Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [50]
Set on having the carrot cake, we dash across South Bridge Street to return to the Maxwell Centre, certain someone in the compound makes a reasonable version. A circuit around the stands leads us to “Auntie,” where the namesake cook works on her savory specialty, which contains no carrots and tastes nothing like the American dessert. She coarsely grates enormous daikon-style radishes, puts a mound of them into a flat-bottomed wok, cracks an egg over the top, and fries it lightly into a loose mixture. Both of us get black cakes, darkened by soy sauce and dried chile, but we take seats at a table already occupied by a local businessman eating the simpler white rendition.
He nods a welcome to us and watches us curiously, remarking after a few minutes in good English, “You must live in Singapore because you handle the chopsticks so well.”
“No,” Bill answers, “but we use them at home in the United States with some frequency. Do you eat regularly at the Maxwell Centre?”
“Just occasionally when I’m in the neighborhood. What brings you here? You must be the only Westerners in the building.”
“We’re on a hawker pilgrimage,” Cheryl says, “sampling as many dishes as we can at a variety of centers. These simple cakes are delicious, as flavorful as any hawker specialty we’ve eaten.”
Smiling broadly, he tells us, “You’re getting a real Singapore experience. I eat hawker food every day and think it’s the best thing about the city. I couldn’t live anywhere else for that reason alone.”
A little full now, still before noon, we decide to get some exercise walking around the historic colonial zone of the city. If Bill had only packed hiking boots for the occasion, the tall, turbaned-and-robed doorman at the fabled Raffles Hotel might have let him enter the lobby. Both of us are wearing open-toed sandals, like most people on the tropical streets, which the establishment’s inspector general deems okay for a lady but not a gentleman. Cheryl goes in for a look while Bill hangs around the portico, trying to annoy the burly fellow, who he hopes is sweating profusely under his officious garb and bulky black shoes.
This bit of fun stirs our appetites again, so we take the subway to the main Malay sector of town, a predominantly Muslim area, for a visit to the Haig Road Food Centre. Several generations of the same family have operated Warong Sudi Mampir since the 1940s, settling in this location about thirty years ago. The current chef-owner and Makansutra Legend, Gunawan Baajoan, seems a little overwhelmed at present with take-out orders, telling us, “You’ll have to wait about forty minutes before I can get to you.”
He probably expects us to leave, obviously oblivious to our reputation for obstinate persistence. Instead, we find seats, get drinks from another stall, and track his progress, noticing that he cooks on small logs rather than charcoal, a sterling sign. He catches on to our frame of mind pretty quickly and comes over to tell us he can fit in a small order, just what we want. Within minutes he brings us ten skewers, equally divided between beef and chicken, both types succulently marinated in coconut milk and spices and then grilled perfectly. Cheryl pronounces the proprietor’s chunky peanut sauce “the best I’ve ever had,” and guesses he made it by hand with a mortar and pestle, crushing peanuts with finely minced ginger, shallots, and chile, and for the salty tang, adding pounded dried shrimp rather than fish sauce.
Concluding the evening with crab bee hoon