Mini-'Garden City'
MEDIUM RARE
When you enter the home of the ambassador of Singapore to the Philippines, expect to be greeted by a mini version of the Garden City, by which name her country is also known.
Ambassador Constance See has plucked more than a handful of giant paper flowers to welcome visitors as soon as they step out of their cars to ascend the few steps to her living room. A small artificial “garden” it may be, but one that probably reminds her of home. Not that she is homesick, because her husband, an architect, and their young family are all here. What’s more, neither she nor her colleagues consider Manila a hardship post.
The lady is a petite size XS, and tonight, she’s wearing a touch of Filipiniana, in baby blue, a cropped-at-the-waist version of a casually tailored terno with bell sleeves. And she’ll tell you where she bought it, at a shop in Makati. Tonight she is hosting a dinner for a small group of friends, three ladies and a married couple, plus me, the only journalist, thank you, Mme Ambassador.
On the menu: tofu soup, garden salad, beef stew, steamed kailan, and, naturally, the star of the show, Singaporean Hainanese chicken rice, to be followed by fresh mango and grapes, coffee or tea. As expected, the main course is a delight, mainly because the chicken is fat and golden, with oily skin that told you it was destined for the pot whose outcome would be Singapore’s signature dish, served with steamed rice. Although I don’t know a thing about cooking, I dared to ask the lady how she was able to find such a qualified hen in the market/supermarket, to which Ambassador See replied, pointing in the direction of the kitchen, that she’d have to ask the cook.
Restaurants that serve “Singaporean chicken” without the required qualifications are shortchanging their customers, as I see it, because while a chicken is a chicken, not every one of them will do justice to the name Hainanese. I recall a former president of the Philippines who would ask friends stationed in Singapore to do him the favor of ordering the dish from “the best restaurant for Hainanese” and sending it to him in Manila, special delivery.