Reading a couple of posts on Serious Eats regarding Singaporean food made me realise that I would soon be leaving my tiny but wonderful island, with its amazing foods and foodie culture, so I decided to start taking more pictures around the island to serve as mementoes before I leave. Singapore is a quirky country – small but illustrious, it’s a capital city known to tourists for three things – the excellent shopping and sales, mouthwatering food and restaurants and lastly, the tyrannical laws in this little nanny-state. Hey, two out of three ain’t bad, I suppose.
When they step into Singapore, though, tourists tend to flock to places heavily promoted by the government tourism board. And while Orchard Road may be ranked the best shopping street in the world by Presence Mystery Shopping (a statistic that many islanders, including myself, find highly dubious), it’s often the places off the beaten track that one can catch a glimpse of what truly is the essence of Singapore. Some of these places, like the Tiong Bahru neighbourhood or Ang Siang Hill have experienced a gentrification of sorts, with many indie shops and third-wave coffee bars setting up shop and garnering more attention from locals. Another location that has in recent years received more publicity (particularly after Anthony Bourdain took a jaunt there in The Layover) is the famous shopping centre, Mustafa.
A huge, sprawling labyrinth with six floors and multiple basements, this shopping centre differentiates itself from other shopping centres by having merchandise such as jewellery, household appliances, apparel and the stuff of most interest to me, food. While shopping centres often have discrete stores from different brands each selling their own goods, Mustafa is simply one store selling a vast array of products, and it is often said that one can find anything just by having a poke around the many shelves of this incredible shopping centre. It has its own import line and stocks brands that simply can’t be found elsewhere in the nation.
Yea, the place is open 24 hours every day of the week. While it can seem rather quiet on weekday mornings, the place really comes alive at the night after work and in the wee hours of the morning, where many throng the place in search of the best bargains.
The ground floor of the complex itself contains many sections from cosmetics to pharmaceuticals. Shelves upon shelves are laden with brands unique to Mustafa (at least, within Singapore) or others that are heavily discounted.
Located in Little India, Mustafa caters slightly more to the Indian demographic, so it’s no surprise that a large section is dedicated to jewellery. It can be slightly disconcerting to descend from a market selling meats and fish to counters of dazzling gold and silver.
Electronics section, from above.
The electronics sections are extensive, selling things from kitchen gadgets and computers to hardware and yes, eclectic spy gadgets such as thumb sized video recorders and surveillance tools.
The line of cash registers act as a marker of sorts to separate the sports section (on the left) from the electronics section. You don’t have to pay before moving from section to section, though; it’s simply for convenience sake.
Sports and Toys
Shoes and apparel. Once again, the photos belie reality, for the sections themselves consist of huge shelves of a myriad of apparel of different brands catering to both casual and smart wear. The shoes themselves take up a significant floor space, where shoppers can pick from shelves of work boots, dress shoes, sports shoes and casual flats. Apparel is also not limited to shirts and tops; one can easily find blazers, bermudas, jeans and trousers of all kinds.
Random knick knacks and souvenirs for the touristy folk.
Food! Mustafa imports a significant amount of their food from unique sources compared to the rest of the island’s supermarkets or department stores, so one can easily spot brands that they have never seen before elsewhere or brands that they simply didn’t expect to find in Singapore. Spotted here is Voortman, supposedly a Canadian biscuit company whose products I have never seen nor tried in my life.
Shelves upon shelves of snacks.
Mustafa has a ludicrously big variety of chocolate for sale, from cheap bars more akin to chocolate flavoured candy to the real stuff such as Lindt’s. While the brand is pretty common here, most shops don’t stock as large a product line as Mustafa’s, and I’m pretty sure this is the only place in the island where I’ve seen New Zealand brands like Richfields. More common brands like Cadbury are also often sourced from different origins compared to the Cadbury bars from elsewhere on the island, so the taste can be significantly different. All in all, it makes for an interesting eating experience.
Some of the many Indian fried bean snacks available.
