- Chinese Food
- Peranakan Food
- Malay Food
- Indian Food
- Others inclusive of Italian, Japanese and Thailand Food
- Queer Food
- Places where you can find good food
- Survey
- Introduction of the six chefs
- Acknowledgements
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I, Jiahui, will be your unofficial tour guide for today. I know I don't have a licence. It will be a bit boring in the beginning and if you are impatient, you can read the climax first, just scroll down till you see the pictures of worms and insect sweets.
Singaporeans are never satisfied. Despite the wide variety of food sold here, they are still craving for more. Creative shopowners make use of this "flaw" to boost their business by the introduction of queer food. So what exactly do I mean by the term 'queer food' ?
Firstly, let us examine the word 'queer'. The word 'queer' is defined as 'strange, weird' by the Oxford Dictionary. 'Food' is defined as 'something solid for eating' by the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Hence, we arrive at the definition of 'queer food' which means 'strange, weird edible things which we do not commonly eat' . A point to note is that people who consume this kind of food aren't abnormal. Let us proceed on to the history of queer food in Singapore.
Long, long time ago (If you consider the 1960s long), when kampongs or villages existed, there were less strict laws imposed against illegal hawkers. Apart from the normal hawker fare which we all know so well about, the hawkers sold 'queer food' like crocodile meat, snake meat, etc. In short, these poor people salvaged whatever they could from the land, sea and air in order to earn a living for themselves. As Singapore prospered, the government imposed stringent laws to deal with illegal hawkers. Due to this reason, these illegal hawkers were forced to move northwards to Johor (South of Peninsula Malaysia), leaving only a small portion of 'queer food' such as deer meat, turtle meat and frog's meat behind.
Before I proceed on, let me tell you something about the Internet or to be more specific the information found on the Internet. What you are seeing on the screen right now might not be true. The morale of the story is not 'be wary of the information found on the net', but is 'the current paragraph I am writting is just a load of rubbish'. Happy April Fool's Day! (Just to lighten the atmosphere before we begin.)
And now, back to serious business. There are stalls in Singapore selling queer food in which the ones(the food) we found are, kangaroo meat, monkey brain, moose steak, and insect sweets.
There is a place we found at Alexandra Road (Brasica Restaurant) which sells kangaroo pizza. The pizza tastes like.... Well, to give you a little suspense, I'm not going to tell you how it tastes like. Drop by the stall and have a bite. In case you are wondering, don't worry about the pizzas jumping about the restaurants.
Rumours say that there is a stall beside Bedok Reservoir that sells monkey brains. We did not go down there to check that place out due to 3 simple reasons: 1)We do not put much faith in rumours; 2)Bedok is very far from our homes(Bedok is in the East and we are in the West); 3)Nobody in our group is daring enough to eat monkey brains. Urghh! Imagine eating our "ancestor's" brains. However, if you happen to visit Bedok or live there, check it out for us and mail me the answer. Your help will be greatly appreciated.
We went around asking people about where we could get queer food. Most of them hadn't an idea about this weird topic. We were about to give up when someone told us of the insect sweets. At this point, I (Jiahui) suddenly remembered that insect sweets were once featured in the Friday Weekly a few years ago. After flipping through the old newspapers I kept, I found the issue we wanted. If you guys happen to keep old newspapers, I shall tell you more about this newspaper. It is the Friday Weekly, Week 272, 3/5/96 - 9/5/96. You might be wondering, why on earth does Jiahui keep old newspapers? I shall enlighten you now. I have a habit of keeping articles related to my favourite topic "Food".
From the newspaper, the venue of the shop stated was Tampines Mall. Interested, we made a trip there. Upon arrival, we discovered that they also sold edible bugs and scorpions on top of the insect sweets advertised. Mika joked that they made the sweets by first allowing the poor insect run about in a confined area and then pouring scalding syrup on the live insect. Gross. Anyway, we realised that most people who patronise the stall were little children. They were fascinated to see insects in the form of sweets and this prompted them to nag at their parents to buy it for them.
One of my friends told me that the stall "In the States" at Holland Village sold fried ants. As it is near my house, I found it worthwhile to check that shop out. I had one more information about queer food to add on to my webpage and did not regret holding on to this topic. Although the shop didn't sell fried ants, I found insect sweets and worm snacks sold there. The insects that were in the sweets include crickets and caterpillar larvae. The worms were seasoned in cheddar cheese and Mexican spice!
Not only are there stalls selling queer food in Singapore, people from all over the world also come to Singapore to promote their queer food. Singapore(lying between the crossroads of major air and sea routes) is located at a strategic position. This makes it the perfect place to promote one's product. An example is smoked reindeer. A deer and moose steak was available at Regent Hotel's caper from 23/2/98 to 28/2/98 (Information published in the Sunday Times, 22 February 1998). Boy, Santa Claus will be angry if he reads this, so don't let him read it!
If you find that what I have not said isn't enough, you can contact me and I will give you a more detailed description. Any doubts and queries are welcome.
Game to try?
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