Six Years in Singapore and I Still Eat Korean Food at My Desk Twice a Day

 I've lived in Singapore for six years and I eat Korean food for lunch and dinner most weekdays.

Not because I'm avoiding anything. My company runs a canteen, and the woman who cooks there is Korean with a long career behind her. Proper cooking, the kind you'd get at a gisikdang back home, the roadside places truck drivers eat at where nobody's trying to be clever with the food. It tastes like Korea. Genuinely.

So the honest version of my Singapore food story is that I've had far less exposure to local food than someone six years in probably should.

The Months I Actually Ate Local Every Day

There was a stretch where the company canteen shut down temporarily, and I had to go out for lunch like everyone else.

I ate economy rice. Every single day.

If you haven't come across it, it's the stall with twenty or thirty trays of cooked dishes laid out behind glass. You point at what you want, they scoop it onto rice in a takeaway container, and you pay based roughly on how many items and what kind. Meat costs more than vegetables. Nobody explains the pricing, you just learn it.

That caught me out early. I loaded up on three meat dishes one day without thinking about it, and the auntie quoted a number noticeably higher than what I'd been paying. I remember standing there recalculating my assumptions about how any of this worked. Nobody was unkind about it. It just clicked, and after that I balanced it out without anyone telling me to.

I never got tired of it, which surprises me looking back. Different combination every day, and because you're choosing dish by dish, you end up eating things you'd never order as a full plate.

Then the canteen reopened and I went straight back to Korean food. I'm not proud of that but it's what happened.

Laksa Tasted Like Soap

The one dish that didn't land was laksa.

First time I tried it, all I could taste was soap. Something in the coconut and laksa leaf combination hit my palate completely wrong. I've had it plenty of times since and it's fine now, I'll eat it if it's in front of me, but I don't seek it out.

I still don't finish the broth, which is the real tell. With most noodle dishes here I'll drink the soup down. With laksa I eat the noodles and leave the bowl half full.

That's about it for things I can't handle. I'm not a fussy eater and I never had a dramatic adjustment period. The only food that's genuinely defeated me isn't even Singaporean, it's blue cheese. I'll eat any other cheese you put in front of me. Blue cheese I cannot do.

I Still Don't Know How to Order Kopi

Six years and I have not learned the kopi ordering system.

For anyone who doesn't know, there's an entire coded vocabulary at coffee stalls here. Kopi-o, kopi-c, siew dai, kosong, gah dai, and combinations of those, each specifying condensed milk versus evaporated milk versus none, more sugar, less sugar, no sugar. Locals rattle it off in one breath.

I order kopi-c when I order kopi at all, and mostly I don't. I don't really drink sweet coffee, so at an actual cafe I get an americano and that's the end of my coffee life here.

If the uncle asked me a follow-up question I'd probably just say yes to whatever it was.

What My Kids Eat

The girls are better at this than I am.

We don't eat out constantly, but when we do, they'll eat anything. Local, Western, Korean, doesn't matter. They've reached the point where something completely unfamiliar arrives and they'll try it rather than refuse it, which took a while and I didn't push it, it just happened.

Spicy is the exception. Anything with real heat is adults only in our house. Although recently even that's started shifting, they'll ask for a small taste of something and decide for themselves. They usually decide no, but they ask.

My wife handles this better than I do, mostly because her work life has put her around local colleagues more than mine has. She'll come home having eaten something I've never heard of, describe it, and I'll nod like I know what she means.

I find their range slightly funny given mine. They're growing up with no default cuisine, and I'm the one eating Korean food twice a day at work.

Two Things I'd Tell Any Korean Arriving Here

If you're Korean and new here, two things will land with your palate immediately.

Sambal, first. It's a chilli paste base used in a lot of dishes, and sambal noodles in particular sit in a flavour zone that's very familiar to a Korean tongue. Spicy, but with something funky underneath rather than just heat.

Second, chilli padi. You'll find it at hawker centres and local restaurants, tiny chillies usually served chopped in soy sauce as a condiment. Sharp, clean heat, exactly the kind of thing you'd put on Korean food without thinking. I add it to more meals than I should.

Neither is an adventurous recommendation. They're just the two things I've watched Korean visitors take to instantly.

Why I'm Not Writing a Best Hawker Dishes List

There's a version of this post where I've spent six years systematically working through local cuisine and now have strong opinions about which stall does the best char kway teow.

I don't have that. I have a canteen, an office routine, and a family that eats out on weekends without much of a pattern to it. When we go somewhere, we eat whatever's nearby, and Singapore makes that easy because there's something decent almost everywhere.

I do think about it sometimes. There's a lot of food in this city I've never touched, and the reason is that someone in my office building cooks doenjang jjigae better than most places I'd find outside.

Maybe that changes eventually. My eldest is at the age where she wants to try things, so I suspect that's how it happens, not through any decision on my part but because she points at something on a menu and I end up eating it.

Until then, it's Korean food at my desk, economy rice if the canteen ever shuts again, and chilli padi on almost everything.

Related reading:

A Local's Guide to Singapore Hawker Centres: The Places I Still Go After Nearly 10 Years

I Threw Up the First Time I Ate Durian. Now I Buy It on Purpose.

Where I Actually Buy Korean Groceries in Singapore Without Overpaying