Editor’s Picks
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…
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…
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…
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…
The oil is already hot when she reaches for the leaves. It’s late morning in a kitchen off a quiet lane, and a woman I’ve been watching stands over a blackened wok, tearing bitter gourd leaves by hand into a small heap. The garlic hits the oil first, sharp and loud. Then the leaves go…
By Dio Asahi for Eat Drink Asia. The lid comes off, and the steam rises first. It’s a warm afternoon in Chiang Mai, and on the table sits a small woven bamboo basket, still holding the heat of the pot it came from. Someone’s grandmother lifts the top and sets it aside without looking. Inside,…
By Dio Asahi for Eat Drink Asia. The lift opens onto a corridor leading to the famed and hidden Cuppage Plaza food, and the building’s age shows in the flickering fluorescent light and the smell of old carpet. Then a sliding door pulls back, and Keria Japanese Restaurant asks you to slow down. Inside, it…
By Eda Wong for Eat Drink Asia. It’s not quite eight, and the pastel-blue shophouse is already awake. Kopi cups clink against saucers. A ceiling fan turns slow overhead. Someone folds a newspaper at a marble-topped table, and the man behind the counter moves without hurry, sliding buns across in a rhythm he’s clearly done…
By Dio Asahi for Eat Drink Asia. The lift opens on the third floor of Orchard Plaza, and for a second I don’t know which way to turn. The corridor is dim and still, the kind of quiet that feels almost accidental in this part of town. A few doors down, an unmarked entrance. Inside,…
By Eda Wong for Eat Drink Asia. Steam curls up from a tray in the back of the kitchen, and the whole room smells green. Pandan, crushed and knotted, pushed through wet cloth until the leaves give up their colour. An auntie leans over the tray with a spoon carved from coconut shell, dark and…