Chicken hearts

The skewer on the right has grilled chicken hearts. Yes!

No, this post is not about eating chicken hearts. However, I did not take a photo of my actual experience, which is why I yanked the above from this excellent slashfood post by Sarah Gim.

This post is really about my chickenheartedness.

I'm referring to my fear of trying new restaurants (I'll save the discussions of my other fears for another time, another blog). Really, I could have called this post "navel gazing", but where are the fun food photos for that title? If you know of any culture that specifically eats navels (and has photographs of said navels) I'd be interested. Actually, do other animals even have "outie" navels that one could eat? Can one eat an "innie" navel? I'd even settle for a photo of a dish made of umbelical cord.

Right, enough about navels. Back to my fears.

Despite my foodie-leanings, I am afraid of going into a restaurant without either prior recommendations by people I trust, or a good review from at least two or three reliable sources (let's face it, even Zagat gets it wrong sometimes). I'm also afraid of ordering stuff in a new restaurant, and even ordering new stuff in a familiar restaurant, again, unless someone recommends something to me or I hear about it from a reliable source or two.

In fact, I am an all round food conservative when it comes to restaurant choice and ordering. If I were a single issue voter (and if that issue were food) it would be GOP/Tories/Liberals all the way. In order to highlight this fact, every time I notice myself say something neurotic & conservative in this post, I shall write "neurotic & conservative", or some appropriate variant thereof, in bolded red font. Like this: (neurotic & conservative).

I say that I am this way "despite" my foodie-leanings, but in fact this fear is in part because of my foodie-leanings, coupled with my general risk-aversion. It is because I put so much importance on having tasty food that I fear going into a restaurant and having something bad. I feel regret about it for hours, days, weeks, afterwards. Also I usually tell everybody I know about my bad experience in an attempt to exorcise it (sometimes I even blog it), so it's tiresome for all concerned.

Today, however, I went into a new restaurant that I hadn't heard of before, hadn't looked up beforehand, and in fact, hadn't even thought about going to until I walked past it on my way to another restaurant and thought hey, Singaporean food! Why not, eh, mate? I didn't actually think the "mate" part, I was just trying to give some Australian flavor. I didn't actually think the "eh" part either, I was just trying to give some, umm, Canadian flavor. In fact, I didn't think any of these words specifically, I was just (neurotically) trying to give y'all the gist of my thought process, brief as it was.


I put this photo here because I thought this was getting too text-heavy. Gross, huh?

Anyhoo.

The restaurant's name was Singapore Chom-Chom (I think), and the one feature that it had to recommend itself was that it was packed. I was somewhat disheartened when I was handed the menu, which was an incredibly long list of dishes. My general (neurotic & conservative) rule of thumb is the fewer dishes there are on the menu the better each dish will be - plus, the less I'll have to wonder about which other dishes I should have ordered if mine turns out to be crap.

I was already in the mood for soup noodles (I had been heading to a good ramen place, Ajisan - recommended by my cousin and already visited conservatively twice by me), and so I limited myself to the soup noodle section of the menu. There were still a neurotically daunting 25 dishes or so. I finally settled on chicken laksa, figuring (neurotically & conservatively) that it's hard to mess up something with coconut milk in it, and deliberately avoiding the regular laksa, which had shrimp. That is another (neurotic & conservative) rule of thumb - avoid seafood in new restaurants.

So they got my order wrong and I ended up having the regular (shrimp) laksa. The shrimp was, as I had neurotically but correctly feared, not too fresh, and overcooked. Fortunately, there was only one piece of it. The rest of the bowl was packed with chewy noodles, earthy beansprouts, sweetly brown deep-fried pork skins, springy fishcake and juicy fried tofu puffs.

Ooh, I feel a bit like Patricia Unterman (she of the long lists of adjectivized nouns).

The service was efficient, if a little bit rushed. The place stayed packed well past the lunch hour, so it was totally understandable. In the end, the bill came to only A$8, which is about US$6. Leaving a tip is not expected in Australia and, conservatively, I didn't.

An added bonus - because the place was packed and people were subtly encouraged to eat and go, there wasn't much lingering and chatting, which made me feel (neurotically) like less of a loser for having lunch by myself (just me and my New Yorker, which, because of the importedness, cost more than lunch).

So overall, I conquered my neurosis and conservatism, and I had a good experience at a new restaurant near my work.

I think it is fair to say - WOOT!

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