Vedge Restaurant, Philadelphia: The World's Greatestby Randi / September 4, 2013
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The Vegan Scene in Singapore
As we saw in the Singapore travel post, this city-state is a wonderful destination even if you aren’t (synchronized) swimmin’ in dollas. This tiny lil baby island republic has lots of interesting sites, history, and culture to offer regular old visitors like you and me (I’m assuming you, unless you’re like Jeff Bezos but I don’t think Bezos reads this site anymore, not after all the shit I said about him (#billionairesareimmoral)). But that’s not what we’re after. No, who cares about history? When it comes to Singapore, the #1 priority is the food. And like most of its Southeast Asian neighbors (and most places in general nowadays), the vegan food is incredible, cheap, and easy to find. As the kids today would say, it slaps. The food slaps. Am I using that right?
Not to make all my talk about Singapore reference Crazy Rich Asians (although it IS the best movie of 2018 and I dare you to question that (no really I’d love to talk more about 2018 movies if you want)) (okay you’re right, tied for first with Set It Up, of course of course), but you know the scene when Nick and Rachel arrive in Singapore and Dr. Azumi and her kind of magoo fiance take them to the food markets and Nick’s like “Singapore’s the only place in the world where market stalls earn Michelin stars” and you’re like “okay buster that happened like two times ever, chill your jets” but you don’t actually say anything mean to Nick because he’s too really really ridiculously good-looking? That scene very accurately captures my time in Singapore, just in awe of the incredible food. Pretend every day is Thanksgiving and/or you’re practicing to be a competitive eater. Act like those monsters at President Snow’s fancy parties in the Capital. We went to those markets. And you’ll go to those markets. Because honestly, all you should be doing in Singapore is eating, and then going to see all the cultural sites mostly to build up an appetite.
That CRA market, Newton Centre, might be famous for its pork noodles and its chicken rice, plus its long lines of people waiting for those classic dishes, but vegans should eagerly jump right into the fray as well. You can easily get those amazing noodles sans meat, con veggies (Singapore mixes cultures and cuisines like I’m mixing languages), and there are veggies, tofu, soy milks, and beans-atop-shaved-ice all over.
A similar giant, crowded, amazing food market is the Albert Centre, which is where my (terrible; it was dark and crowded and also I was distracted by ALL THE FOOD) pictures were taken. The Albert (at 270 Queen Street) is less touristy than the Newton but just as good. I found some of my favorite vegan-friendly stalls here.
You can’t see it because of the terrible lighting (I told you, can’t be mad) but the sign reads “Woong Kee Traditional Beancurd”. Traditional beancurd??? Fire that sucker up and throw it at my face! Like with everything, you have to be careful and communicate that you don’t want any gross animal products, but this particular stall was pretty clear. I got a little cup o’ dessert beancurd, flavored with a simple syrup (not actual ‘simple syrup’, like a simple syrup). Who doesn’t love a cup o’ beancurd! (Lots of you I bet, but you’re missing out. TOFU IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT!)
If anyone goes and finds out what Healthy Bean has for sale, let me know; I’m sad it was closed.
One thing that Singapore does very, very wool is epic shaved ice dessert concoctions. You get a wonderfully wide range of topping options, from tropical fruit to sugar syrups to all kinds of beans (I love that Asia recognizes that beans are for every meal). You can’t go wrong doing what I did – just pointing at brightly colored pictures and saying ‘yes please’ and it will hundo p be delicious.
Don’t forget to order my favorite thing (signage-wise) at this stall – the rainbow grains! Best name for jimmies/sprinkles yet.
Okay, our next stop on our whirlwind tour of just some of what we ate in Singapore, is one of my favorites because I prefer supes healthy food, especially when traveling, but I know the majority of people like to indulge more when traveling. (“Why can’t you just bring a toothbrush?” “Same reason I’m not bringing my cholesterol medicine! I’m on vacation!” (Bobby Cobb, Cougar Town.)) But near the Chinatown Food Market was a place called Well Dressed Salad Bar & Cafe (282 South Bridge Road) that had my favorite ever kind of menu: juices and smoothies, plus truly epic loaded salad bowls. The vegan items were labeled with the Vegan Society logo, and they had all kinds of veggies, fruits, and fun additions like ‘springy tofu’ and tofu feta. You could also get any item as a salad OR a wrap. MY HEAVEN.
