wasting a Singapore Sling, Alex ordered that classic while I chose the Golden Milk Punch.

A tribute to Rudyard Kipling, who visited Raffles Hotel Singapore in 1889 and had a lifelong love of India.

The drink combined blended Scotch whisky, saffron almond milk, apricot liqueur, ginger and fresh lemon juice.

Let’s just say…

It definitely packed a punch 😂

While the bartender was making our drinks I noticed a waitress returning a cocktail that a customer had refused. There was a slightly tense exchange behind the bar and it looked like the drink might go to waste.

Which seemed like a tragedy.

And it looked suspiciously like the Sour Plum Mojito, which had been my other choice.

So I asked if it was spare and whether I could try it instead.

The waitress seemed extremely grateful… possibly because she might otherwise have been charged for it 😳

Either way… it was fantastic.

I even ate one of the salted dried sour plums at the end 😂

Not a bad way to celebrate the first week of our world tour.Read more