During our recent trip to Singapore, we had the pleasure of meeting up with Asia Pacific’s top food blogger Dr. Leslie Tay of the award-winning ieatishootipost.sg. Dr. Tay, a family physician by profession, started his famous site back in 2006 to document Singapore’s best hawker food. Since then he’s become an accomplished author with a national best-selling book, The End of Char Kway Teow and other Hawker Mysteries, and he’s even created the popular ieat hawker app to help find Singapore’s top hawker fare at the flick of a finger.
As you can imagine, Dr. Tay’s a very busy man, so we were fortunate that he had time to meet us for lunch in between seeing patients at his medical practice. We got the inside look into how Dr. Tay passionately conducts his food photography and it was quite the experience witnessing the master in action!
Dr. Tay took us to one of his favourite Malay-Indonesian eateries, Sabar Menanti II in Singapore’s Kampong Glam district where we feasted on a myriad of delicious Nasi Padang dishes.
For our beverages, we had some very addictive coffee with condensed milk (kopi) and sweet ‘n’ sour lime drinks made with juice from calamansi citrus fruit, which are little golden limes. Calamansi is indigenous to the Philippines but is prevalent throughout South East Asia. (I fondly remember enjoying the fruit when I lived in Brunei when I was younger and squeezing them on mee dishes for a tart kick).
Padang food is the cuisine of a predominately Islamic ethnic group native to Padang, the capital and largest city of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Padang dishes are rich in flavour and aroma with prevalent uses of creamy coconut milk and fragrant spices including hot chili. And since the majority are Muslim, Nasi Padang is always halal.
You’re probably already familiar with a few Nasi Padang items such as Ayam Opor, Bergedil, and especially the most famous of all, Beef Rendang. Shared like a mini smorgasbord, you help yourself to the tasty dishes by placing scoops on top of your individual plate of rice (nasi) – a fantastic way to “makan” with great company.
Many thanks to Dr. Tay from ieatishootipost for his hospitality!
Sabar Menanti II
747 North Bridge Road
Singapore
+65 62910109
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