I ordered the Manja Ninja mostly for its name. No, it also had all the things I wanted: mixed greens, shredded beets, quinoa, edamame, peaches, avocado, the tofu feta, purple cabbage and a mustard-wasabi dressing. YUM.
We also had great, refreshing fresh juices.
Since all the healthy needs were being met, I also got an order of meaty skewers, called the Satay Party, you know because I love to party. Yes, in addition to all the juices and all the salads they also have a great hot food menu, including full vegan brunch, epic tofu egg sandwiches, shakshuka, soups, truffle mayo fries (!), and more. The skewers were made from grilled beancurd skin, served with cucumber, pineapple, and peanut sauce. So good! I wish I ate there a bunch so I could have tried more but we had such a long list.
Next up was an all-vegan, HappyCow favorite, a fast food eatery called NomVNom (Clarke Quay for me, but I believe has several locations). Junk food isn’t usually my favorite (see above, too much talking about salads) but I do like trying the crazy vegan options every so often. And NomVNom didn’t feel that junky. Sure it’s burgers and fries but it didn’t leave me feeling gross. It was also super delicious! It’s in the basement food court area of Clarke Quay, and there’s plenty of NVN dedicated seating so you can all enjoy your amazing burger together and laugh at everyone who still thinks veganism is hard.
I got the special Truffle Lion’s Mane burger and it was sooo good in like a creamy mayo chicken sandwich way, you know? It had a crispy lion’s mane mushroom patty, mushrooms on top, lettuce, and black pepper truffle mayo. I usually am a sweet potato fries person, at least over regular fries, but the menu was so extensive they had even more than those two to choose from! Pictured are my Jap Potato Fries, obviously ordered because of the name and obviously short for ‘Japanese’ but also, ya know, funny for JAP reasons. Yum! The whole menu looked incredible and I wish I could have tried everything. I mean look at these burgers! And don’t look at the weirdly crooked photo I took!
Let’s take a brief food pause to marvel at the shopping on offer in Chinatown. I bought some of the plush doggo toys, and my baby nephew loves his, so that’s great, but I still am kicking myself for not buying this teacup below, ohhh my god.
We’ve still got two amazing restaurants to talk about, two restaurants that were so great that I miss them like with my blood, like I feel it in my blood. First up is Whole Earth Vegetarian, the only vegetarian restaurant awarded the Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2016 and 2017, which I guess means this post is part of my #VeganMichelinSeries, whaaat. Turn! Of! Events! Whole Earth Vegetarian (76 Peck Seah Street), to none of our surprise by the way things in this post have been going, had a super extensive menu that was so hard to choose from, I think I took longer to order than I ever have ever ever. But I ordered SO WELL. First, we got their house specialty, the Enchanted Forest – monkeyhead mushrooms over broccoli. UGH IT WAS AMAZING.
We also got an incredible Thai rendang-inspired pile of DELICIOUS greens and spicy green beans with housemade tempeh, so this meal was basically all my favorite non-salad non-pretzels foods at once and it was MARVELOUS.
Okay folks, we made it to the last big restaurant meal before I share special bonus food at the end. This restaurant is ALSO one of my favorites EVER. Didn’t I say the food in Singapore was insanely great?? It really was. We’re up to Lotus Kitchen (133 New Bridge Road), which was very close to our hotel so like we should have gone there all the time but we only had three days, remember??? Anyway, so Lotus Kitchen is a vegetarian restaurant in the heart of Chinatown, and perfectly represents Singaporean culture in its cuisine: Chinese, but influenced by the other cultures in Singapore. Fusiony, and so good.
We had dumplings – OBVIOUSLY, because we are not stupid people – to start; plus like tofu skin roll up jawns filled with vegetables and just overall magic; broccoli because we needed more greens; and OF COURSE Singapore noodles because hellooo. The noodles were SO amazing and the sauce and SO creamy and SO spicy.
So, as you can see and because I am telling you so, vegan food in Singapore is superb. I would love to go back to all these places again and try all the other places on my long list that I didn’t have time for. THE BEST, THE END.
