Eda Wong
By Eda Wong for Eat Drink Asia. It’s 12:40pm, and the basement of One Raffles Place smells of rice, citrus, and the cold breath of air-conditioning. The queue at The Daily Cut moves in short steps. Lanyards swing against shirts. A woman ahead of me stares at the glass counter as if it were an…
Korean food can look simple from the table. A red bowl of kimchi stew. A tray of glossy fried chicken. Beef hissing on a grill. Banchan arriving in small dishes before anyone has even opened the menu. It feels familiar now, especially in Singapore, where Korean food has moved from novelty to everyday craving. But…
I do not remember the first bowl of prawn mee I ever ate. But I remember the smell: that deep, roasted-shell darkness that fills a coffee shop before you have even sat down. My grandfather used to say you could tell a good prawn noodle stall from the doorway, just by breathing. Over the years,…
The first thing I noticed at Pagi Sore Indonesian Restaurant was the smell. Not the sharp, showy kind. Something slower: coconut milk, lemongrass, chilli, fried egg, and the deep warmth of spice paste drifting out from a wood-heavy dining room while Far East Square kept moving outside. I walked over on a Wednesday evening, just…
By Eda Wong for Eat Drink Asia It’s late afternoon, and the river is the colour of weak tea. A woman crouches beside a small clay stove at the edge of the bank, feeding it slivers of charcoal. Smoke lifts, thin and grey, and drifts toward the water. On a bamboo skewer, a whole fish…
Ask most Singaporeans to picture Japanese curry and a familiar image probably comes to mind: a plate of rice beneath thick brown gravy, perhaps with a breaded cutlet sliced neatly across the top. It is rich, sweet-edged, comforting and, by now, almost as recognisable as ramen or donburi. Head to the fourth floor of Fortune…
I had not planned to eat at Meokja by Jungga. I was walking down North Bridge Road on a Tuesday, somewhere around the awkward hour between lunch and dinner, when I caught the smell of something frying and the low clatter of a kitchen working hard. I looked up, saw the sign, and my feet…
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…
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…
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…