I wanted to begin this post by saying that I’ve reached peak Tita — not peak adult, as I have yet to find a job let alone get a downpayment on a house — but reflecting on this further, I can’t even call myself a plantita. The only plant I own is the lush chrysanthemum blossom diffuser that throws fragrance quite nicely in the bathroom. (Absolutely worth the mention, but a warning: it’s a guzzler).
I do want to say that as much as I initially didn’t enjoy the thought of moving to Singapore, after five months, I’m beginning to like it here.
It wasn’t easy at first. I moved here just riiiight before circuit breaker measures went in full effect. Singapore had grocery deliveries available but with the lockdown it was impossible to get a delivery slot. And since I baked a lot in the US (in HK, this was difficult being that we lived in a shoebox apartment), it disturbed me to find that there was no high quality baking chocolate in the supermarkets when I tried to look for them online.
During this time, I sorely missed Whole Foods and most particularly Jeni’s Ice Cream and Velvet Bees Honey Butter (which unfortunately I haven’t been able to successfully replicate) from the US. I’m not even counting the fact that I lived on top of the downtown supermarket in Des Moines.
I missed the freedom to move around freely like I had in HK even as it became one of the earliest breeding grounds for the coronavirus. I didn’t think that I could find anything in Singapore like my beloved CitySuper and Slowood, which is an amazing sustainable grocery in Kennedy Town.
But in Singapore, I recently discovered the supermarket in the basement of Isetan, which was a full-on Japanese grocery with all delicacies I could think of. It had Japan-grown fruit (and I had dreams of being a fruit influencer once in my life). It had all the sushi I could wish for on the prepared sushi chiller (otoro! ankimo! the sushi gods have smiled upon me), cheesecake, pound cake, and other goods from Hokkaido (Icenoie’s Hokutsa Salt ice cream is so good!). I almost am okay with not ever stepping foot in Japan again for the rest of my life. Ok, that’s not true. But I can live with Singapore. Not to mention, there are plenty of Tokyu Hands and Donki branches I can visit whenever I need to scratch a stationery itch. If Loft would open here, that! would be! amazeballs!
There’s also Meidi-ya, another Japanese supermarket, also with a Hokkaido section I’ve read, with a two-storey flagship branch that was due to open in August. It seems to have been pushed back to I-don’t-know-when by the pandemic. I have yet to visit it, but I feel like all my Japanese food cravings are covered.
I also recently discovered Scoop, an Australian sustainable / zero-waste grocery store that’s newly opened. It’s a dream come true for amateur soapcrafters, candle makers, charcutiers. I don’t know how else to put it. I have an easy source for if I ever want to make a bath bomb (citric acid and different kinds of salt / magnesium) or cure some prosciutto (you need juniper seeds) or brew some floral tea (they have dried jasmine, lavender, rosebuds). You have to check out their soap room. It’s not Buly (okay, ridiculously expensive for what it is, still I drool), but it’s definitely not nothing.
With the circuit breaker, some restaurant food suppliers have started selling to non-restaurants, I got lucky and I found a source for Valhrona feves at a good price. They sell them at all the cocoa percentages. You never know with this pandemic, so I stocked up with a 3-kilo bag. They bake into chocolate chip cookies beautifully; no need to chop them up given their heft. Another store I love started selling their signature sauce again, which is literally my secret sauce for some pretty amazing blondies.
There’s a store that sells different kinds of oysters, another that sells Bordier butter, another that sells sheet butter (for croissants!) and exotic ingredients to keep a molecular gastrochef and/or patissier happy. I didn’t believe it at first, but if you know where to look, Singapore has almost everything. The diversity here (compared to Hong Kong) makes searching of ethnic ingredients easier than in most places. And most of the stores deliver to your doorstep.
One weird thing about living here is that, some things can be pretty difficult to find if you’re strictly an online grocery shopper, simply because things are named different. Napa cabbage is called wong bok. Cilantro is called Chinese parsley. Okra is called Ladies’ finger. Eggplants are called brinjal. At least, they’re called those on Fairprice, where I do most of my groceries.
I’ve outed myself as a food obsessive (though if you’ve subscribed to this mailing list, you already knew that). You know who to look for if you’re the type of traveler that considers supermarket trips an essential part of the travel experience.