Looks like garlic, tastes like chicken

tuesday night was the first night this week that marlon was in kobe, and i was home alone. at seven p.m., james rescued me from a lonely and largely uninteresting evening at home with these words: "join us for dinner? go to geylang. eat frog porridge."

it was my first time in geylang, the underbelly of singapore. i expected some kind of singaporean sanitized version where the words "red light district" would be a laughable exaggeration (just like sentosa is supposed to be a tropical paradise), but geylang seems to meet the global standard for red light districts, if there is such a thing.

seedy atmosphere - check. trannies - check. heavily made up, peroxided, scantily clad girls - check. shops with gaudy clothing for said girls - check. neon signs - check. overall aura of cheapness - check. icky men - check. the only thing really missing, i guess, if you're a manila girl, is the feeling that you could be leered at, held up or propositioned at any given moment. but then this is singapore, and i supposed just a genuine aura of sleaze is a big achievement.

after drifting about, lost, in geylang lorong 15, we finally found the frog porridge place -- a set of big round tables in a back alley between lorong 17 and 19. benz was appropriately little-girlish (he is, after all, a little girl), squealing and demurring and protesting as we perused the menu.

buy two frogs, get one free! (seriously)

lilian, jerrold and james couldn't get why benz was so averse to the idea of consuming frog. "but you eat balut! that's even grosser!" lilian protested.

anesh gave benz a few pushes as well. while we were checking out the menu, he told benz: "this says in chinese, everything is chicken. frog is logo only. they just put frog because they think it looks very cute." when the meal arrived, he said: "frog is not here yet. here, you eat this while waiting."

our dinner was served in clay pots, several containing plain porridge. the other pots each held frogs prepared with different sauces: spring onion, kung pao (chili) and whole white pepper. i went straight for the kung pao, but the real winner, i found later on, was the white pepper. although james was drenched through with sweat after eating it (not to mention getting the shits the next day), i found it wonderfully mild and warm. not the kind of heat that burns your lips and gums... more like a steam bath in your oral cavity. and after the warmth fades away, a faint sweet aftertaste in the back of your mouth. yum.

as for the frog: as mike said, "looks like garlic, tastes like chicken." except it was much, much softer than any chicken meat i've ever had. not bad at all. it passed one of my personal litmus tests for something good, which is if i want marlon to try it too. (we also had tofu and crispy chicken wings, and they were equally good.) i didn't bother with the frog's spine and hid it under my leftover porridge because it looked so gross, but jer just popped it into his mouth and sucked the meat off it, like marrow.

time for traditional chinese medicine 101: some foods heat up your body, and others cool them down. frog is one of the former, regardless of whether it is prepared with spices or not. (apparently this is why it's popular in the red light district.) so after dinner we had to go have something to cool us down.

and that something, it turned out, was turtle.

turtle shell, at least. the top three dishes on the menu (parallel to the chinese characters) are jelly made from pulverised tortoiseshell. i forget what the heck it's called, but it's served with sugar syrup and is supposed to offset "heatiness" and be good for your skin.

frog was exotic enough for me and i opted to have mango pudding instead, but i did try a bit of the jelly from james and mike. it was... interesting. faintly bitter, even with the sugar syrup. james' was mint flavored, which made it even weirder. i could feel my face crumpling into a befuddled grimace as i chewed, which made lilian laugh. "i knew you wouldn't like it," she said. i didn't hate it, but i didn't exactly find any compelling reason to ever order it myself.

haibo, mike and benz

haibo's wife, jerrold, ganggang (covered by hand) and anesh

lilian and james

there, you've seen my entire company (with the exception of our two admins, terry and may.) we're so tiny that a weekday dinner of nine people counts as a company outing.