An excerpt from "Around the World in 80 Dinners"
The approach of evening lures us irresistibly into Singapore’s red-light district, discreetly hidden in residential quarters among the street-side shops of Geylang Road, a major artery. If you know the city-state’s reputation for paternalistic morality, you might be surprised the sex trade flourishes here. The government bans “adult magazines” such as Playboy and even requires ones with “mature content” like Cosmopolitan to carry a warning on the cover, but Big Brother approves of prostitution, as long as it isn’t merely for oral sex (legal just as a prelude to conventional copulation) and doesn’t involve sodomy, a heinous offense punishable by brutal and bloody caning.
Heedless on this sweltering night to any of these indulgences, our carnal cravings focus exclusively on crab…About a year before we made final decisions on destinations to visit on this trip, the late R. W. (“Johnny”) Apple, Jr. published an article in The New York Times on “Singapore’s Endless Supper.” A renowned journalist equally esteemed for his political reporting and his discriminating gluttony, Apple claimed the crab bee hoon (a preparation with rice vermicelli) at Sin Huat Eating House on Geylang Road “the best crab dish we tasted in a city famous for crab.” He didn’t describe the place or its location in any detail, but we know our lust for the bee hoon will lead us to the door.
Assuming it has a door, which isn’t really the case. Approaching the area on foot, looking carefully for any sign of an “eating house,” we finally come across an open-air sidewalk dive on a corner with a small sign announcing “Sin Huat.”
“Surely, that’s not our spot,” Cheryl says hopefully. “Let’s look a little farther.” Nothing about the neighborhood or premises seems promising except for rows of fish and seafood tanks, enough—after cleaning the grime off the outside—to supply a large aquarium. The tanks provide all the décor and several dingy, rickety plastic tables on the sidewalk constitute all the dining accoutrements.
“I’m afraid we’ve found it,” Bill says. “Why don’t we sit down and at least get a beer?”
He leads the way over to a couple of short plastic stools, the only seats out at the time until a wiry sparkplug of a woman rushes from inside to wrestle real plastic chairs from a tall stack in a corner. Bills orders a big bottle of Tiger beer for us to share, and as Sparkplug pours us glasses, she insists, “You eat some steamed scallops, too.” Not quite sure how or why to refuse the food, we shrug our agreement to the order and she disappears into the maze of tanks. Inspecting the Tiger bottle, Cheryl hands it over to Bill, pointing to a promise that drinkers will “Live Like a Rock Star.”
“Yeah, right,” he says. “So Jagger’s going to join us at this dump any moment now?”
While we sip the refreshingly cold brew, a cook emerges from a kitchen at the rear wearing knee-high rubber boots, sloshes along the wet floor, reaches into one of tanks, and grabs our scallops, still alive in their shells. Cheryl watches him intently. “I love the Chinese sense of fresh. None of this ‘air expressed daily’ or even caught the same day. If it’s dead when it reaches the kitchen, it might as well have been dead for a week.”
“It’s definitely a good omen.”
A half of the bottle of beer later, Sparkplug delivers a big plate of the scallops on the half-shell, bathed in a rich, heady, oily sauce. “My God,” Bill swears. “These are unbelievable, maybe the tastiest scallops I’ve ever had.”
“And,” Cheryl says, “I bet the menu”—which we never see, even if it exists—“doesn’t blather on about diver harvesting, plumpness, provenance, or other things so common in American restaurant descriptions. You see them in the tank alive and know they’re truly fresh.”
After a few more bites, Bill pauses and glances around again. “You know, this place doesn’t look so bad, after all.”
Pleasantly acclimated now, we order Chef Danny Lee’s specialty, the crab bee hoon. To accompany the dish, a waitress brings us rolled-up washcloths, a welcome sight since none of the other food vendors in Singapore so far has offered napkins or wipes of any kind. Later, when he gets the check, Bill sees the washcloths for a second time, listed as a one dollar charge. He laughs at the fee, for a service that keeps the table manageably tidy for the restaurant, but pays it happily.
When we’re well into our second beer, Sparkplug returns with a brimming platter featuring a magnificent jumbo crab, broken into big pieces over a tangled pillow of vermicelli in a sticky broth flavored with oyster sauce, mushrooms, scallions, ginger, and red chiles. “Apple certainly didn’t exaggerate,” Cheryl says. “How could crab get any better?”
Taking turns with the metal cracker, we shatter shell much of the evening, probably even in our sleep later. Our goal is to direct the juices into the noodles, enriching them further with briny sweetness, but the shells go every direction, including as Cheryl discovers the next day, into her purse.
She doesn’t keep the mementoes, but we’ll certainly remember the night and its delight. Rock stars got no glory on us.”
Excerpted from AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DINNERS © Copyright 2008 by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. Reprinted with permission by William Morrow. All rights reserved
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