Food Trip Down Memory Lane

A memory is like a powerful microchip  (thefreedictionary.com)/ and the Singaporean cuisine at The Coriander Restaurant, Lounge and Grill (Crossroads, Banilad) rekindles memories of Singapore. I really felt I was back in Singapore when I accepted an invitation for a degustation from Chef Sheldon S. Jeyga and he has called his restaurant "coriander" because all the dishes served there contain a piece (leaves & seed) of the plant.

It had been years since I have been in Singapore. I was in Malaysia to study the egg production business and then I had a break because there was a holiday. With my Malaysian host and his family, we took a three-hour drive from Kuala Lampur, crossed a short bridge, passports validated and finally the Republic of Singapore. It had a population of nearly 5 million citizens, consisting of three ethnic groups: 77 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay and 7 percent Indian.

Each of these groups have a preference for food. The Chinese, for example, came from several provinces in China and they brought their regional cuisines like Fujian, Cantonese, Teochow, Szechuan and Hakka. In fact, a new regional cuisine developed, Nonya, which is a blend of Chinese and Malay cuisine.

In Singapore, there are two national pastimes, eating and shopping. The former will cause an over production of gastric juices that Singaporeans have coined a new word, Makan, for this gastronomic promiscuity. And during my short stay there (and Malaysia), I was a most eager devotee to both. I had access to all kinds of food, from street dishes found in the hawkers' centers to the better restaurants since my Malaysian host was eager to open a restaurant in Cebu and I was to rate whether the dishes would be acceptable to Cebuanos. We are not really that adventurous about food; if you think you are brave, do you eat frogs?

Chef Sheldon S. Jega has an intense passion for food and he brought to Cebu inspirations from his grandmothers' cooking. During the food tasting, we had the following Singaporean dishes: Har Cheong Kai (Fried Chicken Wings Coated with Fermented Shrimp Paste), Curry Feng or Christang Curry (Pig Offal Stew with Malaccan Spices), Oyster Omelette (Fresh Oysters Fried in Special Flour-Egg Mixture), Hainanese Chicken Rice (steamed chicken with rice cooked in chicken stock with ginger paste chilli sauce and dark soy sauce), Hokkien Mee (Stir-fry Noodles with Shrimp), Chai Tow Kway (Stir-Fry Carrot Cake), Kangkong Sambal Belacan (Stir-fry Kangkong with Fermented Shrimp Paste), Ikan Bakar (Grilled Fish Stuffed with Spices) and a dessert (my choice was Pistachio Kulfi). And in Singapore, except for the dessert and the Curry Feng, I have tried them all.

A dish that awakens memories is the Hokkien Mee because I was surprised then that there is a Singaporean version of our Bam-I. Hokkien Mee uses two kinds of noodles, bihon (rice noodles) and miki (wheat) while Bam-I use tanghon (made from soybean) and miki (wheat). Another dish was the Oyster Omelette which is similar to the Cebuano Chinese dish called O-Wa-Tian (fresh oyster omelette with camote flour and ganda, a member of the onion family). And your favorite food columnist was fortunate to have eaten the original version found in Xiamen, China together with a local Fujian speciality called Chilled Sea Worm Jelly (Tu Sun Dong).

During the degustation, everything was a near replica of the dishes I had eaten before in Singapore. My beloved readers are fortunate to have been born in this generation because so much variety of cuisines is now available in Cebu and they do not have to travel far to taste it. No passports are necessary to have a taste of authentic Singaporean dishes at the Coriander Restaurant.