FEW doctors are known to be obsessed with hawker food. But Dr Leslie Tay, 38, is so enamoured with Singapore's street food that he started a food blog last August to recommend the best stalls around.
He has listed more than 300 stalls and restaurants so far, and his reviews are written with enthusiasm, humour and peppered with nutritional information.
Dr Tay, a general practitioner whose clinic is in Tampines Central Community Complex, goes food-tasting twice a week with two different groups of foodies.
Charming and affable, he has even persuaded stall vendors to create special items, which they've put on their regular menus.
Among them are the ieat Super Burger (with 200g sirloin beef pattie, cheese, bacon rashers, barbecue sauce and fried onions) at Astons steak house in East Coast Road, and the Godzilla Da Pao (a huge pork bun the size of your brain) in Elias Mall in Pasir Ris.
Dr Tay is married and has two children, aged seven and four.
Tell us one thing you ate that will banish you to the Medical Hall of Shame.
I was recently crazy enough to order four double-dough roti pratas (two doughs to make a big prata) in a row from different shops in Simpang Bedok to find out which was the best. I asked them to use pure ghee, too. The best was from New Hawa, which was crispy and fluffy.
How do you balance out your daily diet with all these tastings?
I usually eat one main meal a day in the afternoons. I have cereal or something light in the mornings, and no dinner.
When I get home from work at 10pm, I have a fruit salad and maybe a sandwich with grilled vegetables. I try not to have any meat at night to cut down on my total cholesterol intake.
I have a theory on calorie conservation. When there's nothing spectacular to eat, I save calories by eating very little or healthily.
Then I have calories saved up for that wagyu steak on the weekend.
If a plate of char kway teow is mediocre, I'd rather not eat it, and save the calories for a shiok meal instead.
Hence, my blog's motto: "Never waste your calories on yucky food".
In your opinion, which Singapore hawker dish is the healthiest?
Fish soup. But only some hawkers use just fish bones to boil the soup - which is healthier - while others use both pork and fish. Also, some add a lot of MSG, while others don't. So it's not just a matter of what food, but which hawker.
And the most unhealthy?
The high cholesterol stuff like ter kah (pig's trotters) and soup tulang (mutton bone marrow soup). No matter which hawker sells it, it's sinful. And if it's not sinful, it will surely not taste good.
Share an amazing hawker stall or restaurant that you recently discovered.
Wah Kee Prawn Noodles in Cambridge Road food centre. It has a particular flavour that is not found in other stalls, and I realised it's actually the same one you get in lobster bisque - the flavour that comes from frying crustacean shell and tomally (lobster liver).
Which Singapore dish is the most underrated, and most overrated?
Overrated is easy: chilli crab. Okay, it's good, but I could very well have the gravy and man tou (buns) without the crab, and it tastes just as good.
Most underrated is Hokkien mee. It's unique to Singapore, yet we take it for granted. Every time I come home from abroad, this is my first dish.
What do you forbid your kids to eat?
Sweets, chocolates and canned drinks. They're bad for the teeth, and the sugar makes them fat.
What ingredient, if it suddenly disappears from the face of the earth, would severely affect your life?
Eggs. During the recent bird flu epidemic, I realised I really missed eggs. All I wanted was a simple sunny-side-up.
What would your last meal be?
"Who cares about the last meal? There is a heavenly banquet prepared for me on the other side which would make all the Matsuzaka beef on this earth taste like bad vegetarian bee hoon."
