Have only 24 hours on a Singapore stopover? Here’s where to eat
By Paul Chai
Despite the fact my stomach has a low rumble to rival my plane’s engines as it approaches Singapore’s Changi airport, there’s no airline breakfast for me. I touch down at 7am with just 24 hours to fit in the city’s best plates of food before setting sail on a cruise.
I plan to attack the Lion City like a sprawling outdoor buffet, hitting the spots I fell in love with when I lived here for two years, and finish up at the new kid in town: Aussie chef Josh Niland’s first overseas venture, Fysh.
The bright and greenery swathed dining room Josh Niland’s Fysh, within Singapore Edition hotel.
Still clutching my luggage, I make a beeline for the food court in Jewel at Changi airport and find a long queue at Toast Box. Celebrating the corner coffee shops that were once the focus of local life, this chain delivers Singapore’s salty-sweet breakfast champion, kaya toast. Sugary pandan jam and chunks of ice-cold butter are wedged between toast and dipped into soft-boiled eggs covered in soy sauce and white pepper, but it is the kopi artistry I love. Like a pot-and-cup ballet, the coffee is strained through a long coffee sock, poured at a dizzying height and served with a dash of sweetened condensed milk.
Singaporean chain Toast Box specialises in that most glorious of sweet and savoury dishes, kaya toast.Credit: Alamy
Travelling with my youngest son, we have a very specific mission for second breakfast: BreadTalk. As a preschooler, this off-the-wall bakery chain that tops its buns with pork floss and ikan bilis (spicy anchovies) was his after-school go to. We jump in a cab, drop our bags at the Singapore Edition, just off Orchard Road, and discover we are metres from baked-goods heaven. We are so early that trays are still coming fresh out of the oven and I snag a still-warm curried chicken bun and share garlic cheese toast with my son.
The deeply satisfying bak kut teh (pork bone soup) is a must-eat.Credit: Getty Images
Full for now, we are reduced to window shopping. We catch a cab to our old haunt of Balestier Road, where we used to snack on flaky tau sar piah (biscuity pastry stuffed with mung bean) and sip bak kut teh (pork bone soup). I find room for a plate at Miao Sin Popiah, a stall that has been turning out popiah for 40 years – boiled turnip, crushed peanuts and a sweet-and-spicy sauce wrapped in a thin skin.
To kill time, we take public transport to the financial district, walking past Clarke and Boat Quay to our lunch at the ornate Lau Pa Sat hawker market. We join the line for SG Dim Sum, packed with business types, and find prawn dumplings with gossamer-light skins, coriander-packed fried dumplings and custard bao.
The beautifully ornate Lau Pa Sat hawker markets in the evening.Credit: Getty Images
Our cab back to Orchard Road drops as at mega-mall Ion Orchard, so we duck into BreadTalk again and split a lobster-shaped bun packed with crawfish, potato and spicy sauce, and my son has an ice-cream sandwich from veteran street vendor Uncle Chieng.
To stave off a food coma, we return to our accommodation The Singapore Edition, a new build opened late last year and designed by Safdie Architects, the team behind Jewel.
The Singapore Edition’s rooftop pool floats nine floors above a courtyard garden.
We take a plunge in the pool that is suspended in the air a la Safdie’s other work at Marina Bay Sands and which has a huge circular window in the pool bottom looking down seven storeys.
Through the pool’s glass portal you can see the fern-covered al fresco area of nose-to-tail fish maestro, and renowned Australian chef Josh Niland’s Fysh at Edition restaurant below. We dress for dinner and navigate the more than 300 indoor plants to our booth in a room dominated by a tapestry painting by Christian Furr celebrating the bounty of the sea.
Dry-aged Mooloolaba yellowfin tuna rib-eye at Fysh.
Starters include a grilled Abrolhos scallop in sambal, slices of raw fish in a calamansi ponzu and clams and scampi with Niland’s noodles made completely of ground fish bones. But the star is my Fysh martini which has gin washed in Murray cod fat, giving it dirty martini vibes.
The stated aim of the restaurant is to be a seafood steakhouse, so a yellowfin tuna steak comes smothered in Cafe de Paris butter. We finish with a Valrhona chocolate macaron sandwiching ice-cream made with the eyes of the tuna from the main course (you can’t see or taste it; it’s just a binding agent).
This playful dessert serves to remind me I have run out of time for a fish head curry. Oh well, next time.
Josh Niland’s Valrhona chocolate macaron features ice-cream made with fish eyes.
The details
Stay
The Singapore Edition hotel is the first of Ian Schrager’s design-heavy stays to open in Asia and features soaring white walls and a statement-purple lobby bar with shelves packed with “love potions”. The 80-strong main dining room showcases Josh Niland’s sustainable seafood and also offers breakfast (the deep-fried egg with salmon roe is amazing). Double rooms from $SG789 ($908) a night. See editionhotels.com/singapore
The writer was a guest of the Singapore Edition.
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