Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Seeing as the most Turkish thing I had ever eaten was Turkish Delight, I was quite looking forward to eating at the aforementioned restaurant.

Sitting down to read the menu, my stereotypes were smashed as I found neither Turkish Delight or turkey to be available for consumption. Opting for a harmless-sounding kebab and rice, we watched the sole chef spasm his way round the tiny kitchen, preparing food for an entire restaurant full of Saturday-night punters. Whilst waiting for the food, the Sheesha’s arrived, and the fun began.

A Sheesha is a Turkish smoking apparatus. Looking like an elaborate bong, tobacco resin blocks are placed on the top and smoke is drawn through the entire length of the contraption as you breathe in. Somewhere along this is a receptacle containing a fruit-scented syrup. Thus, the resulting smoke smells and tastes not unlike something that is extremely pleasant. An entirely different experience to cigarettes, which do just taste of burning plant matter.

The Sheesha’s produced smoke in abundance - much more so than their smaller cigarette or cigar brethren, thus meaning one can indulge in such games as “look at me, I’m a train!” and “rah, Im a dragon”.

Now, I don’t know whether it was the food, the novelty of a new experience, or the tiny amount of hallucinogen gained from the inhalation of the no-doubt synthetic fruit-flavouring, but this restaurant was one of the best places I’ve eaten in Singapore. And to those who have never visited Singapore, that is a bold statement as the Singaporeans’ love for food can surely only be matched by their entrepreneurs’ passion for opening up new restaurants every single day. The food was cheap, generous and of very good quality, the ambience suitably quirky (everyone puffing away on these big cumbersome things) and you would want to hug the old Malay lady waitress for being so goddamn polite.

Apple-flavoured smoke rocks my world.

Next entry - the hotel of doom.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 13th, 2003 at 3:51 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.