How do you eat toast?
In England you eat toast and coarse cut marmalade for breakfast.
In restaurants and grand hotels worldwide you receive toast and pate as an appetizer.
Toast with goats' cheese and tomato jam. Flickr and Wikipedia.
In Singapore restaurants specialise in toast and kaya jam.
How should you practise eating Kaya toast in Singapore? you can try it at Changi airport and all over singapore, especially in shopping malls.
A Singaporean friend of mine discussed the way local people eat kaya toast. Kaya is a delicious sweet, over calorific jam, a blend of eggs and coconut, which looks like lemon curd.
You might be served Kaya Toast like an open top sandwich or like a sandwich. The sandwich may be made with thin toast.
My friend wrote an email to me:
1 "For locals, the most common method they use to eat toasts is first spreading the butter or Kaya jam on the whole piece of toast, and then using their hands to pick the whole piece of toast up, and taking a bite. Then they'd put the rest of the toast down in between the bites, with the half-circle bite mark clearly imprinted on the toast, sometimes dripping with saliva.
2 "A small number of people would spread the butter or jam on the whole piece of toast, and then cut the toast into small rectangles, using a knife and a fork. Then they'd pick up a rectangle & put it into their mouth, using either their fork, or their fingers.
3 "Another way is to first cut the toast into rectangles, then pick up a rectangle using fingers, and spread some butter or jam on that rectangle, before eating it."
***
1 My view is that the first method, biting a big piece, clearly upsets some bystanders. Do this at home with family, if nobody else minds. But be sure not to carry the habit over to the restaurant.
2 Method 2 is quicker, acceptable, and is more likely to ensure you eat hot toast. Cold toast with kaya is just not the same. Cutting all your food up before transferring the fork is the American way.
3 is a nuisance. You keep taking your eyes of the person you are talking to in order to cut up your toast.
This method is traditionally recommended by the British and French experts when eating cold food at formal dinners. (However, the French lay emphasis on eating your hot food whilst it is hot.)
So I recommend method 2. However, if I were alone in a restaurant, I would adopt method 1 for maximum hot toast before it gets cold. Naturally I would hold up a newspaper or book to hide my teeth marks from the establishment owner. However the owner would say nothing because he or she wants my custom or money. I would also need to hide from video cameras which might reveal the inelegance to the world.
Where To Eat Kaya Toast
Ya Kun
Toastbox
Changi Airport Terminals
Handy Websites
singaporeair.com
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author. Please share links to your favourite posts.
