Sometimes I get asked by friends for veg and vegan food options in Singapore.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
In the local hawker centres (a collection of street food stalls) there tends to be at least one Chinese Buddhist veg place. Food will be much simpler than the restaurants above (like a simple rice / noodle / mock meat thing). Look for this sign, usually green. Those places and the Indian stalls will be the most likely veg spots. Almost no other stalls will be veg friendly
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I think there are many types of veg folks in Singapore. Among Chinese people, mostly occasional vegetarians (on certain Buddhist days). Only very religious Buddhists tend to be full time veg. Or they’re more cosmopolitan and vegan for the animals. Most of the time it’s health food vegans. I’m not recommending many stalwart vegan places because they are bland health food places I hate.
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by [email protected]
Another great spot is Tekka market and food centre in little India. Go in the morning, go to the cooked food section (you’ll know from the lights and the people eating there). Keep to the right for the ‘Indian food’ (left side is Chinese food, way fewer veg options). Every second stall will have a good veg option or dish but they not be fully veg as a stall. Sri Aachi Appakadai is my fave. Fresh appams. Not fully vegan (skip the egg and cheese if so)
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Other than Warung Ijo you are highly unlikely to get any veg Malay or Indonesian foods. Most of the foods can’t be made veg easily and frankly there isn’t any demand for that by the people who eat those cuisines.
Probably a bunch of other Thai / Nepali places I can recommend later.
If you see ‘thunder tea rice’ I think it’s the most vegan friendly Chinese dish. I like that a lot and think it would be a big hit abroad.
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If you’re not traveling there I would highly recommend this dish: it’s very close to what I would eat at home. In general I prefer vegan food like this that’s a bit more involved. Stuff that’s like ‘toss a bunch of raw leaves’, I flee from
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My last tip is to not assume that every tofu dish is veg or vegan.
I was very surprised when I moved to the U.S. and saw people assume all tofu is veg and vegan. It is the opposite in East and Southeast Asia. There will be 10 tofu dishes in each restaurant and one of them will be veg and even then you have to ask is there fish sauce or shrimp paste? Only at veg restaurants can you safely assume this.
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@skinnylatte Once, at a business dinner in Tokyo, I told my Japanese + Taiwanese table companions that in Europe, most people look at tofu as something that vegetarians eat.
The whole table laughed very loudly that anyone could be so misinformed
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@skinnylatte I haven't spent as much time in Singapore[*], but the number of times I've been in China and ordered something like 全素套餐 - literally "entirely vegetarian" - from a normal non-veg restaurant and it comes with pork fat rice and maybe a big chunk of sausage in it. Because who wouldn't want a chunk of sausage?
[*] although just looking at this thread has me itching to go again!
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@slothrop tofu is wonderful and everyone likes it in those places, not just vegetarians! It’s not competing with meat, it’s just.. dozens of types of very good tofu and hundreds of possible dishes, all different
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@projectgus haha Singapore is way easier than China for veg food even though Hannah Che’s work on veg food there is incredible
Little Soybean | Hannah Che | Substack
Dispatches on regional Chinese food and vegetable-focused cooking. A newsletter by James Beard award-winning author Hannah Che. Click to read Little Soybean, by Hannah Che, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
(hannahche.substack.com)
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@skinnylatte Yes! It's such a versatile ingredient.
And yet, most people in Europe think of it as bland, tasteless health food. Which might be due to the fact that so few people know how to work with it here. Things are improving, though.
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@slothrop health food people spoil everything for everyone. I can’t stand health food. lol
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@skinnylatte I learned this the hard way in San Francisco and San Jose in the 1990s
Most of the “Tofu House” places have a LOT of meat and nothing vegan
In fact, Tofu in the name of the place was an indicator that it’s not vegan friendly
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@peterbutler it’s not seen at all as a vegan item. Just another ingredient. Most traditional dishes in Vietnamese and Chinese cooking (and probably Japanese and Korean too) is tofu and everything on it
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@skinnylatte I once ate at a Buddhist restaurant attached to a temple in Seoul; I was more strictly vegetarian then and the local tourism authority thought I'd enjoy it. God it was bland - though that was part of the philosophy. Check out this text on the menu:
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@timrichards those places tend fo be no onion and no garlic too! I like that stuff sometimes but the ingredients have to be stellar
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Carl Coryell-Martinreplied to Adrianna Tan last edited by
@skinnylatte I often really enjoyed The Whole Earth in Tanjong Pagar https://www.wholeearth.com.sg/ (helped it was very close to the office.)
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Carl Coryell-Martin last edited by
@carlcm yes! One of my faves
