Travel with Angela Lansbury: Tradition and modern architecture and food in Desker Road

Walking against the traffic from Farrer Park MRT (underground railway station), with your back to City Square Mall, walk left, after Syed Alwi road you reach famous of infamous Desker Road.

The corner of the road has an eye-catching mural.

Traditional Singapore Shophouses

Further along are some wonderfully preserved and painted up old shophouses, the old style of a ground floor shop with living accommodation above and behind. (Although high streets in the UK often have accommodation above high street shops, usually the entire block is build in a certain style, such as art deco. But in Singapore each separate number has a frontage looks like one two-storey or three-storey town house, with a shop on the ground floor and matching colours and decoration on the accommodation above. It is a house. (Like some in central London and the Bank area) Not a shop with a flat above, which you find in UK suburbs.

About two thirds of the way along the street, just beyond number 100, are two very eating different premises facing each other.

Martial Hub Cafe, Desker Road, Singapore, with lion dance costumes and drums.

Modern Martial Hub Cafe

At number Martial Hub Cafe 107 is ultra modern. White walls. Red lion dance costume hang overhead. If you are lucky, or unlucky, you might see a lion dance with lots of noisy drumming and clashing of cymbals. You can try out the drums and lion dance costumes.

With lion dances. A popular venue for a couple of Toastmasters International groups.

Food and Drink

Offers tea and coffee for about 7 dollars sing. A plate of potato fries with a little cheesey sauce was shared by two or three of us.

The lion dance in the background was a bit challenging as several of us were reading from the book Grief and Us for a book launchl Who would imagine that so many authors, smartly dressed and happy to meet other authors,were people who had suffered bereavements or severe setback. Merry widows, sharing their secrets of recovery. We started with a lady whose solace was music. I chose not to read from the chapter which I wrote - leaving that for the buyers to enjoy reading. I spoke about how suicide an be prevented, which is my latest topic for apseeces at Toastmasters International.

Afterwards, five of us popped across the road, literally, to the Biriani restaurant.

Islamic Restaurant

We had mutton biriani. I chose a stuffed bread. In the UK i like stuffed paratha with a coconut or almond stuffing. Here I was offered a naan bread with fruit. The fruit was dried peel, not to my liking.

The rose badung, a pink drink, a long drink with ice, provided the liquid I needed. I like to try new things.

This time suki cake. It is semolina. It was dry and gritty. No flavour. Not lemon nor syrup. Hm, Maybe I would get to like it, or would like it with coffee. It could be an acquired taste. I might acquire a taste for it one day.

I had to try suji cake, semolina cake. Recipes say it is made from yogurt and semolina flour. A quick cake. It can also be spelled Sooji.

The main joy of the place was the red decor.

The window table gave me a backdrop of red curtains.