Oh I almost forgot, here’s your bonus: a salad I forget all the details of – what, where, why. Well no we know why, I love salad. Byeeees.
Almost Back to a Functioning Normal…But First a Word From Our Sponsors
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Hello out there! It has been months since I last blogged, I know. I haven’t gone this long without writing since Raul Esparza lost the Tony for “Company” (still not over it) (never forget). I’ve been stupid busy with work since I last dipped my toes into all the writing I have to do about my California trip. But more than that, I couldn’t mentally spend time writing about happy things during the final months of the election. I had to devote time to making calls for Hillz, arguing with internet trolls (I can’t not), and worrying about what would happen to the world if Toilet Emoji won. But I kept telling myself, on November 9, I’ll be able to finally breathe deep again and shake that weight off my shoulders like I’m TayTay at the discotheque, white-girl dancing away from h8ters.
But, alas, that deep breath never came, my shoulders are hunched protectively towards my ears more than ever, and the small pit in my stomach has become a John Hurt situation. Can we ever relax again? Not for the foreseeable future. I mean I hope you are able to, but I just don’t see it happening if you are fully aware of how destructive Toilet Emoji will be and has already been for our country. Also, not that I want you to be white-knuckling every daily activity from now on, but we can’t ‘relax’ in the sense of accepting any of this – we have to resist. I don’t mean break the law (let’s leave that for Toilet Emoji and his fellow toilet bowls) but we cannot normalize the Toilet administration of white supremacy and disregard for the Constitution and for democracy as anything less than the crazy authoritarian danger that it is. This is not partisan issue. Yeah I’m using a Hillary campaign image as the picture for this post but what the Toilet-Brush Elect is doing to our government should be of concern to all parties. If anyone refuses to be concerned, then they are equally to blame, whether Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian pothead, Socialist, whatever. This affects everyone.
As you thinking feeling humans know, the opposition to Toilet Emoji is not based in the ordinary ‘oh my party lost, darn’ style of disappointment. This is not disappointment. This is fear. If you don’t know why, you either live under a rock or only get your fake news from Fox News and Macedonian teenagers. The number and scope of hate crimes is increasing all over the world, not just in Klan strongholds but in progressive cities that we never thought could house such evil, but of course they can. So many despicable and, yes, deplorable people have had their most disgusting viewpoints validated, as TE’s win was indeed a victory for racists, misogynists, anti-semites, homophobes, and all around horrible people the world over, who now believe that their hate has been authorized by the highest office, that their viewpoints are now the law of the land, and that they have TE’s permission to act on their hate. People who doubt the veracity of these hate crime reports are not paying attention, or they don’t want to. The worst of humanity now feels legitimized, and they have the confidence to come out of hiding in every town and city. Of course not everyone who voted for TE is, say, a racist, but at the very least, at the very very least, they were okay with racism. With misogyny and sexual assault. At the very least they weighed the off-chance that they save a few dollars in taxes (why they think this will actually happen is beyond logical thinking humans) as more important than the civil rights, the human rights, of many others. At the very least they are selfish, and without logical reasoning skills. Good thing our education system will improve! Not!
So what do we do, we who care the slightest bit about our fellow humans, or animals, or other countries and the people in them, or the planet? We have to fight in whatever ways we can. Don’t buy piece of shit holiday presents that merely feed the consumerist hamster wheel that is destroying the environment with more plastic shit that destroys oceans. Donate that money to worthwhile organizations. Your relatives hate what you pick out anyway.
If you care about the future of the planet at all, you have to go vegan. You just have to aim for that. Everyone knows by now the incontrovertible fact that animal agriculture is the biggest culprit in climate change. Start by doing what you can, and then keep moving closer towards veganism. The incoming administration has no regard for the planet’s future – they don’t even believe in climate change – and many international environmental safeguards are in danger. Some days I think, you know what, maybe humanity deserves to only have another decade or two left. But it’s not up to me to say that, just like it’s not up to Toilet Emoji, so even though I’m appalled by my fellow humans, I’m still going to do everything I can to protect their future.
