24 Hours of SINGAPORE Street Food 🇸🇬 CHILLI CRAB at Singapore's ONLY Floating Restaurant!

Welcome to Chopstick Travel. I'm Luke Martin and this is 24 Hours of Eating in Singapore. So we just hopped on a boat and I'm taking you somewhere I'm guessing you didn't know existed here in Singapore. As far as I know, it's the first and only floating restaurant in Singapore. So we are taking the boat there now. We're going to be trying the famous Singaporean chilli crab as well as some other seafood dishes. It's going to be my first time there. We're just enjoying the views of Singapore as we cruise. As you probably know, Singapore is a very busy shipping lane and port. This is a massive oil tanker we're just passing by. And when you get up close to these things, you realize just how huge they are. Look at that! So we just got dropped off at the restaurant. This is called Smith Marine Floating Restaurant and it is actually floating. We are out in the middle of the sea. It was just about a 5 minute ride from the mainland. We're going to go in and have some seafood. So besides being just a restaurant, this is also a floating fish farm. They call it a kelong. So they've got these nets, kind of pens, that are in the natural water. They're feeding the fish. This one here is a red snapper. So you just pull up some red snappers. Here we go. Nice. And they will cook these up here, yeah? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. So all the fresh seafood is literally grown right here at the farm, at the restaurant. Just taken from the pens, into the kitchen, cooked up for you to taste. It does not really feel like you're in any kind of special restaurant that's floating on the water. It just seems like a normal restaurant. But it really is floating on the water. Boat just went by. You can sort of feel it rocking. But it feels modern in here and we're just enjoying a nice cold coconut before our seafood meal. So we're in the back kitchen now. We're going to watch all the dishes be prepared. The ones that we're going to try. We just cooked up the fried rice real quick, just like a minute on the wok, really high temperature to get that smoky wok in. Second dish is the mussels. Smells like a sweet and sour. Lots of garlic, onions, tomatoes in there and the temperature control here is just crazy. It's fast and furious. On the heat, off the heat, on the heat, off the heat. It's really a delicate process to cook everything. So we've also got a fresh snapper into the steamer and this is even an extra level of complexity to cooking all these dishes because you've got to deal with the floating restaurant swaying back and forth. You can start to feel it. The wind's picking up. And finally, the one I'm looking forward to trying the most, the famous Singaporean chilli crab. A base of garlic in that chilli mixture. The crab goes in, shells on, all the shells in there to add that extra flavour and then it's kind of steamed away with the lid on for a little bit to get that sauce reduced It's a really thick, almost like curry that's made with a base of chilli, garlic, onions, there's some ketchup in there, there's even egg in there to kind of give it that stringy texture and then some cornstarch to thicken it all up. And the chef just whipped up, I think that was four or five dishes in probably less than five minutes. Fast and furious. Okay. Oh, that smells good. So we're sitting down now at Smith Marine Floating Restaurant for a seafood feast. We've got five different dishes. First off was that sweet and sour mussels that they prepared. That smells super, super good. Fresh mussels from the farm here. We've got a fried rice. We've got some greens with fried garlic on top. Those look great too. And then the steamed snapper. We literally watched them pull the snapper out of the water earlier. Steamed for eight minutes, topped with some cilantro and some fried, I'm not sure, the fried onions and then a light soy sauce and then the famous Singaporean chilli crab. Just look at the consistency there. It's really interesting. It's kind of got that stringy egg texture and then the thickness from that corn starch and all kinds of crab meat in there. But I'm going to go back to the beginning here. I love these little lazy Susans and try out one of these Singaporean sweet and sour mussels. Let's try it with some fried rice. Yeah, that's a really plump mussel. Really big. A little bit spicy too actually. Smoky fried rice. Yeah, that's really good. I really love how they're prepared, the mussels, with so much flavour. I mean, it's totally different than like French style cooking or something where it's just like a white wine with the mussels. This is so much flavour. Spicy, a little bit sweet as well. They're huge mussels. Super plump guys. Yum. So the fresh snapper from the farm and I just found out this is actually fried ginger on top, not onions. Steamed very lightly, a very delicate cooking method, Cantonese style in origin, steamed fish. I love it. Put a little bit of extra sauce on there. Just a light soy sauce, thin, thin soy sauce. Let's try that. Yeah, that's lovely. You can actually taste