Why this city-state is famous for its fusion food

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

The unmistakable aroma of coffee fills the room — it’s nutty and chocolatey with a pleasantly smoky quality. I breathe it in before I see its origin: a plate heaped with crispy chicken slathered in dark sticky coffee sauce. It arrives at my table accompanied by a dish of golden butter cereal prawns and moonlight horfun — stir-fried beef noodles served with a raw egg in the middle.

I’m at Keng Eng Kee Seafood, affectionately known as Kek to its regulars. The third-generation, family-owned and run restaurant is one of Singapore’s zi char (‘cook fry’) establishments offering traditional Chinese Hokkien food with Malay and Indian influences, served family-style for everyone to share. “We’re all immigrants here; we’ve all come from somewhere,” says my guide, Naseem Huseni. “So, it’s not unusual to see typically Malay ingredients used in Indian dishes, or saffron with noodles and so on.”

This eclectic blending of flavours and convergence of traditions also manifests itself in Singapore’s Peranakan culture. A centuries-long mixing of Chinese, Malay and Indonesian influences has created a hybrid culture with its own cuisine, language and art — for many, the highly decorated and colourful Peranakan houses are a symbol of Singapore.

Naseem explains that the complex and typically slow-cooked dishes of Peranakan cuisine, once out of fashion, are enjoying a surge in popularity. This is in no small part thanks to Candlenut, which in 2016 became the world’s first Peranakan restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star. Its menu changes according to the season and is updated monthly. When I visit, a salad of sweetcorn, peppery mizuna greens and Java apple, with crispy anchovies and a dressing of sesame and gula melaka — a type of palm sugar with a deep, molasses-like flavour — is a zingy standout. Its balance of sweet, salty and piquant is the perfect counterpoint to the beef rendang that follows, a melt-in-the-mouth tender Malaysian stew, and Candlenut’s take on ikan gulai, a fiery red snapper curry with mellow coconutty notes that are a balm to the dish’s spicy burn.

The feast ends with buah keluak, candlenut ice cream. “You know it can be highly toxic,” Naseem says, laying out the consequences of an improperly prepared candlenut. I take the leap anyway and shove a whole spoonful of the dessert into my mouth. In skilled hands, the nut imparts an earthy, slightly bitter flavour akin to dark chocolate, while sea salt caramel and chocolate chilli crumble add rich layers of flavour. 

Made from a poisonous fruit that’s only edible when fermented, buah keluak ice cream is one of Candlenut’s signature dishes.

Photograph by Audrey & Mok Photography

Hawker heaven

High-end dining is a huge part of Singapore’s food culture. During my visit, I indulge in an omakase menu celebrating premium ingredients like Wagyu beef at Keyaki. And try the mind-boggling creations of chef Edward Chong at Peach Blossoms, including an umami-rich deep-fried ‘cigar’ of snow crab, prawn mousse, foie gras and black truffle, and a dainty pastry crafted into the shape a bee and filled with flavourful honey. But it’s Singapore’s hawker centres — a local version of a food hall — that really capture the essence of this city-state.

“We don’t have a common history or traditions; sometimes we don’t even speak the same language,” explains Naseem. “So, you have to wonder — what is it that unites Singaporeans? Any Singaporean will tell you that when they leave home, they only miss one thing — food.”

Chicken rice is one of Singapore’s most famous dishes, consisting of poached chicken, seasoned rice and some greens on the side.

Photograph by Danny Santos

We’re navigating the lunch crowd at Maxwell Food Centre, near Chinatown, and it isn’t long before I’m dazed by the choice on offer — there are more than 100 stalls here, serving everything from simple-yet-hearty stir-fried noodles and steamed cockles to complex seafood curries and a Singaporean signature, chilli crab. Naseem has her sights set on Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice and its feted dish of Hainanese chicken and rice. What started as a frugal way to make chicken go a little further in less prosperous times is now a meal so popular it competes with chilli crab for the title of Singapore’s national dish.

We have to brave a long queue to get our hands on it: a deceptively simple combination of seasoned rice and tender poached chicken, with some greens on the side — often accompanied by dark soya sauce, chilli-garlic and ginger dips. It’s most Singaporeans’ comfort food of choice, and while it might look rather plain to the eye, its real secret lies in the skill of building the depth of flavour.

“Recipes are often passed through generations and haven’t changed in decades,” Naseem says, also explaining that the real star of the dish is actually the rice, cooked with chicken fat and stock from poaching the bird. As I savour another mouthful of the fluffy rice topped with slices of juicy chicken, fragrant with fresh garlic and ginger, I wholeheartedly agree.

After hours

Another unmissable element of Singapore’s culinary patchwork is its cocktail culture. And its threads stretch much further back than the 15 or so years since creative craft cocktail bars started springing up across the city. Singapore, after all, is the birthplace of the eponymous sling: the cocktail created in the Long Bar at Raffles hotel in 1925. A rosy, pink drink with an elegant foam top that resembles an innocent fruity punch, the Singapore sling was invented so women could enjoy an alcoholic drink discreetly, in a time when such hedonism wasn’t socially acceptable.

Discarded peanut shells crunch underfoot as I’m shown to a table. Long Bar tradition has it that once you’ve shelled your monkey nuts — bags of which accompany each drink — they’re discarded on the floor. Salty snack thus dispatched, it’s not long before I’ve slung back the sling, a sweet yet refreshing way to while away an hour or so on a hot and humid day.

The bar at Mama Diam is accessed via a secret door that’s part of a mock ‘mama’ shop.

Photograph by Mama Diam

Created in 1925 for women to enjoy an alcoholic cocktail discreetly, the Singapore sling is a sweet yet refreshing drink.

Photograph by Raffles Hotel Singapore

Singapore’s cocktail scene offers abundant choice, its bars often weaving in stories of the city-state in their historic locations and creative libations. Mama Diam, where I spend my final evening in the city, is named after the sundry ‘mama’ shops that occupy the ground floor of housing blocks built in the 1950s and 1960s. I find its entrance masked, speakeasy style, by a mock shopfront where a secret sliding door opens to reveal the dim interior.

After a can of milk tea, transformed into a creamy sweet cocktail of whisky and amaretto, I head upstairs to find an elevator door. At the press of a button, the door opens, and I step through and out the other side into another era. Cafe-cocktail bar Lou Shang has seating arranged along two countertops at the centre of what looks like a 1950s housing block — laundry hung out to dry, electricity meters, plant pots and all. The bar menu is similarly nostalgic, organised into evocative categories such as ‘coming home’ and ‘staying home’, with home-made noodles and comfort food favourites like chicken poppers and banana peanut cake.

When it’s time to pack, I have comfort food of my own to take home: a jar of Kek’s incredible house-made coffee sauce, gifted to me by one of its third-generation owners, Jiamin Liew. “Oh, it’s no problem, please enjoy!” she’d said, with a generous smile. “Singaporean food is meant to be shared!”

How to do it: 
A return flight from Heathrow to Singapore costs from £604 with Finnair, which flies between Heathrow and Helsinki up to five times daily and between Helsinki and Singapore daily.

Doubles at the Pan Pacific Orchard start from £275 (room only).
For more information, check: Visit Singapore

This story was created with the support of Singapore Tourism Board, Finnair and Pan Pacific Orchard.

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