If you care about women, you need to speak up when you are in the presence of rape culture. Guess what, if you dare leave your home, you’re probably in the presence of rape culture. It’s so ingrained in our daily conversations and encounters that we don’t even realize that we can call these situations by this seemingly dramatic term. I know, like me, all the females out there are sick and tired of hearing that it’s our job to fight it. And I’m not going to tell you that it is. We can, and we should if we’re strong enough, but it’s high time all the men out there start taking care of this fight since they’re the ones responsible for the problem. I want every male person I know to fight against all the trappings of toxic masculinity and start defending women even when no women are present. Good men will take on this effort when it’s just them hanging with their boys, if Toilet Emoji’s wife was right and ‘locker room talk’ really does happen just anytime men are together. I don’t believe her, but I do believe it happens at least a good deal of the time. I expect any man who isn’t a misogynist to stand up to his friends or colleagues when this bullshit comes out of their mouths. Even if they’re ‘just’ talking about a woman’s body. Even if they are ‘just’ talking shit about women who are ‘unlikable’. This is your job now. Stand up and resist in even the smallest moments and it could help prevent the bigger ones.
If you care about other people, especially you fellow white people who say they care about nonwhite people, we need to really step up our game and prove that maybe we might one day deserve for someone to call us an ally. When you inevitably hear Toilet supporters in the wild harassing people of color, people with headscarves, women, &c, try not to look away or ignore what’s happening. If you feel safe doing so, speak up and tell the perpetrator that what they are doing or saying is not okay and will not be tolerated. It’s such a problem that these pieces of shit feel legitimized in their hateful acts. It’s up to us to inform them that they’re still pieces of shit by taking a stand against normalizing and accepting such actions. Tell the leaders of whatever religious group you belong to that they must instruct the congregation to stand with other religions, to stand with Muslims and Jews and everyone else who is now in danger or not. If a leader of a religious congregation is not willing to take such a stand of solidarity with other religions, then that person is not worthy of being such a leader. Write a letter to your local mosque and tell them that you welcome them into your community and will do what you can to support them. Pretty much every mosque in the USA is getting hate incredibly frightening hate mail on a daily basis; let your letter give them hope in humanity. I am inspired every day by the amazing people in Pantsuit Nation who share their stories of how they stood up to the bigotry they now witness in everyday life. I hope I can follow their lead, and I hope you can too.
If you care about the USA, whatever that means now and whatever it becomes, keep calling your representatives. This is a good place to start. Make 10 minutes worth of calls every day. If you can’t, make 5 minutes of them. One minute. They’re the people whose job it is to prevent the worst from happening. I don’t have high hopes, considering how eager the Republicans have been to kowtow to the Toilet and how eager the all-too-quiet Democrats have been to hold their hair back. But we can’t let them give up. Never get quiet. The same applies to journalists, those who are very much responsible for their share of the damage done by this election. Call out publications who refuse to say ‘white supremacist’ instead of the almost laughably kind ‘alt-right’. Write to the editors and say you will pull your subscription unless they start doing their job, which is to provide a factual check on government, not to appease our new Toilet overlord. Contact the advertisers for those publications and say you won’t support them unless they put pressure on the publication to do a better job. Write letters to editors about how they are failing us when we need them most. And most importantly, support the ones who are actually doing a good job, or at least a relatively good one. This kind of support means a paid subscription. We are at that point when we need to pay for decent journalism if we want decent journalism to exist. The Washington Post isn’t perfect, but it’s doing a much better job than every other main, including the NYTimes. NPR is always an okay bet. The Guardian is doing a decent job. Hold your newspapers accountable.
It really helps to have an action plan. Even if you are just making that one call a day, or even per week, or if you are boycotting certain companies and donating to charities. But we’re past the point where we can just do nothing and hope for the best. We’re all responsible now at this turning point in history. We may not be able to enjoy that deep sigh of relief for many years to come, but day by day I am getting better at breathing around the pit of despair in order to function, and fight, like how Leslie Odom Jr had to sing around the post-meal burp he always had in Act II. I hope that you are as well.
Having finally been able to say a few words, however rambling and stupid, about this utter tragedy, I will now try my best to resume my regular nonsensical but jovial blogging. My resistance will be equal parts fighting and trying to create light. Join me, won’t you?