a little bit of the ginger flavour in there as well. The meat of the fish is just so delicate, so smooth, just melts in your mouth. I love that style of cooking fish. It just really retains the flavour of the fish. But then you also get the soy sauce, which reminds me of like the same sauce they put on chi chong fun, which is like a rice roll. I think it's probably the same one, Cantonese style. Lovely, lovely fish, fresh from the farm. Yum. That's so good. I love that. I truly think that steaming the fish is probably the best way to cook any fish. It's just such an amazing method. It retains the softness of that meat and the flavour of the fish. It's just effortless chewing. Yum. Okay, I'm going straight for one of these claws. Look at that. Completely covered in the sauce. This is a messy affair. That's the way it's supposed to be though. I think I just got to go in with my fingers. I'm just going to get completely dirty here, but that's okay. I got to peel back this shell. Oh man. This smells so good, guys. Oh, there we go. I kind of wrecked it, but that's okay. Look at all that meat in there. Give it a little dunk in that sauce. That chili sauce is so good. Spicy a little bit, but you can also taste the ketchup that he put in there. It's tangy and a little bit tomatoey. Okay, this claw is loaded with meat, but you got to extract it first before you kind of suck it out because you want to get the meat completely covered in the sauce as well. That is Singapore's most famous dish for a reason. That is so good. So much flavor. I love the crab meat too. It's super, super tender and soft. Sweet a little bit. You definitely get some heat. It's spicy. Not too spicy, but really good. Such a thick sauce completely coats the crab. Yum. And messy. Very messy. Yum. Oh, that sauce is so good. The sauce to meat ratio is perfect. A lot of sauce. Still quite a bit of meat, but a lot more sauce, so you get tons of flavor every bite. Everything is so soft too, from that crab to the fish and the mussels. It's definitely got a little bit of heat. This is like seafood paradise here, floating in Singapore. The chili crab is not complete without the fried mantou that's steamed and then fried bread. Give it a little dip. Mmm. Yum. The texture of the mantou is so interesting. It's got a really thin, crispy layer on the outside, and then the inside's steamed, really soft all the way through. Some really tasty seafood, and it's kind of funny. You totally forget that you're floating, and then a ship goes by, and then the whole restaurant starts to rock. You remember, oh yeah, I'm not in an actual restaurant, I'm floating out in the middle of the sea. Some awesome seafood here though. Definitely gotta give it up for the chili crab. Not the best chili crab on the island, that's for sure, or even off the island, for that matter, but still decent. So finished off with our meal. I do have to say, it is very expensive. There's three of us here, and it was 400, a little bit over 400 Singapore dollars for the seafood. We're with our tour guide, Toon, and Mink, and actually, our tour guide, Toon, is also a busker. He's going to show me a magic trick right now, and we're going to put it on camera. My hair is a mess. I do one more for you, I will, okay? Okay? Interlock? Yeah. Confirm? Okay. Confirm, huh? Okay? Where is the rubber band? Alright, time to head back to the mainland Singapore. This is our boat, and we're heading to the iconic Gardens by the Bay to show you guys around. Oh my god. So Mink just got a first-hand experience of the floating restaurant concept. She went right through the wood into the water. She almost fully went in. The wood was rot. She fell in, but she's fine, luckily. That was scary. I can't believe I caught that on camera. Are you okay? Yeah. Tell everybody you're okay. Oh, I was fine, actually. It just happened in like one second, and the moment that you realize one of your legs was underneath the ocean. I'm kind of like all soaked. So, be careful. Every step can be your nightmare at the floating restaurant. So we made it to the Gardens by the Bay. You can see the iconic super trees. One interesting little fact about this area is this whole area of Marina Bay is on reclaimed land. So they actually bring in sand from Indonesia. They've been doing it for years and years and years to fill in parts of the sea to actually make more land for Singapore. And since they've started doing that, they have expanded Singapore by 25%. So it's really effective, and all of these gardens have been built on top of reclaimed land at a price of about $1 billion to build this garden. So we're actually going to go up to the top of one of these super trees, and there's a little cafe up there. We're going to grab a drink and take in the views. So we've come up to the top of one of the super trees, they're called. These are built in a sustainable manner with solar panels to light them up at night, and they also irrigate the water down to the plants that are living below them, and you just get an incredible view over the city here. We've got the famous Marina Bay sand building in the background, and