The Singapore Travel: The Imperial Herbal Restaurant – part 2

By Isabella Tree

She continued prodding her finger at my menu. “Next you like black chicken for PMT or special Whip Soup for aphrodisiac?” By the time we had fought our humiliating way to the end of the list she had prescribed an additional course of deep-fried scorpions on prawn toast, “for the brain,” two portions of a bizarre potluck panacea called Buddha Jumps Over The Wall, and a dish of menthol jelly for desert. We managed to steer clear of her final recommendation for double boiled snow frog’s glands with rock sugar to, “improve functions of liver and kidney.”

As soon as her back was turned we ordered a couple of Tiger beers to settle our stomachs.

It is not only the medicinal aspect of food that is dished out with headmistressy insistence at the Imperial Herbal. The Chinese believe that whatever you eat has a direct effect on the body. To be in perfect health the internal ‘yin’ - the cool, contemplative forces - should be kept in equilibrium with the ‘yang’ - the more active, hot energies.

Every food has its own energy, so eating ‘cold’ foods like mussels, cucumber, snake and bean sprouts, has a calming effect on your macho hothead, while ‘hot’ foods like chocolate, beef, butter, onion and chillies can invigorate the wimp.

And some foods have a direct effect on different organs in the body. Egg yolk, for example, affects the heart, peppermint the lungs, wine the liver, salt the kidneys, and sugar the spleen. The small intestines are affected by spinach, the large intestines by pepper, the gall bladder by chicory, the bladder by watermelon, and the stomach by rice.

Every dish at the restaurant is a balanced combination of ingredients and each one should be chosen to complement the next. It’s a hypochondriac’s heaven and might have proved pleasantly diverting were any of it edible. For sheer disgustingness I rate only Fernet Branca and school cabbage higher.

Some of it was virtually impossible to put into your mouth without stomach-churning panic. The scorpion, for instance, flipped its tail up as I bit it and hit me on the nose.

Our waitress returned with gusto to see how we were doing. She was clearly disappointed to see our unfinished plates.“Eat your soup,” she commanded, fishing about in my bowl with a spoon. “See, here is nice lotus seed - make ginseng taste better. And sliced sea cucumber, and abalone - good for sex life.”

“Will it do anything for jet lag?” I asked queasily. “For jet-lag,” she said helpfully, “you need plenty sleep,” and bustled off to persecute the next table.