Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Where to eat in Little India - Tekka Centre

Before going to Singapore I had no idea what a Hawker centre was. I can now safely say they're a food court type deal where vendors have a (roughly) 2 metre wide shop front often then restricting them to selling one type of food - a plus in my mind because then they can perfect that one thing :) With food comes reputation and after a quick googling I had a list of places I wanted to try. You know the funny thing, despite my pages and pages of food print outs that I lugged around with me, I feel we didn't really eat all that much on our holiday *gasp* I'm going to put all the blame on the weather, I don't know about you, but when the Weather gets warm I'm all about the beverages!

Anyway back to the hawker food, there are a bunch of these food courts all around Singapore but since we were based in Little India this post is dedicated to the Tekka Centre! Again my perception of size from reading about this food court was largely squashed when we got there, it was much smaller than I imagined. Seriously from googling I was worried about locating all the "must try" shops but once in there it was a quick stroll around :)

My google instructions for locating 'Yakader' was to find a man standing in front of a big metal pot :p Success!

So what do they serve at Yakader? Briyani! From what I could gather Briyani is a curry type dish (lol insightful) I'm not too well versed in my curries but I can say this was actually the mildest curry we ate on our trip and to me was almost reaching my hot limits! (More on that to come!) So would I recommend Yakader? Despite having to wait in cue for 15 minutes I gave our chicken Briyani a pleasant 7.4/10 it did come on a banana leaf which maybe bumped up the points a bit :) I don't know if my score if valid though, since I'm the worst expert on curry :p

We also got some drinks from AR-Rahman! I got the Teh Tarik on the left and Ben got the Milo Dinosaur on the right, I gave my drink a 7.8/10 I thought it was great! I was wondering how they got the milk so creamy and I think I worked it out by the end. So far our SE Asian countries have taught us that they don't do milk like we do in Australia. I remember Ben going for an ice chocolate at Starbucks in Malaysia and I warned him but he didn't listen and came out with a cup mostly full of ice. At our final hotel in Malaysia (and most ritzy) they had coffee and tea provided (ritzy for us!). They also had a mini bar but no fresh milk capsules like you would most likely, find in Australia. So I compromised and used the coffee creamer and you know what, it tasted an awful lot like my Teh Tarik! Mystery solved :)

So AR-Rahman also sell Kopi Tarik (took me a second to figure out that was Coffee, oops!) but I went for the Teh Tarik ('tea' for those still in the dark). Tarik means, from what I can gather "pulled" and pulled means well pretty much what that guy is doing above, pouring the tea back and forth! It was fun to watch and it gives your drink that nice frothy bit on top :)



If you find yourself in Singapore or Little India, I would say a Hawker visit is well worth it, you know for the sights, smells and sounds or something or other :)





10 comments:

  1. That curry likes nice! Always good to see insights into different cultures and their food

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  2. That briyani looks very flavorful!

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  3. I always enjoy trying new foods :) I just need to build up my spice resistance :P

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  4. This post makes me miss Singapore so very much! I eat out at hawker centres as much as I possibly can when i'm in Singapore. There's no other experience quite like it.

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  5. I wish my stomach would have allowed more food in personally!!

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  6. The Briyani looks yummy! I do like curry although I'm no expert and only tolerate a low level of hot :) We usually bring lots of restaurant recommendations as well and finally only need a 20% of them, hahaha. I love your pictures, do great to see the locals of Little India working and hanging around.

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  7. It would be nice if you could go around everywhere and just get a sampler! lol I'm working on building up my tolerance!

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  8. Oh this place looks like heaven. So many different new flavors to explore!

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  9. too many flavours, not enough time!

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