then those little domes down there are the cloud forest, which we're actually going to go to next. But first, there's a cafe up here called Janice Wong. We're going to try out local beer and some chocolates. But wow, the view here is just stunning. Look at this. So I've got a local Singaporean craft beer called Off Day Haze. This is actually an IPA. Actually, it's really good. A little bit fruity. But this place is known for their chocolates. It's called Janice Wong Pure Reimagination. And they've got all kinds of interesting flavors, different colors. I won't try all of them right now, but I will try this one, which is Laksa Leaf Lemongrass. I'm only... I'm not getting any of the Laksa or the lemongrass, to be honest. It tastes just like white chocolate on the inside. It's a good chocolate, but really, no lemongrass at all. Nothing. Let's try one more. This one is the Kaffir Lime Caramel. Oh yeah. Okay. I think the white chocolate was too powerful in the last one. Couldn't taste the Laksa lemongrass. But I can definitely taste Kaffir Lime in there. Really strong in that one. That's interesting. Good. So, there are two domes here. First is the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest Dome. Right now, we're in the Flower Dome, and this one is for all of the dry climate species of plants. So, lots of desert plants, lots of cacti, you can see, all right here, all the succulents. But what's even cooler, I think, than the plants is the architecture of this building. It's incredible. This huge dome. Earlier I mentioned that the gardens here cost a billion dollars to build, and a lot of that money, most of that money, went into research and development, because they needed to figure out which plants could actually survive in which climate, and not only survive, but thrive. So, you could just imagine, I don't know how many species of plants are in here, but it's got to be thousands. This place is so beautiful, and you can imagine just how good it smells. It smells incredible here, all these different flowers, you get all these crazy scents as you walk through. So, we've come to the second dome. This is the Cloud Forest Dome, which is famous for its waterfalls, artificial waterfall, but just check that thing out, that's so cool. This is truly an incredible feat of engineering, and an incredible blend of man-made and natural. Of course, this whole place is artificial, all these plants were brought here, but the way they've designed it just feels like you literally step into a jungle in the middle of the city, and I have to say, this is probably the best thing you can do in Singapore. You have to come see this, it's just stunning, really. Such a cool place that I think could only be made here in Singapore, and super refreshing to come in here, because you get the nice, cool temperature, they keep it nice and cold in here. We're finished off here at the Cloud Garden, and the Gardens by the Bay, and we're heading to eat some more Singaporean food. Let's go. So we've come now to Tiong Bahru, a part of town that is sort of a trendy, kind of a hipster part of town, that used to be one of the more modern parts of Singapore, and nowadays it's kind of had a rebirth, and you can come visit the Tiong Bahru Hawker Centre to get all kinds of delicious Singaporean food. So there are, to be exact, 127 hawker centres here in Singapore, and this one is quite well known for being very cleanly, and having lots of good food. There also is a lot more seats than there is stalls, so you shouldn't have a hard time finding a place to sit. So we're kind of just walking around, taking in all the menus, seeing what we want to try, and the culture of hawker centre food and eating here in Singapore has recently been recognised as a UNESCO cultural heritage of Singapore, so it's a very important part of Singapore's culture, and in fact, the former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the sort of father of Singapore, was the one who decided to create these hawker centres, to take the hawkers off the streets, to give them a clean space with running water and electricity for them to organise, and you can often find that the cooked food is on the second floor, and the raw food is on the first floor, so it's very cleanly, well-maintained, they're all across Singapore, and pretty much the best food in all of Singapore can be found at these hawker centres. So let's go pick something out and try it out. So we just went to this stall called Jian Bo, they're serving something called Shui Kueh, which are these little steamed rice cakes, which are topped with a radish mixture, kind of like a sauce of grated radish. I've never actually had this one before, but it's quite popular, let's try out one of these. The rice cake texture is kind of interesting because it's steamed, it's not like, it's not mochi-like, it's not really chewy, it's more creamy, it completely sort of melts in your mouth, and there's a lot of flavour packed into that radish sort of sauce, and it's definitely got some chilli in there, it's not super spicy, lots of soy in there as well, let's try another one. Actually, really