The Magnificent Makan Mania

Rafee’s Corner in the Amoy Street Food Centre serves up a refreshing teh tarik, with nothing short of an attention-grabbing demonstration of his long and highly accurate “pulls”.

Then it became a little more obvious why we were treated to the show – it was a challenge. And almost immediately, I had automatically volunteered myself, not because I have always wanted to do this, both probably due to the fact that Wee Teck and Julian had reacted faster than I did and had already bolted a few steps back, leaving me to “save the team”.

And I am usually better at pulling legs than tea...

The tea definitely had a different characteristic – very smooth as it flowed down into my stomach, compared to most others served in coffee shops. Furthermore, it definitely will not be sending sweet-toothed customers craving for more sugar, nor will it cause the more conservative taste buds to shun it.

So after gulping down our teh "tariks", we were off again, sprinting back to the MINI.

We headed to Defu Lane next, and being caught in the Ubi area’s notoriously heavy and slow traffic did not do one bit to help calm our nerves as much as the tea had.

Of course, that did not slow us down as much as we had expected. Thanks to the car’s short length and its copious torque available even from lower revs, mimicking a few moves from The Italian Job saved us some precious time. Well, ok, we didn’t jump any stairs nor drive in drains, nor were there any helicopters chasing us.

The skies were greying as well and time was tight. All the better, we thought, with cheeky grins plastered on our faces.

With seven more stops of out ten to go, we certainly did not want to be halfway through “breakfast” at two in the afternoon.

This brings us to the end of part one. Keep your eyes peeled for part two, where we will reveal the actual places visited by the team, participants and of course, Seetoh!

Credits: Text by Andy Hum and Amery Reuben, Photos by Julian Lim, Andy Hum and Amery Reuben