Eat the Food, Digest the Culture

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.”