Garden in Its Finest Glory and Food Escapade at Makansutra Glutton's Bay

Gator has been procrastinating in updating the food blog. Blame it on other priorities in life - one of which is data collection for research. It is indeed a time consuming exercise and one should not underestimate the time to contact people etc. The most exhausting component - your mind just keeps on thinking while you are speaking to people. Research is indeed an iterative process. So, this is going to be a backdated post.

Gator was at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and it was such a marvelous visit. I mean this entire garden spanning some 101 hectares of land is totally reclaimed. It just shows how much discipline is needed to really develop a city and the landscape. Trust me - Singapore has its faults and sometimes, the relentless work pace and the drive of the people to work till they zonk out seems so exhausting. But very few cities that are cramped for space actually devote that amount of land to develop a garden instead of more high rise buildings. So, that did impress Gator.

Gator visited two conservatories - the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. The former  is supposed to mimic the cool-dry climate of the Mediterranean region. It does seem weird to have a Dutch theme with windmill, clogs and tulips surrounded by this glass of insulated artificiality - the glass acts as a physical barrier from the external tropical climate to a sizable space of controlled cool air and low humidity. In one sense, Gator can see a lot of parallels between this engineered environment with the general controlled physical landscape of the city state. Gator has become too philosophical with a lot of political analogies here.. (hehehe)

Check out the little wooden clogs 

Little Holland in the making?

This is not frozen ice but is a miniature cactus

The other conservatory is  Cloud Forest with an artificially created cool-dry climate, almost similar to the tropical highlands.

Huge waterfall greets visitors at the entrance of Cloud Forest

You can walk around the cascading waterfall with this elevated structure.

Peeking into the city landscape from the waterfall

Gator felt a bit acrophobic walking around the waterfall 

Outside Gardens by the Bay - with a view of the Singapore Flyer in the background.

The use of air conditioner in the two conservatories did worry me a fair bit but I read online that the buildings are supposed to be environmentally friendly. One of which are these super trees which supposedly harness solar energies. The glass surrounding the conservatories are also double glazed to reduce the heat.

The man-made super trees said to generate solar energy

Finally, the Makansutra Glutton's Bay which highlights some of Singapore's famous street or hawker fare. I actually think the food was generally passable - you can better hawker fare at grittier places, outside the city centre.  We ordered a range of typical Singapore hawker food.

Roasted chicken rice - this was passable. The rice is traditionally cooked with chicken fat.

Satay - chicken and beef with rice cakes and cucumbers. 

Oyster omelette- loved the crispy bits 

Ngo hiang - an assortment of fried meat, tofu, fishballs and even crispy prawn fritters. 

Quality of food: 3/5 - great for tourists as a one-stop eating centre but nothing really spectacular
Value for $$: It is considered slightly on a pricer side for local hawker food but rent in the city area is not cheap, I guess
Overall Experience:  Gator was famished after walking around the Garden and devoured the food. The ambiance is pretty quaint but the quality of the food is pretty average.

Hawker's Delight - 4127 Main Street

The word "hawker" usually denotes a person who goes from place to place selling food. And that basically is the origin of the phase hawker food in Southeast Asia and Asia. In the early colonial days, many of these itinerant hawkers were unlicensed and over time, strict controls were implemented to ensure food safety and for better controls in sanitary conditions. The term hawkers eventually evolved from an itinerant trader to one which became settled into a fixed place - where people usually congregate to eat cheap and good street food. The hawker centers are now an ubiquitous feature in many parts of Asia and its a great way to savor a variety of street food.

I was thus very excited to try out the hawkers delight at main street. Actually, the place is pretty gritty itself - small and hole in the wall place and where one can see the chefs frantically stir-frying food in huge iron woks over the hot stove.

For appetizers, we ordered vegetable fritters. I have to say that the dough was pretty light and bouncy and it was so crunchy. Gator loves her fritters.

Crunch veggie fritters

The inside of the veggie fritters

For main course, we ordered two dishes. The mee pok noodles were a HUGE disappointment for me. It came choke full of ingredients - bbq pork, prawns and vegetables. But the brown sauce was weird. The sauce was salty and came with minced meat.Traditionally, the sauce should come with a bit of spicy chilli sauce, mixed with soya sauce and vinegar - it should be spicy, salty and a bit tangy. The sauce served unfortunately was just salty and lacks the oomph factor .Mee pok refers to the type of noodles and can be served with wanton or even with fish balls, fish cakes or minced meat.

Mountain of mee pok noodles

Gator loves her shrimp but the sauce wasn't nice at all :(

View of meat in noodles

The second main course - nasi goreng (in Malay) which means fried rice  was much better. Even then, I found it pretty ordinary - it was fried with onions, tomatoes, shrimp and some pieces of fish cake and tofu. Nothing much to rave about.

My fried rice paradise wasn't much of a paradise :(

Close up shot of the nasi goreng

Overall Experience:
Deco: 2/5 - this is a no fuss, eat and go place. No problems for me in that aspect
Quality of food: 2/5 - except for the veggie fritters, the 2 main dishes were a thumbs down for Gator. Quite disappointing
Value for $$: $$/5 - price is cheap - between CAN$5.25-CAN$9 bucks. But the quality of food is below average
Overall Experience: 2/5

It was an overall disappointing experience for Gator. Hopefully, the other dishes like the laksa will be much better.