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Singapore makes me feel like being at home

Jan 10, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
I just returned from a visit to Singapore. That beautiful city state and Guyana have a lot in common, especially in terms of cuisine or food habits.
So although I was at the “other end of the world”, I did not really miss my delicious Guyanese food and the warm hospitality normally presented by Guyanese hosts.  The Singapore cuisine is excellent and has much in common with Guyanese dishes.
Feeling nostalgic about my Guyanese type food while in Vietnam and Singapore, I visited Little India, a busy shopping district in the heart of downtown Singapore, to find a restaurant that would satisfy my crave for Guyanese-type cuisine which I had missed being away from NYC.
In Singapore, there are several restaurants that offer delicious food cooked with the same kinds of ingredients, seasonings and spices that we are accustomed to in Guyana. Although the taste is somewhat different from what I am accustomed to in Guyana and while for me Guyanese dishes taste a lot better, the cuisine of Singapore’s Indian restaurants is quite similar to Guyanese dishes.  I should also note that Guyanese type vegetables are readily available in Singapore although there is no space to grow food. Virtually every food in Guyana is found in Singapore.
I got paratha (oil) roti and an assortment of other rotis not available in Guyana but there was no dhal puri in Singapore.  In terms of dishes, all the vegetables (baigan, loukhi or squash, ochre, bora, seime, alou, pumpkin, saijan, etc.) cooked in spicy curry are readily available in all the Indian and even in some Malay (but not Chinese) restaurants.
Eating at an Indian restaurant in Singapore reminds me of eating at weddings or at prayer functions in Guyana. Several of the restaurants offer a buffet (eat all you can) style lunch or dinner.
The buffet is like meals being served at a Guyanese wedding or pooja or Koran Sharief. The waiters come around the tables with buckets containing each dish (tarkari), rice (Basmati and parboiled) and (a variety of) dhal serving the diners continuously.  Someone also comes around with plenty of mango chatney to add to the already heavily spiced meal.
Non-vegetarian meals come with dhal and chowrai and poi bhajjie as well as two other vegetables.  Separate curried gravy or what in Guyana is known as soorwa depending on the non-vegetarian ordered (fish, mutton, goat, chicken) is also served.

The waiters feed you to death literally. A buffet lunch costs just over U.S $4. I had a similar buffet in Dubai last February that cost around the same amount but it was not as tasty as the cuisine of Singapore’s which come closer to a Guyanese taste.
What shocked me about the Singapore buffet was there were more non-Indians (Chinese, Malays, Whites, Africans) than Indians as well as the way people ate in the restaurants in traditional style. Almost everyone ate without utensils.
As we say in Guyana, people “sanay” food with their hands and they ate not from a plate as used at restaurants in Guyana. Food was served on the leaves of plantain and banana trees rested on tables similar to Hindu or Islamic weddings or prayers in Trinidad but different from the purine (Lotus) leaves used at prayers and weddings in Guyana where meals are served on plates in restaurants.  Non-Indians were comfortable eating their meals directly with their fingers as opposed to using spoons or forks.
I should note that Little India in Singapore reminds me a lot of Richmond Hill or Little Guyana in NY.  There are dozens of (Indian) stores and restaurants and you can find all the items needed for a traditional Guyanese meal or a religious festival; incidentally, Diwali, Eid and a few other religious festivals are national holidays.  Singapore makes me feel like being “at home” except it is a developed country. I visit it regularly and each time I go, my expectations of economic development are surpassed.  And as I noted the food makes me feel like I am in Guyana unlike in Vietnam where my dietary habits were not met.
Vishnu Bisram

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