I think about food. A lot.
Not just because I love to eat: I also think that food is politics, history, culture, and the best lens through which I can learn about the world.
I've been lucky to have eaten extensively across the world. I've also worked on several cookbooks. Now, I write an occasional food newsletter, obsessively review tacos, and develop recipes that are at once traditional and outright absurd.
Sept 22, 2023
It was my first full day back in Singapore. Here's what I ate, and where.
Excellent scallion pancakes and fried dumplings from 喬記面館
Mee hoon kuay from China Whampoa Homemade Noodles
Excellent coffee at Kurasu. Today, they had a coffee bean from Yunnan. I had to try that since I’ve never tried Chinese espresso beans before. Very fruity!
Rock salt macchiato oolong bubble tea with daily special pearls at Hollin
Family hotpot at Hai Di Lao
Noyah La Maison, Changi Airport T4
One of the best things about being back in my part of the world, is that breakfast foods now make sense.
No more pancakes, syrup, waffles, badly made eggs for brunch. Definitely no donuts. No sugar in general for breakfast for me, except a little bit in my kopi.
6am at Changi Airport was a routine for me for many years. I was typically catching a 7am flight to Indonesia, Thailand or Myanmar a few times a week in the last decade and a half.
There are lots of kopi spots and while airport franchises aren’t as good as what you’d get in the city proper, it’s still whole lot better than donuts!
Kaya butter toast, kopi, soft boiled eggs are usually sold in a ‘breakfast set’. I was also able to add on halal siew mai.
It’s going to keep me happy until I land in Surabaya in two or so hours.
Here are some food thoughts I'm excited about as I pack for my annual visit home. What's home? My passport says Singapore. But in practice, it's the entire region of South and Southeast Asia that I miss and think of as home. I've lived in, and eaten in, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Myanmar; and spent substantial amounts of time in other countries in the region.
I'm interested in food culture, food ways, migration, food access, the impact of our colonial past, new food trends, enduring traditions, what people eat and don't and why.
I'll be in Singapore, then Surabaya, and I can't wait because (1) I love tropical weather (2) I love the food from these two cities.
Things you can expect in the coming weeks:
Along the way, I'll meet interesting people. I plan to interview some distant family members who run food stalls. I hope to discuss some historical family recipes with people. I want to talk to my friends, who between them know more than I can ever hope to know.
Hopefully, I'll be able to share a sense of what 'food' and 'home' feel like to me: delicious, warm, and happy, and when I return to the Bay Area I'll be able to reconfigure this space to also showcase Asian, Mexican and other immigrant foods in a similarly meaningful way.
I have a problem: I tend to be a perfectionist. Sometimes, when something doesn't turn out well I get so annoyed that I don't touch it again forever. Or for a long time. (Recently, I learned that people with autism and ADHD like me have severe 'rejection sensitivity'). Being mindful of this, I'm trying to actively embrace mistakes.
So when I pulled out my film and found many 'spots' on my photos I decided to embrace that mistake, too. I had left a small amount of Photoflo in a container that I also used to stir my Ilfosol film developer. After developing, I noticed that my solution was bubbly. For some reason the detergent bubbles only showed up on one reel of film and not the other. In fact, it lent an interesting visual effect to some of the photos.
Dinner the other day.
Surprised at how well Kodak 5222 performs in low light indoors.
I've been delighted to see more street food vendors in the Mission these days, especially on Friday nights outside very busy nightlife spots. From this lady I also had a delicious, freshly made pupusa with pork, beans and cheese. She was shaping the masa to order when you ordered one. Or twelve.
I think I can eat four of them at once.
More bubbles. Thankfully, they only impacted less than 20% of the photos.
All film shot on Minolta Hi-Matic 7S II, on Kodak 5222 film, developed in Ilfosol 1:9 for 7:45 min, scanned on Plustek 8200i.
I used to be a creature of the night, but no longer. I used to be out all the time, but rarely now. Partly, it's that San Francisco is so chilly at night, but also that it's pretty dead at night compared to the much bigger cities I've lived in. I don't quite enjoy walking around, cold, in areas where there just sijmply isn't that much going on at all. For my wife's birthday, we went out to dinner in the Mission and I also brought my Minolta Hi-Matic 7S II. It's fast becoming one of the cameras I use the most: its f1.7 lens, combined with the small form factor and weight, makes it easy for me to pop it into my jacket pocket. It works really well indoors at night, too, with black and white film (and a steady hand.. or an elbow firmly on a table or chair or door, which is my style. I dislike tripods).
Here are some shots on Kentmere 400, pushed to 800 in Ilfosol 3 (1:9). I really like the combination of this film and this camera, and my self dev setup at home these days. Scanned on Noritsu LS-600.
The outdoor space at Blue Plate is quite lovely. So is the key lime pie there.
I love neon signs. I also love that I was professionally involved in getting these 'parklets' up early pandemic: my team at sf.gov helped get a joint permitting process out quickly to help businesses move their business outdoors.
Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission.
Street tacos are the best tacos. There was a lot of light from one side from the street lamps, but I quite enjoy the effect it casts on the photo.
I am starting to feel more confident about bulk-rolling black and white film and developing it at home. Other than the cost savings, it's the immediacy that I love: I can roll a 24 exposure cassette in black and white, shoot it in an hour, and come back and process it immediately and see it shortly after through a scanner or light table.