Eating Cheap in Singapore

In Singapore you have three real options of where to eat: 

1. Restaurants 

These are incredibly pricey with a simple Pizza or Pasta dish setting you back around $16 and if you fancied a local seafood or chicken noodle dish you're looking more at $25 minimum. 

2. Food halls at the shopping malls (poet and I didn't know it) 

For the more budget conscious among us, these offer food at a not dissimilar rate or service than we are all already used to at shopping centers in the UK. 

The only negatives being is it can become overwhelmingly busy at meal times; mainly this is just due to the sheer number of restaurants and stalls all squashed in to a relatively small space. 

However, if you can navigate your way through the crowds you can find some truly amazing food here. It has taken us a few days to pluck up the courage to dive in to the chaos but we were rewarded with the best fried shrimp ANYTHING I have ever eaten. 

The best fried shrimp EVER. $6.20 at a food hall.

This bliss however was devastatingly short lived as I then ate part of a chili that brought on sweats and gagging. 

We came annoyingly late to the food hall game as at first glance it just looked like unauthentic and overpriced canteen food. But if you take the time to search around you can find some real gems. 

3. Street Food 

Budget friendly, fast and tasty as hell. What's not to love? 

Street food has been about 98% of our diet since we got here (the other 2% consists of pre-bed time snacks brought from the shop at the end of our road - the shop next door to the brothel) so that is going to be the main focus of this blog. 

So, street food in Singapore varies a fair bit depending on which part of town you're in; with so many different cultures inhabiting the small city you can stumble from Chinese to Mongolian to Thai to Indian in about 100 meters. 

This is both a blessing and a curse; I'm sure at some point in all our lives we have all used the phrase "there is just too much choice" and that really is the slogan for Singapore street food...unless that is you are vegetarian like Emma and I. We have really struggled to find anything 100% meat free. 

I did tuck into a deep fried carrot cake (a mixture made of white radish, rice flour and egg) in China Town which was absolutely delicious, but other than four bananas brought from the local shop we are struggling to find meals. 

Well, kind of. 

We are struggling to find veggie meals. Eating seafood, however, is easy, delicious and affordable. Yes, tut at me and my ever loosening morals all you like but there is literally no other option in Singapore. It is actually proving difficult enough to find a purely seafood based meal as everything seems to also come with chicken or pork. 

Exhibit A) We ordered a prawn noodle dish from a street vendor and she must have misheard and gave us pork instead. We politely explained our situation and she fished the pork out and slammed it in the bin like Michael Jordan at the play-offs and threw a couple of shrimps on top of the noodles instead. 

What are you meant to say in this situation? Erm excuse me I'm a vegetarian please can you cook me fresh noodles and make sure the broth doesn't include meat extract and please ensure to use a separate frying pan, thank you. 

We went with thank you. 

If you are a vegetarian and are 110% committed to the cause and a damn site more hard core than we are, it would be possible - you would just have to avoid main meals, let me explain. 

We stopped for food at a relatively up market street restaurant, up market meaning it had tables on the pavement next to a main road and instead of queuing up to order you get to sit down and place an order. We decided against ordering two main meals in order to try more of what was on offer so ordered a selection of sides, or dim sum if you will, and sat back to see it we would regret our decision. We most certainly did not, they will bring you your food as soon as it's ready - not necessarily serving it all at one time, a bit like Wagamama - so we dove straight into the sweet potato cones and fried buns accompanied with chili crab meat sauce as soon as they hit the table top and they were to die for. I could not recommend the latter more highly. 

Street food is only ever a short distance from wherever you are in Singapore, and if you take the time to look you can generally find something going cheaply.

When we visited Sentosa, a theme park island where water costs $3 a bottle, we managed to get two fantastic vegetable currys for $.6.50 each. 

$6.50 curry in Sentosa

All in all the food here has been excellent, and if it wasn't for sweating my guts out walking around the hot humid streets, I would be starting to worry about not fitting into my shorts. 

My biggest piece of advice when on the hunt for food in Singapore is to make sure you have a good look around, I know it's not easy when the hunger strikes and you want something right NOW but trust me, an extra 5 or 10 minutes looking and you can find something that is cheaper and/or tastes better.