Squareface @ 31°North

Singaporeans tend to make this simple equation. Singaporean identity = Singaporean food. We spend our lives talking about food, and how good it is. We dedicate our lives finding the best food in town. For those who live abroad, they bring boxfuls of food/pastes/spices from home, and learn to cook versions of the famous Singapore cuisine. For those not culinarily inclined, they will pay exorbitant (think S$20 for a bowl of laksa) prices at restaurants to satisfy their stomachs with it. For those… you get the idea. We love our food and we can’t get enough of it.

Or can we?

Let’s backtrack to the first few months I was away from home. Even the smell of chicken rice lingering in the air made my throat tighten.

Now, I can look at a Singaporean restaurant’s menu and nothing, NOTHING speaks to me.

This can mean one or all of a few things. Has Singapore food lost its meaning on me? Do I no longer feel my identity attached to craving for laksa, chilli crab, hainanese chicken rice, bak chor mee, char kway teow, fried carrot cake (black), roti prata, chicken curry, fried hokkein mee etc? Or is it that Singaporean food holds no meaning to me when it’s not eaten in a hot and smoky hawker centre with designated seats for smoking, and the drinks stall staff impressing you with their fantastic memory of customers’ drinks?

It may the case of how the eating experience is just different so the food becomes just that, food.

Perhaps I attach too many external factors to the eating experience when it should just be about the food. But how can I enjoy it per se? Take my favourite black pepper crab for instance. Yes I do love eating it so, and I can probably eat a whole kilo of Sri Lankan black pepper crab on my own, but my crab eating experience is simply not complete without my mother there to eat it with me (and foot the bill). I’m supposed to abstain from eating seafood, crab being one of the prime abstinence because of high cholesterol content which will kill me (really, because I have familial hypercholesterolaemia), and my mother will never let me hear the end of it. But during the twice yearly homecoming, she buys me that crab meal as a kind of ritual to welcome me back, not without nagging about my diet, but nevertheless we enjoy our crab-eating feast together (and she pays).

Have I lost touch with my foodaholic nature? Hardly. If anything, I’m more a foodaholic now than ever before. I learnt the magic of laksa, bak chor mee and crabs only after I left Singapore, actually. And I’ve been catching up ever since. My tastbuds have also grown more diversified — Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and of course they’ve acquired a liking for kimchi and all the Korean dishes made with it. More exposure to other cuisines is something I hope to achieve in time to come. Reaching higher thresholds of spiciness of different kinds is also something I want training in.

As for Singaporean food, it’s best eaten in Singapore, with friends and family.