Singapore Food-Fan Alert : (

I've just returned from Blk 11 Telok Blangah Crescent (at the end of Tlk Blangah Mall; just across from Mt Faber SAFRA) - home to many great stalls, including:

• one of my contenders for the very best Mee Goreng in the world;
• a most very wuurd it lime juice (served like a dessert);
• completely superb Nasi Padang (more Negiri Sembilan pedas magic than usual Singapore types, and good use of lemongrass);
• the 'Xiong' stall's noodles (noodles served in sep bowl to fishballs in soup);
• outstanding Carrot Cake ('authentic' and -so poor thing one- just moved from Mei Chin)

...and more places I hadn't tried but came recommended like the Yong Tau Foo, the Congee, and howabout the curry rice with an eternal queue? That's the curry rice with an eternal queue that I may never get to try now BECAUSE THE MARKET AND FOOD CENTRE IS SUDDENLY CLOSED!!!

I was just there last week (twice), enjoying familiar sights, smiles, smells, tastes and characters and nothing to suggest an imminent change. There was the argue-about-everything monologue drinkman's wife, and here the Mee Goreng-stall's lookalike family. The 'hess boss' roti-spinner shouted across at me as I passed the the smoking cabbies (always an encouraging sign if you seek proper food). And there was the can-collecting Auntie who gives one unsolicited advice she feels might be useful if one gives her a can, and when Grace once gave her several bags-full: she stuck around for an exhausting eon with a litany of tips on health, safety and international relations. Today? Nowhere to be seen.

Instead: a lively gentleman in tailor-made shorts, shirt-open, and perched on a stool. On seeing my shock and disappointment at the scene before me he launched into a monologue: "You see! No more all leddy! Now you want eat? You starve! (rubbing belly) Now you want eat you say what? You say: FARCK. Gahment close! You no eat! In your country like that you say FARCK CANNOT. Here? No like that. Go where now?"

Translated, what he was saying was probably exactly what I was thinking. There are other places to eat there, but they're of that uncannily-homogenous HDB food-court variety. With the orange theme going on. And clatter. And the noise of tellys that no-one is watching. And hired-in staff that don't seem to understand any of languages or dialects generally understood in Singapore. And cleaners who will take your plate away before you're done and brush the contents into a cart that will be wheeled around, shedding its fumes and stickiness all over...

Please please please, if you have any information regarding the Food Centre and Market at Blk 11 Telok Blangah Crescent, do let me know. I hope you're going to tell me: It's okay. It's going to open again and nothing much changed. And it won't be some committee's idea of improved... even if I couldn't see the standard banner one normally gets if this is the case. I can hope can't I (even if I just read it's to be closed for "renovation" FOR TEN MONTHS)?

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow some developer is going to spoil everything.



Photo found via Google and copped - without permission - from the interesting Flickr galleries of Achisculpture