Traditional Ramadan snacks for the Muslim folk. While Mustafa does cater mainly to the Indian community, most of the foods for sale are halal as well.
If you are looking to cook some Indian dishes, Mustafa is certainly the place to go: the dried goods section is immense, with stocks of long and short grain bryani rices as well as beans and legumes of all sorts. I didn’t check to see if they had Japanese Pearl rice, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if they had. They also stock all sorts of different bean flours, though the predominant variety are the ones utilised in Indian cooking. The smell of the dried goods section is extremely distinctive, though nothing compared to the spices section.
For those a little less inclined to make everything from scratch, Mustafa carries all sorts of ready-mix or prepared flours and powders. Great for those short on time.
Some mixes for those more inclined to Anglo-cised desserts.
For those even shorter on time, Mustafa offers chilled or frozen foods such as these chilled ready-made Indian desserts.
A somewhat typical scene in any supermarket, except most supermarkets don’t stock 6 shelves full of different kinds of dried dates. Most supermarkets in Singapore don’t, at least.
A shot of a shelf containing mostly cereals of local provenance. Since I grew up munching these, it never occured to me that these were unique to the region.
??!! According to Wikipedia, this is “a flavour of ice cream in New Zealand, consisting of plain vanilla ice cream with small, solid lumps of honeycomb toffee” and is supposedly extremely popular, though I have never come across it before today. As I mentioned earlier, Mustafa is a great place to make foodie discoveries!
An extensive dairy section. The prices shown are ridiculously low, far cheaper than anywhere else found on the island.
The spice section. All of these aisles and shelves are laden with spices and dried herbs, both whole and powdered, and the aroma is intense. They don’t really package them very well, though, and I find that most of the cheaper bottled variety simply smell of a blend of spices.
A pre-mixed blend of spices for a slurpingly good local pork ribs soup. Omnomnomnom
The produce section has a great variety as well, though the varieties don’t differ all that much from a large super or hypermarket found elsewhere.
All them hairy nuts.
The vegetables section are a little bit more interesting, though; the above shows just one of the many eggplant varieties for sale.
Lufpa, a plant I had never known of before.
Two varieties of preserved duck eggs, including the infamous century egg. I must admit, an amusing hobby of mine is simply to google videos or articles of people attempting the dreaded foods of the Orient, such as century eggs, durians, bittergourd and the like. I don’t claim to like all of them, but as I pretty much grew up eating these, it’s quite funny to watch or imagine people gagging when they taste the strong flavours for the first time. More often than not, it’s simply because they try these things as foods in isolation instead of as ingredients cooked in dishes as they were meant to be.
Yes, Mustafa also stocks fresh food like other markets! In Singapore, where most supermarkets stock pre-cut fillets or ground meat and most wet markets close by 10 in the morning, Mustafa is often the only place where one can find fresh meat in wee hours of the day. And there’s plenty of it to choose from, to, with an extensive meat section…
To a pretty extensive seafood section.
If you are looking for fresher fare, fear not! Locals generally prefer to cook fresh, whole fish, and the pre-cut fillets are mostly for time strapped cooks wishing to save some time and effort. The fishmongers on hand are always willing to scale and gut the fish, and cut them up for you if you wish.
Yes, these fish come from the tanks as seen on the left of the photo. That’s how we know they were alive and kicking just a few hours before.
Sri-Lankan crabs, the star of many of our island’s iconic dishes.
Yep, it’s really easy to find something that makes one take a second look, like these frozen sheep brains I chanced upon in a freezer.
As one of the more famous malls in Singapore, Mustafa stands out for having a bewildering array of goods yet having a completely unpretentious atmosphere. It’s one of the few places where you can spy aunties and uncles, arms laden with meat and fish, peering at expensive jewellery at a counter. It’s also an incredible place to simply spent time; I can personally while away a good part of my day just walking and looking around in the supermarket section. If you have a chance to come to Singapore, do drop by and take a look! It’s definitely a different experience from the glitzy strip malls lining Orchard Road and the new Integrated Resorts.
The Lard Bard 