tiny little gourmet supermarket in this industrial area – an odd spot for a place quite as cute and consumer-friendly as this, but the space is welcoming and the goods are worth the drive.
and also, as an aside, my favorite indonesian restaurant has an outlet just above this space – so you can get your (gourmet) marketing done and fill your belly at (almost) the same time!
it could almost be tsukiji market right, but it isn’t. it’s a tiny japanese corner hidden in the depths of pasarbella, the new gourmet marketplace that’s taken singapore (and its expat/ hipster/ moneyed population, especially) by storm.
pasarbella suffered a lot of flak from loads of unappreciative dissers who couldn’t reconcile this plastic, covered sprawl to the european food markets it supposedly took reference from. but it’s an unfair comparison – I don’t think this was meant to be the sort of down-to-earth daily-marketing style you see in places like d’aligre; it reminds me instead of that tiny market I used to visit in london’s duke of york square. a little posh, more-than-slightly wallet-emptying, but satisfying both gastronomically and as a worthy day out.
fantastic eating – gratifyingly inexpensive, as well – by the semi-floating market at taling chan. if you had thoughts of eating on a boat while streaming past vendors on their tiny vessels – well, this isn’t it.
here, you plop down on a rather securely fastened floating platform that bobs gently atop the water and wait for your food to be brought to you from the boat-parked kitchen (so to speak). I like this better: great food, no fear of being splattered by dubious river water, and no bulky life-vest constricting the appetite – precisely my jazz.
I pulled the trigger a little too quickly this morning – descriptions now included!
when you get to thailand, a floating market is almost definitely on your list of go-tos. if you’re like us and can’t quite be bothered to get to the typically picturesque markets outside bangkok (the most popular being the damnoen saduak floating market) – two hours early travel and massive crowds to deal with – then this is a great choice. right within the boundaries of the city, a good proper market with more locals than tourists and lots of good food, this place fit right into our schedules and stomachs.
we ate very well here (but that’s for the next post!) – and saw quite a bit about how the locals live, and shop. if you remember the vietnamese market I visited last year, then perhaps you’d notice similarities between the two!
grilled sweet-and-sticky marinated pork skewers (so delicious!) | every-kind-of-‘ball you could want
there’s no better way to start a deluge of bangkok posts than with the famed chatuchak weekend market – a market square north of the city centre that’s packed with stalls selling nearly everything you could want (and most likely don’t need).
we went with the best of intentions – there are zones demarcated by category (the work of an optimist, really, as the whole place is really just a mix-and-match of stalls that set up wherever they can) – but we ended up just doing a stroll through alleys that caught our eye. which might, actually, mean we covered not half of the market that afternoon.
but you’re here for the food – so let’s go!
step-in-the-right-direction-but-not-quite-there-yet food fair at the f1 pitstop. I made my way down here on a sweltering sunday afternoon – and while it definitely is encouraging for the local food scene, I think it needs further thought into the sort of food that was on offer.
with a large proportion of asian stores selling dishes already readily available locally – and at inflated prices – and most stores offering carb-heavy specialties, it was difficult to try everything. but at the prices being charged for rather small portions, it’s probably just as well that the dishes were so filling.
last post on the mekong lodge – and what better way to finish, then with my favourite meal of the day. I’m a firm hot-grain-with-a-pat-of-peanut-butter-and-raisins kind of girl (I’ve had this basically everyday for the last six months since starting work) ((and post coming up on how to cook it!)) but sometimes it’s nice to be served something different.
breakfast here has been as it was with the other meals – simple, and wholesome, and full of the clean flavours of food. I despair at hotel breakfasts sometimes, with their gravied-dishes and too-rich spread, always heading for the simple cereal and milk, but this meal was a revelation.
fragrant, and soft-as-a-baby’s-somethingsomething bread that came hot and stacked in a basket, these loaves were amazing. they were a sort of cross between the soft enriched japanese white bread, and a more crust-worthy european loaf, and very good for all that. baked as a literal roll, you could undo it quite easily and it’d steam its way across your glasses (I’m highly myopic) before you go at it with a pat of butter of jam. dream-worthy.
we had more fresh cut-fruit, none of that syrupy monstrosity some paltry places use, as well as half-boiled eggs. if you’re so inclined, get the pancakes too – these are very clearly asian-type pancakes, elastic in the way kueh are, and flat as a crêpe. good with jam, or with a sprinkle of sugar, the way my parents remember it.
it’s been a great time at the lodge, a good escape for city folks like us, and well worth a visit if you get the chance.
more on the mekong lodge found on the heading out for food page, if you scroll down to vietnam | mekong delta.
this was dinner after our cooking class – and a pretty good one at that, even if it does sort of show you the abbreviated portions they serve (and why we had to order more). I did wonder at this meal if the problem could be fully accounted for by the fact that we have unashamedly large appetites for seafood and all sorts of good food – but even you must agree that the prawns up there look a little sad on a large white plate (yes, they arrived like that).
andmorefood 