Food in South-East Asia

Com­ing from Aus­tralia, where food was expen­sive and not exactly haute-cuisine, South-East Asia was a foodie’s par­adise. First, food is cheap by world stan­dard and sim­ple meal usu­ally cost under $5. Sec­ond, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia and Thai­land have a “street food” tra­di­tion and numer­ous hawk­ers offer local del­i­ca­cies on-the-go. Finally, the blend of flavours was sim­ply amaz­ing, from Thai curry to Penang’s Nasi Lemak.

A Foodie's Day in S'pore

I’m lucky to have a strong stom­ach and a taste for street food. I’m not a huge fan of “weird” meat (i.e. intestines and the like) but I can eat pretty much any­thing else. You can’t really apply West­ern health stan­dards to Asian street food but I’m per­fectly fine with that. Who wants to live in a taste­less san­i­tized world, anyway?

The Picky Eaters

Some cou­ple argue about money, reli­gion or work. We argue about food.

Food is deeply cul­tural and in our Chinese-French-Canadian house­hold, we blend flavours. Some would call it “world cui­sine”. I call it “a-compromise-so-that-we-don’t-kill-each-other”.

The Byward Market

The Byward Mar­ket is some­what of a fix­ture in Ottawa. It is located down­town, close to the Rideau neigh­bor­hood, between Sus­sex and Rideau St. There is a main mar­ket build­ing (very sim­i­lar to Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket in Toronto or to The Forks in Win­nipeg), sur­rounded by an open-air mar­ket on George, York, ByWard and William Streets.

French Bakeries

I love French bak­eries. There is one at every cor­ner and they all carry fresh bread, crois­sants, pains au choco­lat and pains aux raisin. They also have their spe­cial­ties, from elab­o­rate cakes to sim­ple fruit pies.

Crêpes Dinner in Nantes

Crêpes are Brittany’s spe­cialty and crêperies can be found every­where in Nantes. These very thin pan­cakes are made from flour, eggs, milk, but­ter, and a pinch of salt. Nor­mally, crêpes are slightly sweeet and galettes are unsweet­ened: the first one is served as dessert and the sec­ond one is the main meal. They are tra­di­tion­ally served with very cold cider.

A French Market

There are two big mar­kets a week in Nantes, and they are both very busy. French do love food after all.
Fruits and veg­eta­bles are not always cheaper than at the super­mar­ket but peo­ple have their “petites habi­tudes” (cus­toms) and they enjoy shop­ping at the same stalls weeks after weeks. They joke, taste the fruits, com­plain about the price and hap­pily bag a few pounds of this and that. So-and-so has the best meat, so-and-so has the fresh­est bread etc.

Food In Numbers

You won’t find any nutri­tional infor­ma­tion on prod­ucts in France. I guess it doesn’t mat­ter that much because most peo­ple fol­low a com­mon­sense diet, or at least try to: eat more veg­gies than Nutella, nib­ble on bread but go easy on the may­on­naise, enjoy some dessert but a small por­tion of it. But in North Amer­ica, a lot of restau­rants offer super-fatty dishes.