But how much truth is there in that belief? Or are we just repeating the familiar?

About 10 years ago, I was in the small Chinese city of Chengde [1] . a few hours north of Beijing. After a day of sightseeing, I was famished. Asking for advice from the driver of the bus I was on, I was told that there was quarter in Chengde famed for its vast variety of food.

"You'll find dishes from North, South, East and West," he told me enthusiastically.

I was skeptical, but since I needed to eat, why not?

When I got there, I found streets and alleys full of Northern Chinese fare noodles, dumplings, hotpots and the like. Plus a few restaurants and streetside stalls advertising dishes from some other provinces south, east and west of Hebei. Non-Chinese food? Nowhere to be found.

But is Singapore any better? Does our much-vaunted variety in reality go no further than half a continent?

Walk into any foodcourt, whether downtown or in the suburbs of Singapore, and you'll find the same kinds of food being sold: probably 8 - 10 different kinds of Singapore Chinese rice and noodle dishes, with maybe a Japanese, a Korean and a Nasi Padang [2] stall. Even the dessert stall is virtually identical in all our foodcourts, selling shaved ice desserts and some sweet soups [3].

Occasionally an entrepreneur would start something exotic, perhaps Lebanese, Vietnamese and even Taiwanese, but they never last. Not even the Taiwanese, and you'd think Chinese Singaporeans shouldn't have any trouble taking to it, right? There is simply not enough food curiosity, let alone sustained demand, among Singaporeans to support such stalls.

Outside of the foodcourts, our affordable choices diminish rapidly. Like so many other cities today, we are confronted with depressing and unhealthy options like McDonalds, Burgerking, Pizza Hut and KFC. Most of them are patronised by schoolkids or large Malay families. I see visions of them acquiring the worst kind of taste preference, and all getting fat and sick.

In the mid-price range, there are more interesting choices: Western, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and of course Chinese. And if you're prepared to go a little out of the way, you'll have a choice of various 'seafood' places, such as Long Beach. They're really Chinese restaurants, just that they have a wider-than-usual selection of fresh seafood dishes. But they're also tacky, messy and noisy, yet the food isn't that good to make you forgive the complete disregard for ambiance.

Of course, if you're prepared to throw money, you'll find a number of specialty restaurants in Singapore, making up with price what they can't get from volume. These are the fancy fine dining establishments drawing inspiration from aristocratic Europe, imperial China or super-refined Japan. However, for the purposes of this essay, we should leave them out. A Great Global City isn't measured by what the richest 1% of the population can find, but by what at least the middle-classes, if not the masses, can enjoy.

I honestly don't think the food choices in Singapore are exceptionally wide. We seem to have no more, no less, than cities of equivalent size and income. Neither do I think the average Singaporean is adventurous with food, giving rise to a demand for steadily expanding boundaries.

Perhaps there was a time when our confluence of Southern Chinese (and not even Northern Chinese) cuisine, with South Indian and Malay, made our foodscape quite unique. But that was when other countries like Australia and Britain were a lot more insular and homogenous, and travelers from there might have been struck by the unusual flavours and combinations they found here.

But not anymore. Cities like London, Paris, Sydney and of course, New York are much more cosmopolitan than Singapore. They have communities of Afghans, Ukrainians, Peruvians, Ghanaians and Vietnamese. We haven't even begun to imagine such a mix (and we're likely to recoil in horror if we tried). Increasingly, Asian cities such as Shanghai, Tokyo and even Bangkok, are also becoming more variegated than us.

This is a factor because very often, ethnic cuisines require the presence of the respective immigrant communities in order to sustain them commercially and to keep them authentic. Frankly, compared to truly global cities, Singapore is not an ethnic or cultural melting pot. We are too insecure about our Chineseness to truly welcome people from around the world. We are too poor in opportunity to attract enough of them. Without a diversity of migrant communities, it is difficult to sustain a diversity of cuisines, especially at the budget and mid-price range.

To compound the problem, rents are expensive in Singapore. It's really difficult making a go of a restaurant unless you serve tried and tested food. Even if you want to start small and just take up a stall in a foodcourt, can you? The foodcourt operators have consolidated down to just a handful, which means the motivation to differentiate themselves is reduced, and economics dictates that every sublet stall must sell in volume. The operators want to maximise their rent and percentage-cut of sales. They have no interest in tenants selling unproven dishes, which explains why our foodcourts have become so indistinguishable, one from another.

Thus, even in something as ordinary as food, Singapore seems to lack both cultural and economic enablers to create a true cosmopolitan city. And if we have no curiosity, no creativity, no space to experiment and be different, we'll never be a Great Global City.

The fact is, food-wise, Singapore is very middle-of-the-road. The fiction is, we're a food paradise. The gap between the two is called self-delusion.

© Yawning Bread