Butterfly Tea: Thailand’s Magical Color-Changing Drink

By Dio Asahi for Eat Drink Asia. It’s mid-morning, and the cook doesn’t look up. He stands over a rectangular pan, copper worn to a dull gold at the edges, and pours a thin skin of beaten egg across its surface. It hisses. Steam rises, warm and faintly sweet, and he tilts the pan just…

It always starts the same way for me. Someone lifts the lid off a plate of chilli crab, and the whole table leans in. Fingers reach before spoons do. Somebody tears the first piece of fried mantou, drags it through that sticky, sweet-savoury sauce, and the rest of us stop talking for a second. That…

The first time I ate tteokbokki in Seoul, I burned my tongue standing up. It was late, the air was sharp with cold, and I had stopped at a small street food stall near a subway exit because the steam pulled me in. The woman handed me a paper cup of rice cakes in red…

I wasn’t hungry when I walked into 313@somerset. I’d come for something else entirely; an errand, a shop I needed, the usual Orchard rush of people moving faster than the escalators. But somewhere on the first floor, past the noise, I caught the smell of star anise and beef bone, and my feet slowed down…

By Eda Wong for Eat Drink Asia. It’s late morning, and the light is doing most of the work. It pours through the high windows of Colony, at The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, spilling across white tablecloths and the vintage prints on the walls. Marina Bay hums somewhere outside, but in here the room feels a…

I found it by accident, the way you find most things in a mall basement. I’d come down to Plaza Singapura’s B2 for something else entirely, drifting past the usual food-court noise, when I caught the smell of star anise and beef bone coming from a corner. I followed it. And there it was —…

Fresh Vietnamese spring rolls, or gỏi cuốn, look delicate, but the recipe is really about control: barely softened rice paper, dry herbs, restrained noodles, clean protein, and a dipping sauce sharp enough to wake the whole thing up. This is not the fried version, chả giò or nem rán. This is the cool, translucent, herb-heavy…

I didn’t set out to write about steak. It started with a bad day and a craving for something that pushed back when I bit into it. One dinner turned into a habit, and over a couple of years I found myself at counters, coffeeshops, and dining rooms all over this island, chasing the same…

By Dio Asahi for Eat Drink Asia. It’s a Saturday evening, and someone across the room is carrying a birthday cake. The candles are lit, the walk is careful, and a whole table turns to watch. Plates clink. A child laughs somewhere. The room at Carousel, inside Royal Plaza on Scotts, isn’t quiet — it…

I’d spent the morning with kaya toast. Crisp bread, cold butter, the clean snap of it between my teeth. Good, all of it. But by the time I’d walked a few streets over to New Bridge Road, my mouth wanted the opposite. Something warm. Something that gave way instead of shattering. That’s how I ended…