Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/107892
look confident, and he serves up my plate. I recognize one dish as rendang beef curry, often featured on Malaysian menus in North America. (This illustrates the polyglot nature of North American Asian restaurants, where different regions and traditions are often rolled together under one banner.) My plate also holds chicken and vegetable curries, plus a side that includes banana peppers. Taking a seat beside a family (communal seating is one of the pleasures of solo dining in Singapore), I dig in. And in fact the spice hit is rather mild. In Malaysia and Singapore they don't go in for butt-kicking Thai chilies – the sambal chili paste favoured here tends to be a little milder and sweeter, making Malaysian cuisine seem a little kinder and gentler overall. My tablemates include Yusef, a young local man eating with his parents and wife. Is this his favourite spot, I ask? Yusef shakes his head. "My favourite restaurant is home," he says. "Nothing beats Mom's cooking." On my way out, I remember that Kampong Glam the neighbourhood also features Kampong Glam the restaurant, at the corner of Baghdad and Bussorah streets. Which means I must return to the area tomorrow – I know and love this spot from past visits. I line up with a crowd the next day as planned, to order a couple of Malay favourites, lontong and gado-gado. Gado-gado is a local classic, typically vegetables and boiled egg covered in a warm peanut sauce. As for lontong, the name can refer to what I have before me – a dish containing cabbage, bean curd, sliced egg and green beans, topped with a dollop of chili paste and swimming in coconut milk curry. But more specifically, lontong refers to the main ingredient, a sort of rice cake that's been cooked for five or six hours, then cut into cubes or slices. Seated at a table beside locals, I'm told that lontong has a special role in Malay Muslim culture. "Traditionally, this is a New Year's dish," explains my dining companion, a trim, 50-ish Malay man in a blue short-sleeved shirt. "But these days, people eat lontong all the time." Lontong dishes have also become an integral part of Chinese New Year festivities, the kind of cultural crossover that makes Singapore what it is. Singapore's most famous cultural hybrid is the Malay-Chinese blend known as Peranaken. In the local legends, it's a little unclear whether Peranaken culture resulted from Chinese immigrants absorbing Malay 28 W e s t w o r l d p24-29_Singapore.indd 28 >> spring 2013 Singapore's Chinatown district, where durian dishes including crêpes are an acquired taste. influence, or whether it represents a more literal crossbreeding. But it's now a distinct local tradition that finds its fullest expression in food. One example is laksa, a coconut milk curry with short rice noodles. A number of laksa shops in Joo Chiat, on the east side of the city, claim to have been the first to serve this dish. But 328 Katong Laksa (yet another small, basic, open-front diner) R. Ian Lloyd/Masterfile 13-01-21 3:05 PM