Foreign Grocery Friday: The Kaya Toast of Singapore

February 3, 2012 at 5:07 PM | by JetSetCD | Comments (0)

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're trying out this new feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? Let us know!

It can be tempting while traveling, especially for more than a week or two, to revert back to ordering the comfort foods with which you grew up. This maybe means eggs and bacon for breakfast or something similarly boring. Of course we urge you to overcome the temptation and, instead, take even more to the local menus. In Singapore, this means Kaya Toast for breakfast.

Kaya jam, which can be bought in jars in the grocery store, is a mix of eggs, sugar, coconut milk and pandan leaf. It's spread between two thin, toasted piece of bread and cut to neat rectangles. Adding butter is optional, depending on how decadent you feel.

Yes, it's green, but once you get over that and just bite in, you'll immediately forget the color for the flavor.

The taste: Perfect toast is so yummy that it quickly has our salivary glands going, just looking at it. Thus, it wasn't a big deal to go for our first bite. Kaya Toast is crunchy with the welcome texture of the smooth jam, and sweetly salty overall. Vegemite haters take heart, because this snack isn't anywhere as near an acquired taste. That said, vegemite lovers will probably love it as it a less intense, sweet alternative.

The price: The "homemade pandan kaya-butter toast" at Oriole Coffee Roasters is $3.50 SGD ($2.80 USD)

Where to find it: We had Kaya Toast three times during our two weeks in Singapore, and while it's most popularly ordered from mall bakeries like Toast Box and Ya Kun Kaya Toast, we loved the homemade Kaya Toast at the Oriole Coffee Roasters Chinatown branch, at 10 Jiak Chuan Road (near Neil Road).

If you'd like to share some of your foreign grocery finds, we'd love love love to see them. Send 'em on over via email here and snack on, my friends.

Disclosure: Airfare to Singapore and some accommodations were as a guest of Singapore Airlines, though all photos and opinions (and cool discoveries like this one) are completely our own.

[Photos: Jaunted]

Jaunted

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