Goodbye Singha :(

Singha is this Thai restaurant along Clark street and yes, it’s now closed. They lost their lease to the location and now it’s an empty space and the two statues up front are now gone.

I know I’ll only get two reactions from the statements above. Either you’ll be completely nonchalant or like me, you’ll go through the 5 stages of grief:

Denial: "Nooooo! They can't close Singha!"

Anger: "P*%#$@na nila! Bakit nila sinara Singha?!"

Bargaining: "Maybe it moved! Maybe they just changed the name to something more appealing to Pinoys!"

Depression: You start sharing Singha stories with friends like your favorite dish or who you ate there with.

Acceptance: "Hooters!"

So what's the big deal about a Thai restaurant closing down? For one thing, it's located on the same block where a magical building called "The Sterling apartments" was located. Click here if you want to view it in Google Maps. Back in the good old days, everyone sent onshore from Chicago to Manila by my previous IT company were set to live in Sterling for a couple of months. Since Singha was literally a few steps away from the apartment, it was the place we most frequently ate out at. In the winter when the temperature drops to -20c, if you go out, you'll end up frozen once you walk past Singha so you might as well eat there. Convenience is just one reason though.

Price. Compared to other restos in Chicago, Singha is cheap. If you factor in how frequent you eat out (or how lazy you are to cook), you'll have no idea how important this is.

Rice. Being Pinoys, we can't live on burgers, fries, pasta and sandwiches. We need to eat rice at least once a day (or else you get weird cravings like microwave mac and cheese).

Plastic containers. If you order take out from Singha, they place it in these sealable and reusable plastic containers and if you were like me, you have one cabinet almost dedicated to a big stack of singha containers. These are extremely useful for storing leftovers, coins and other stuff plus, they come with the food and anything free is good.

Food. Of course it wouldn't be special if the food didn't taste good right? My personal favorite is the pad see ew which is Thai flat noodles with Chinese broccoli and beef cooked in a dark soy sauce. The 2 dishes in a close second are crab rangoon which is deep fried wonton stuffed with cream cheese (yeah, as if you'll ever taste the crab there) and the basil chicken which I've been trying to cook in Manila. There's also the beef fried rice and the tom yum soup but we rarely order them.

Memories. I've eaten here with my closest friends during my onshore assignments. I've ordered take out here alone. I've eaten here to celebrate a recent milestone. I've eaten here to console myself. I've eaten here when I'm bored. We've eaten Singha for lunch especially when you wake up really late on weekends you have absolutely no desire to cook and wash dishes. We've eaten it for dinner especially when you've used up much of your cash and you want to eat something decent for less than 10 bucks. We've eaten it for lunch since it's just nice to wake up munching on a piece of crab rangoon. Jaye and I have eaten here when we were still friends.

(deep sigh)

I do have good news though. All is not completely lost. If we go back to the 5 stages of grief earlier, it turns out the third one (bargaining) is true. The same person who owns Singha also owns the "Star of Siam" which is just 2 blocks away from Jewel. For my birthday, I asked Jaye to have dinner there so we can check it out. I think you already know what we ordered.

Is it the same? Close. Pad see ew is almost identical. The basil chicken is still close but the spices are a little stronger this time. The beef fried rice is the same. The crab rangoon is a little disappointing though since when you try to slice it with the side of a fork, it flattens like a burst balloon and you find a very small amount of cheese inside. Now you're left with just a flat dumpling on a pile of white goo.

Eating at the Star of Siam is like using your friend's laptop. The keyboards are the same, the screen is the same, the applications are the same but there's a great deal of unfamiliarity and you can't stop thinking about your own laptop. Eventhough the food's the same and they even have the same weird enclosed seats, I guess nothing can still replace the original thing.

I miss Singha.

(Sigh)