S'pore looks past bird flu, cries 'Let's Eat!'<\/p>\n
Jonathan Landreth, Reuters, Singapore<\/p>\n
Chop-chop goes the cleaver on the butcher's block at Tian Tian
\nHainan Chicken Rice, but fear of the bird flu ravaging parts of
\nAsia has cut business in half at this tiny Singapore food stall.<\/p>\n
\"My birds are from Malaysia where there's no flu, but people
\nare still afraid to eat,\" said proprietor Madam Foo, who did not
\ngive her full name.<\/p>\n
The shop sells 50 whole chickens a day when business is good,
\nMadam Foo said. \"Business is much, much lower this week.\"<\/p>\n
Dishes are cheap at S$3 (US$1.76), but most plates at the
\nMaxwell Food Centre, where Tian Tian is located, are piled high
\nwith pork these days from the 100 or so stalls selling spicy
\nlocal fare.<\/p>\n
Singapore has suspended live chicken imports from all nations
\nhit by bird flu, which has spread rapidly to 10 countries from
\nJapan to Pakistan, killing 15 people and millions of poultry.<\/p>\n
With the city state's 2004 economic growth forecast of five
\npercent under threat, poultry farms have been covered with nets
\nto keep out migratory birds, which are thought to be spreading
\nthe disease around the region.<\/p>\n
And, hoping to recapture the S$700 million tourists spent
\nwining and dining in the city state in 2002, the Singapore
\nTourism Board (STB) has launched a Let's Makan! drive to promote
\nhawker food.<\/p>\n
Makan means \"eat\" in Bahasa, the language of neighboring
\nMalaysia and Indonesia, and food and beverage sales are
\nSingapore's third largest source of tourist revenue after
\nshopping and accommodation.<\/p>\n
\"We expect the Let's Makan! drive can grow this revenue,\" said
\nJoycelyn Ng, assistant director for local fare at the tourism
\nboard's food and beverage division.<\/p>\n
Health authorities rate Tian Tian for cleanliness, just as
\nthey do all of Singapore's 16,000 hawker stalls.<\/p>\n
And to assure patrons of that last little bit of protection,
\ntraditional Chinese dragon dancers chased off evil spirits in the
\nlast days of the Lunar New Year festival.<\/p>\n
But a Scottish tourist sitting under the whirring ceiling fans
\nin the open-walled food centre fears a chicken lunch might get
\nher quarantined when she travels on to Australia soon.<\/p>\n
\"I won't eat chicken at all now unless I cook it myself,\" said
\nFiona Allen, 27, as she dipped her chopsticks into noodles with
\nroast pork, a dish she also enjoyed on the last leg of her trip
\nin Vietnam, a country hit hard by avian flu.<\/p>\n
A Singaporean friend lunching with Allen said she was unafraid
\nof chicken, but ate roast pork noodles anyway.<\/p>\n
\"I guess the chicken will be much safer here since the
\ngovernment actually makes stringent checks of everything,
\nespecially after last year,\" said May Tan.<\/p>\n
Tan was referring to Singapore's tough measures to control
\nSARS after it killed 33 citizens and more than halved tourist
\nvisits to the island last April.<\/p>\n
\"It's about time Singapore positioned this new icon of tourism
\ncalled food,\" said K.F. Seetoh, editor of Makansutra, a 456-page
\nguide to the spectrum of food the island has to offer.<\/p>\n
Sutra means guide or lesson in Pali, the ancient language of
\nBuddhists in India.<\/p>\n
\"We enjoy our food so much we want to share it with the
\nworld,\" said Seetoh, who took a food reviewer from the New York
\nTimes on a 16-hour tasting tour of the island last autumn.<\/p>\n
In April, Seetoh and the tourism board will offer abbreviated
\n\"Food Safaris\" charging tourists up to S$65 a head for a hawker
\ncenter sampling of 10 \"must try\" dishes, including favorites such
\nas chili crab and fish head curry.<\/p>\n
\"Maybe the buses will help business, but I hope the tourists
\nfrom New York aren't scared of our chicken,\" said Madam Foo,
\nwhose specialty dish comes from her ancestral island home of
\nHainan, off China's southern coast.<\/p>\n
Adventuresome eaters had better not expect waiters and
\ntablecloths at the food centers, where dining is nothing if not
\ncasual, its origins in pre-independence street carts still
\napparent in the hawkers' hustle.<\/p>\n
The hawkers provide a pan-Asian menu that feeds Singapore's
\npopulation of four million, mostly Chinese in a city state that
\nhas been independent since 1965.<\/p>\n
Families in shorts and sandals gather around tables and chairs
\nbolted to cement floors, using disposable chopsticks to eat from
\nplastic bowls.<\/p>\n
Many hawkers, cramped in stalls 2.4 meters square, sell a
\nsingle speciality dish with Malay or Indonesian roots, or flavors
\nfrom ancestral villages from China or India.<\/p>\n
\"As a young nation of migrants from different cultures we
\ndon't have culture enough of our own, and it really shows in our
\nfood,\" said Joshua Koh, an army man chatting online at website
\nwww.makansutra.com.<\/p>\n
\"I like to try everything, and since nothing in Singapore is
\nthat far away, I can,\" said Koh, who likes to treat visitors to
\nhawker food. \"You get more variety for your money.\"<\/p>\n
The island's roving diners have bought about 25,000 copies of
\neach of Makansutra's four S$12 editions, said Seetoh, and a fifth
\nwill hit bookstores this year.<\/p>\n
In \"hunting season\", about six months before publication,
\nSeetoh says he dispatches a team of about 40 tasters to sniff out
\nthe latest and greatest culinary creations. He pays the tab.<\/p>\n
\"It's our biggest expense. About forty thousand Singapore
\nbucks ($23,600) on street food. People walk up to me all the time
\nand say, 'Hey, I'd like to be one of your food spies',\" Seetoh
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
The Makanmatas, as he calls the group he started with some
\nfriends, represent what he calls Singapore's quiet majority.<\/p>\n
\"Where else can you jump into a taxi and say you're hungry and
\nget good advice from the driver about where to eat?\" he asked.<\/p>\n
Let's Makan! ends with the Singapore Food Festival in July.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/spore-looks-past-bird-flu-cries-lets-eat-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }