A few people have asked me over the last week or so what happened to The Month of Eating Dangerously. Did I finish it? Did I find black chicken, geoduck, frogs? Did I manage to swallow a single morsel of chicken foot/sheep stomach/pig intestine/stinking tofu? And did the mysterious dessert shop ever re-open??!!
Well. Having had my ass soundly kicked by sheep's stomach soup, I spent much of the last weekend of September girding my psychological loins to get myself back into the Chinatown Complex and really man up for the final three days of the month. My will was set, steely. Eye of the Tiger was playing in my head. I was going to eat some really, really disgusting stuff. Or at least try to eat it, gag a bit, cry a bit, try again. It was only three days. I could eat again in October.
So at noon on the last Monday of September I marched purposefully to my fate... only to find that the food court was shut. Not just the dessert stall: the whole bloody place. Utterly, shutly, shut - to the extent that there was what looked like police tape stretched across the foot of the escalators. I thought for a moment that maybe someone in power had tried the sheep's intestine, but then noticed a huge sign proclaiming "CLOSED FOR CLEANING". The thought that I probably should have waited for the (annual?! *gulp*) spring clean before I started this project briefly crossed my mind, before being swept aside by the realisation that I could now quite legitimately eat a burger. Which I then did. And that burger took away in one fell swoop all the resolve I had spent the weekend - in fact the whole of the previous month - building up. And (*hides head in shame*) I never went back.
So there remain a few items on the list that I never managed to find, let alone eat, and I am - honestly! - still intending to hunt them down at some point. I have an accomplice lined up for a frog porridge dinner, there's a place near my office that does geoduck (and thankfully doesn't limit itself to cleaning only once a year), and I can get black chicken in the supermarket. But in the meantime, there are a few valuable life lessons that I have learned from my experiences at the Chinatown Complex, which I will share with you:
(1) Do not base your decision where to eat on the length of the queue waiting to be served. If anything, the size of a queue in a hawker centre is in inverse proportion to the edibility of the product on offer at the end of it. See day 11, Mystery Queue Roulette (AKA tofu-gate).
(2) Just because something looks revolting, doesn't mean that it is. Century eggs are conceptually and visually about as repulsive as it's possible to get but actually strangely delicious. An open mind can mean a full stomach.
(3) Notwithstanding (2) above, chicken feet are not meant to be eaten.
(4) Ditto sheep stomach.
(5) There isn't any carrot in carrot cake. Nor is it a cake. It's one of life's great unsolved mysteries why they insist on calling it that. And (see (2) above), the disgusting-looking black version (think regurgitated cat food) is delicious, while the other one (well it doesn't look delicious, it kind of looks like waterlogged carpet tiles) tastes... well, like I imagine waterlogged carpet tiles would taste, actually.
(6) If you are going off piste, always, always accept the offer of rice. You will not regret it: it may be the only thing on your lunch tray capable of being eaten.
(7) There are 27 different types of durian. Twenty-seven!!! Most of these aren't even a 'gift' from nature, but are genetically engineered hybrids with romantic names like D24, D13, and the most appropriately named D101, which just goes to show that there really is no limit to the cruelty of human invention.
(8) Desserts in Asia contravene fundamental trading standards laws. And also human rights laws. Maybe the dessert shop man was on the run from Amnesty International? It's not beyond the realms of possibility.
(9) Sugar cane juice is manna from heaven for the chronically hungover. Pig knuckle tea is not.
(10) If you are asked in a hawker centre whether you want chilli, just say no. They will put it in anyway, but maybe, just maybe, if you are very lucky, it won't be enough to administer third degree burns to your oesophagus.
So, that's it, folks. In due course, when I've got over the trauma of this experience (I still can't walk past a food court without fear gnawing in the pit of my stomach), I will wrap up the last items on the Top 10 of Doom, but for the time being, I'm back on the salads and steering clear of mystery meat, pongy fruit, eyeballs, tofu of all shapes, sizes, and consistencies, and anything else that looks even tangentially like it belongs in a bushtucker trial on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!
Meanwhile, though, another question I've been asked is "what's next?". It seems that some of you fear a void in your online lives, now that the challenge is over and you no longer have my tales of gastronomic punishment to titillate you over your toast and marmite on a Monday morning. To you I say first and foremost, thanks for reading and all, it's really lovely to know someone out there is listening... but you are all, with the best will in the world, sadistic bastards. Secondly, in all honesty the challenge has been a fun, educational, enlightening, and eye-opening experience, and a big part of that has been your participation. I won't say that knowing you have been with me, from Singapore to London to Portugal to Hong Kong to Manila to Switzerland to the USA, has made it easier to swallow the nasties (for some of them, literally nothing would make that possible), but it has definitely made it more fun. And with that in mind, I guess I will have to don my thinking cap to try and come up with a new challenge - ideally one that doesn't involve eating feet.
So, watch this space... and of course, if you have any ideas for a follow-up challenge - at all times subject, of course, to the aforementioned foot disclaimer - do let me know. In the meantime, I'm off for another burger. Bon appetit!
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