My weekly grocery shopping travails have been documented here. Singapore's layout seems to have a one-point agenda: Make life miserable for Indian vegetarians. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit. But crave clean Indian vegetarian food? Go to Little India. Need Indian groceries and spices? Li'l India again! Throw in a two-leg bus-train journey, you are looking at anywhere upwards of 3 hours to fill yourself and your refrigerator. And, the return journey, hauling full bags, is sure to remind you of your weekend escapades well into the work week.
But all that has changed with the discovery of Sheng Siong - a chain of super markets with a very distinctive smell. It wasn't a discovery that I made while exploring a road less taken, it had been sitting right by the side of a very beaten track. I've walked past this store for nearly a year now, every day to and from work. But it was the smell that kept me from venturing in as I had mentally branded it as a store for the Chinese, replete with aquatic organisms dead, dying or dried. Yet, curiosity got the better of me one evening when I was using the ATM in front of the place and I took a few hesitant steps in.
You could be forgiven for thinking that you were entering a poorly maintained aquarium. They have the usual 3 sections: the aquarium, the dead zoo and the garden. While I can't comment on anything other than the smell about the first two, the garden section carries, besides the usual onion-capsicum-beans-carrot quartet, an impressive array of Indian vegetables. Podalangai? Check. Keerai? Check. Seppankizhangu? Yes, of course! Agreed, they don't carry murungakkai or kathrikkai, both critical requirements in my opinion. But, hey! It is a compromise I'm gladly willing to make in return for saving me a trip to Mustafa's on any weekend. Whats a little bad smell compared to a few hours of shopping hell? A chayote squash still tastes the same even if it gets billed as fo shou gua, right? Moreover, as I said before, this is located very conveniently on my way back home from work: more weekend hours freed up!
To my very pleasant surprise, they also offer a lot of Indian culinary requirements like mustard, cumin seeds, pepper, etc, except for a few, very specialized spices like asafoetida, fenugreek and the usual masalas. But these are items that I usually stockpile from India and won't need on a weekly basis. And, frankly, I won't expect a fully blown Ambika Appalam Depot in a foreign land. I'm reasonable.
But I still haven't touched upon the biggest advantage of all: rice. I thought that this was something available only in and around Little India. No Siree Bob! Parboiled ponni rice is available in 5kg and even 25kg packs! Good bye blue fingers and sore arms.
To top it all, this place even let me show some patriotism. There were two brands of rice available. One look at the bags and it was a very easy choice for me.
P.S: They also sell a dozen different varieties of biscuits in "loose": required quantities from a wholesale size tin!
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