Category — Chef Interviews

Rick Bayless, James Beard Winner, Top Chef Master, and creator of the Mexican street food restaurant Xoco, practically drools when he talks about the chicken tinga he gobbles on the corners of Mexico City. “To me this is the soul of street food,” he says. “It’s almost primal. There’s an alchemical reaction when you taste great street food.”

Chicken tinga merges roasted tomato and chipotles, “gutsy” flavors that stand up to their gutsy atmosphere. For more from the Mexican master, check out the video.

So here’s the thing about Singpore: everybody thinks it’s boring. Paternal government, no gum chewing, and the occasional caning just to keep things lively. But when I visited in 1999 I found your basic collision of culinary atoms.  In street stalls across the nation – which is only three times the size of Washington, but has more than 35 thousand eateries — the tamarind- and chili-spiked dishes of the Straits Chinese sidle up to roti prata brought by the Indians and peanut- dunked satay cooked over charcoal by the Malaysians.  At CIA tonight we got to meet the high priest of indigenous Singaporean food, K.F. Seetoh, creator of the definitive Makansutra food guidebooks. Click on the video to hear why his mantra is “Eat the food, digest the culture.”