good. Tons of flavour. It's just bursting with flavour. Yum. Mmm. I really like the texture. Super creamy. Yum. Mmm. It's actually a popular simple breakfast here in Singapore. I can taste some, not sure if it's dried shrimp or dried fish, but some kind of dried seafood in the sauce as well, which gives it a little bit of umami. It's really good. A little bit spicy. Another piece of advice, you can't go wrong with waiting in a line at a hawker centre. If you see people lined up, that means it's good. So we just waited in line, maybe only about 10 minutes or so, for a popular wonton mee, so wonton soup with the noodles on the side, the mee, we actually got the dry kind, so the soup comes on the side, and it's also served with the char siu, and one interesting thing I just learned from our tour guide, Toon, is that you can notice that each stall will have a rating between A, B, and C, which is their sort of cleanliness rating. So A is the cleanest, and then C would be the dirtiest, but I can't even call it dirty because I'd say a C rating here is probably more cleanly than most other Asian countries' hawker centres or hawker stalls, so rest assured, it's still going to be very clean, and kind of the joke is that the C places might even be more tasty because they're focusing more on cooking the food and less on cleaning. Just some beautiful noodles with a little bit of sauce, and then on the side we've got wonton soup, a couple wontons in there, and then I love it with these sort of pickled chilies, they're not jalapenos, but they sort of remind me of a jalapeno, they're a little bit sour. Let's try a piece of char siu, chili, and some wonton, or some mee. Mmm, yum. It's really good with the pickled chilies because char siu is quite sweet, it's almost like a honey and glazed pork, and then you get a little bit of sourness and crunchiness, it's really not spicy because they're pickled, and then chase that with some soup and a wonton. Mmm, I think that's a shrimp wonton, yum, I love it dry, because you get the soup on the side, if it gets a little bit too dry, just add a little bit of soup on top of it, but for $6, it's quite a good deal, especially if you're in Singapore, where everything kind of tends to be expensive, $6, you can come and get a big plate of noodles like this, fill you right up, yum, worth the wait. Not a lot here. So we picked some less typical things to try here at the Cheong Baru Market, some Singaporean foods you probably have not heard of before, this one is called tau suan, so it's a green bean sort of soup, it's a dessert or a breakfast, so you can see the green beans down there cooked with the sugar and starch, so you get that really thick texture, and then it's topped with the fried breadsticks, Chinese you tiao, I've never tried this one before, just like the kueh this morning I hadn't tried, so let's try the soup, it's served hot, really hot, mmm, yum, you can feel each individual little bean, kind of, not crunchy, but still solid, and then the you tiao sort of soaked it up, it's not as crunchy anymore, it's a little bit soggy, but that's the way it's supposed to be, and sugar in there, so it's sweet, but not crazy, you can just see the texture, it's really goopy, a lot of the desserts of Chinese origin have this starchy kind of texture that gives it this really thickness, but really hot, actually, you gotta be careful, mmm, just slightly sweet, it's actually really nice, really comforting, yum, every time I eat something like this, I always think, wow, this would be so good to have in a cold country, maybe like Canada, unfortunately you're not gonna have any cold weather here in Singapore, so you're gonna have to endure the heat and the hot food, but still tastes great, I actually really love it with the you tiao, it's got a little bit of a saltiness, so it kind of balances out, super hot, mmm, I know that some Chinese desserts are not everybody's cup of tea, especially when, maybe trying it for the first time, the textures might surprise you, or the ingredients, like green bean or red bean, you might not be used to it, but honestly, I prefer it now, to like chocolate and super sweet desserts, I love the subtle sweetness, and it's honestly way healthier than eating like a chocolate ice cream or something like that, really nice hawker center, good option to try lots of foods in a nice clean setting, it's my first time here, Changbaru Hawker Center, but we are taking off now, we are heading across the city to Little India, so welcome to the Tekka Center here in Little India, this is the heartbeat of Little India, the place to come to try all kinds of Indian snacks, it's not my first time here, but you can come back here again and again and always find something new, it is lunch time now, so it's absolutely packed in here, and we are going to try the Makan, I like to come here every time I visit the Tekka Center, because they serve one of the best roti paratha, so basically a very thin dough that he flattens out, paper thin, kind of flips it up in the air, it's a little bit of a show to watch, I love it, and then it's fried with oil, and then after it's finished frying, he pounds it into a pulp, just completely smashes it, and then it's served with either your choice of a mutton gravy, or a fish gravy, we got both, so this is the final result, this is the fish gravy here, so just a thin flatbread, eat with your hands, like the locals do, or if you didn't wash your hands like me, you can just use a fork and spoon, go for a dip, first with the fish gravy, wow, it's a lovely, lovely flavor, I'd say it's more like a thin gravy, not like a thick curry or anything, and there's a little bit of a kind of tart sourness in there, that one's fish, but it doesn't really taste like fish, it's just packed full of spices, a lot of flavor in there, but the best part is the roti paratha, because it's crispy, it's kind of chewy at the same time, and the way that he kind of smashes it to a pulp, it kind of brings out all the kind of layers of the roti, and you get a full coating because of it, with the gravy, when you dip it in, it's just completely smashed, like look at it, it's like falling apart, I love it, a little bit sour, and a hint of spice, not too much, yum, okay, let's try the mutton, big bite, wow, they look identical, but the flavor or profile is totally different, I can taste lots of like kind of cinnamon cloves in the mutton one, it's a little bit meatier, a little bit kind of thicker than the fish one, which was a thinner broth, but I actually think I prefer the fish, surprisingly, it's really, really good, yum, so much flavor in that sauce, sauce, gravy, curry, whatever you want to call it, it's freaking delicious, Singapore is truly one of the best places in the world to eat, you get the mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay, you've got it all, so you can really taste all kinds of different foods in one spot, and you can go to different parts of the city that specialize in different things, like Chinatown, or like here in Little India to try different flavors, I love it, it's seriously one of the best cities in the world went for some teh tarik, which is actually like a Malay name for pulled tea, tarik means to pull it, and you can see that kind of foamy layer on the top that's created when he actually pulls the tea, and I mean he really pulls it like a couple of feet, and you can get this everywhere in Singapore, Malaysia as well, you don't have to be in Little India, you don't have to be in a Malaysian restaurant, it's pretty much available anywhere, and this condensed milk, let's try it, yeah, that flavor is just so good, every time I taste this, this is like brings me back to Malaysia or Singapore, if I taste it in another country, it's just like so nostalgic of my trips here to Singapore, but it tastes even better if you have it in Singapore, yeah, so good, just a quick stop here in Little India, we are on a mission to show you the diversity of cultures and cuisine here in Singapore, so for our dessert, we're gonna head to Chinatown next, so we're here in Chinatown, we've come to a place called Tong Shui, they specialize in Cantonese style desserts, and some of these desserts are becoming increasingly difficult to find, and definitely can't find restaurants that have all these options, so this is a really good place to come if you love Cantonese desserts, I've got two different kinds, this one is my personal favorite, it's the black sesame paste with the almond paste, so you can see the black sesame and then the white almond, I love the aroma of the almond, it just smells so, so good, and then this one is taro paste with ginkgo nuts, let me try this one before, I've never tried this one, so I'm gonna try it with one of the ginkgo nuts here, mmm, yum, so rich and creamy, and it's not super sweet, the ginkgo nuts is not like a crunchy nut, it's been boiled, so it's like a soft nut, yeah, I like it, really strong taro flavor, okay, let's try this one too, I just love the color swirls going on in there, white and black, sort of like yin and yang, let's try this, oh yeah, I love the almond paste, and the black sesame, it's like my two favorite things together, oh, it's such a perfect combination, mmm, so comforting, nice and warm, they're both served hot, it's really good, you can get cold desserts here too, but these ones are served hot, I just can't explain the complexity of that almond flavor, it's really interesting, I'm not sure how they do it, because when you eat an almond, it doesn't taste like what this tastes like, but in Taiwan, I like to drink almond tea a lot, it has a similar flavor, and then Cantonese, or like in Hong Kong, or here in Singapore, you can have the almond paste dessert, it's such a rich and complex flavor, mmm, mmm, so that was 24 hours of eating here in Singapore, like I said in this video, truly one of the best cities in the world for food, and one of my favorite places to come eat, every time I come here, there's just more to explore, more to taste, I really really love this city, so if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe, hit the bell icon so you're notified, and I'll see you guys on the next episode of ShopTrickTravel, bye!