Singapore: A Heaven for Indonesian Food Lovers

Since my wife joined the indosing-mums (ISM) mailing list, which belongs to the Indonesian female community in Singapore, she has made a lot of new friends here in Singapore. And not surprisingly, most of the members of the community are great cooks. Therefore, I would say it’s actually quite easy to find good Indonesian food here in Singapore.

There are two reasons. One, there are now numerous middle-class restaurants serving good Indonesian foods here in Singapore. Several years ago, we would need to fork out quite a lot of money to enjoy Indonesian food at those high-class restaurants, such as Sanur, Tambuah Mas, Desa Kartika or House of Sundanese Food. Now, there are plenty of middle-class restaurants serving Indonesian food, such as Es Teler 77, Ayam Penyet Ria, Kantin Aneka and Ayam Bakar Ojolali. Those restaurants also serve good Indonesian food such as ayam bakar (grilled chicken), ayam goreng (fried chicken), gado-gado, empek-empek, batagor and many other native Indonesian foods, at a friction of the cost of those high-class restaurants.

What’s the second reason? Well, there are quite a lot of our Indonesian friends, who are also great cooks. :) So it’s quite common to see my wife contacting some of her friends to order certain type of food, which might be difficult to find elsewhere in Singapore. Inong’s Dapur Bunda, is one example. Its close proximity to our house (only 10 minutes drive) makes it quite convenient for us to order some food from her and I just needed to go to the lobby of her apartment to pick up the food and make the payment. Some of the foods we’ve ordered from Dapur Bunda include the Strawberry Tiramisu Cake and the Chocolate and Cheese Martabak.

Yesterday, my wife also ordered chilli crab from Nisi, one of her friends, and I dare to say that this is the best chilli crab I have tasted so far. It’s much better compared to the usual chilli crab we usually bought from Al-Ameen Eating House. It’s also very convenient, my wife just needed to contact her through Yahoo! Messenger to order the crab, and then during lunch time, I dropped by to her place around West Coast to pick up the food and make the payment.

Other than that, fortunately, I also had the chance to taste Mela’s Tongseng Mela Kumis, and of course Hany’s Braddell Satay, which is reputably still the best Indonesian satay in town. If you notice, all of the cooks are my wife’s friends from the ISM community, so some words of advice to my fellow Indonesians men: if you are currently living in Singapore, and you’re married, ensure that your wife joins the ISM community!

And the best of all, sometimes we can enjoy the food for free. Really! Sometimes when the ISM community gathers, like this one, for example, we would be spoiled with lots of variety of food during the gathering. Sometimes, my wife and I would also got some invitations from some of her friends (which sometimes turn out to be some of my blogger friends as well) to visit their home and try their specialties.

So, who said that living in Singapore is boring? :)

[Indonesian version]