Major Malls
Visiting Tim Ho Wan PEAK wasn’t part of my plan, but the inviting aroma drew me in. I was simply passing through The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands when an irresistible aroma stopped me in my tracks, the sweet, smoky scent of perfectly roasted char siu. It was one of those smells that pulls you…
My first Korean meal was a mess. Not the food me. I was twenty, out with friends, and I let them order everything. We ended up with four rice dishes, a stew nobody touched, and a mountain of side dishes I assumed we had to pay extra for. I spent the whole meal quietly panicking…
I didn’t set out to become the guy who maps Korean food and Korean restaurants across every mall in Singapore. It just happened, one meal at a time. Over the past couple of years, I’ve eaten my way through most of what ION Orchard offers from the food court downstairs to the spots scattered across…
The first time I ordered sashimi, I did everything wrong. I was maybe nineteen, sitting at a counter in Singapore with a friend who knew what she was doing, and I panicked. I drowned a slice of salmon in soy sauce, dropped a fat clump of wasabi on top, and swallowed it before I could…
I didn’t set out to write this. It started as a habit. Somewhere between the shopping errands and the quiet afternoons, I began drifting up the escalators at Takashimaya, looking for a plate of raw fish and a corner to sit in. Over the past two years, I’ve eaten sashimi at nearly every Japanese restaurant…
I wasn’t planning to dine here. It was a regular weekday in Singapore, hot and sticky, and I was killing time along Orchard Road. Then I spotted the balcony on the fourth floor of Orchard Central: a few tables, a decent breeze, people eating what looked like very good bowls. I went up. That was…
The first time I ate sushi in Takashimaya, I was eighteen and completely broke. My aunt slid a plate of salmon across the counter and told me to eat slowly, because good fish deserves patience. I’ve never forgotten that. Over the past six years, I’ve eaten my way through nearly every Japanese restaurant and sushi…
I wasn’t planning to eat at Food Opera Singapore that afternoon. I’d come down Orchard Road for something else, got ambushed by the heat, and ducked into ION just to cool off. The escalator brought me down to B4, and the smells started before I even saw the place: garlic, coconut broth, something charred and…
The first time I brought a friend from overseas to Orchard Road, we walked for forty minutes and ate nothing. We started at ION Orchard. Then someone said the food looked better at Ngee Ann City. So we crossed over. Then a queue at one place made us doubt ourselves, and we wandered toward Wisma…
The first time I met a friend at Plaza Singapura, we spent twenty minutes walking in circles. We had no plan, too many choices, and that very Singapore problem of being hungry but still unable to decide what to eat. By the time we finally reached a table, we were more tired from choosing than…