“Jam-packed between the carefully feng shui’d architecture, skyscrapers, and office blocks, are rich, deep, very old, and deliciously funky remnants of the old world. Chinese, Indian, Malay. And a culture that still cherishes the joys of a simple, good thing.” — Tony Bourdain on Singapore, back in the day. Maybe, just maybe, Singapore has some lessons for us today.
“Spotless. Efficient. Safe. Protected. Controlled.” It’s hard — impossible, even — to revisit Tony Bourdain’s 10th season-opener of Parts Unknown, with its focus on the booming city-state of Singapore, and not be struck today — in April, 2025 — by the conversation that underpins the entire program: Namely, if you could give up privacy, personal freedoms and a free press for a system of government that promises peace, prosperity, good schools, decent housing for everyone, a booming economy, some of the most astounding architecture on the planet, a benevolent if authoritarian form of government, and good food, would you?
Bourdain’s answer in September 2017, when Singapore first aired on CNN, was a definitive no — “not for me.”
But.
In that ever curious, all encompassing way of his, his roving eye and his attention for social detail that marked his finest hours in TV program-making, Bourdain paints a compelling picture of a utopian city-state — “just 227 square miles, a little more than half the size of LA … run like a multinational company,” where street crime is unheard of, people seem happy — outwardly, anyway — and dissatisfaction is just a Rolling Stones song. Basically, Singapore works, both in theory and in practice. “Disneyland with the death penalty,” Bourdain quips at one point, and in that inscrutable way of his, it’s hard to tell if he’s joking or reciting a simple statement of fact.
In his Field Notes for CNN at the time, Bourdain reminded us that Singapore is a remarkable city for food, food so varied and sumptuous — “delicious,” he says in the program, more than once — that it kept him coming back, time and time again.
On her Eat Like Bourdain website, food writer Valerie Stimac Bailey lists no fewer than 32 “places where Tony ate,” culled from four separate visits over his 15 years of world wanderings, beginning with A Cook’s Tour in 2002 and culminating, for what would be his last time, with Parts Unknown in 2017.
Think about that. Thirty-two places, spread over 15 years, all different, all in one city — the debut episode of The Layover, the fourth-season opener of No Reservations, the episode that kicked off Parts Unknown’s 10th season, everything and everywhere from the Imperial Herbal Restaurant overlooking the Singapore River (fish soup in ginseng broth, braised codfish and fresh lily bulb topped with rice fermented in white wine sauce) to Guan Hoe Soon in the Victoria Food Court, one of the longest-standing restaurants in Singapore, where he discusses the meaning of things with chef Damian D’Silva over a plate of ikan asam nana, a Laotian dish of sour fish curry and pineapple.
Only in Singapore, Bourdain noted at the time, does one find the singular, exquisite mix of Chinese, Indian, and Malay dubbed ‘indigenous fusion’ by local chefs. thornyOver several meals in homes and at hawker stalls, the conversation turns to Singapore’s government; here residents seem to have traded civil liberties for a booming economy. At one point in the program, Bourdain pauses and asks a thorny question: “I mean, is free speech overrated?”
If you’re a recovering journalist, as I am, that’s the kind of question inclined to prompt an existential crisis. Free speech is one of the basic underpinnings of social democracy, dating back to Ancient Greece, and who knows how much longer before then? Early humankind didn’t emerge from the caves just because Moonwatcher had it going on and the other cave dwellers left it up to him to do all the talking, and make all the decisions. Whoever held the tiki around the fire was given permission to say whatever he or she wanted, and the others were inclined to listen. The following morning, a free press told everyone else what was said and decided in that get-together.
Singapore has its contradictions, which in Bourdain’s mind made it that much more fascinating. Enigmatic. Interesting.
Here he is, on those very contradictions:
“For a state in which an ounce of weed can put you in the jug for up to 10 years and the same weight of dope can mean death, where chewing gum is indeed illegal, a surprising number of vices are allowed here. Drinking age is 18. Prostitution is legal, with sex workers getting regular medical checkups. There are casinos and strip clubs. The government seems to understand that, along with a certain amount of repression, safety valves are required. Get drunk, get laid, and you are less likely to be difficult. Perhaps that’s the thinking. Or maybe it’s just business.”
Bourdain had no idea how prescient he was being when, in the summer of 2017, just six months after a new president swore the oath of office in on the Washington Mall in the US, he talked about the rise of populism throughout Western democracies, and how antithetical to Singapore’s ideal of globalism populism is. To wit:
• “To many, Singapore is the land of opportunity. People come here from all over the world to get a good job, to find a better life.”
• “Singapore has fully embraced globalization, and that’s proved, in their case, very rewarding.”
• “By some measures, Singapore is a welfare state, taking care of the less fortunate. But at its heart, it’s a cold-blooded meritocracy. You follow the rules—and there are many—work hard, and you’ll have a good life. That’s the message.”
• “Unlike most of the wealthy, developed world, there’s universal health care and little to no homelessness.”
• “By ensuring that its citizens are safe, housed, healthy, and for the most part economically successful, the Singaporean government has been effective at keeping the masses placated enough—willing to accept curbs on their freedoms and civil liberties.”
But don’t overlook the food. Never underestimate the importance of the food.
Bourdain: “It’s funny. I recognize every place here by the food.”
“I come here mostly to eat, because that’s what they do here. And they arguably do it better—with more diverse, affordable food options per square foot than just about anywhere on Earth.”
And much of that food is delicious, like the man said.
In the hands of episode producer-director Erik Osterholm, who worked on some of Parts Unknown’s most distinctive outings — Morocco, Congo, Bahia Brazil, Punjab India, Paraguay, Iran, Hawaii, New Mexico, Senegal, Antarctica; that’s quite the mix tape — Bourdain’s voice seeps into the subconscious and mind’s eye alike.
All Parts Unknown episodes have a distinctive voice and style — there’s not a single dud in the entire bunch — but Osterholm’s eye is particularly unique, it seems to me. His episodes are both gorgeous to look at and to listen to — man, that background music, when you think of the crap that passes for background music in most docuseries (hello, Netflix, that means you), the background music in so much of Parts Unknown is wow, just, wow — and you can’t help but come away from them thinking. That’s very unusual for TV these days, let alone a food and travel show.
One can never go far wrong, when talking about Parts Unknown, to end with Bourdain in his own words. Osterholm knew this. Tom Vitale knew this. And, lord knows, Bourdain knew it.
“One could be forgiven for thinking it’s a giant, ultramodern shopping mall. An interconnected, fully wired, air-conditioned nanny state. Where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. And those things are … kind of true, especially if you read the papers or the carefully monitored internet. You look around the litter-less streets, where everything seems to work just fine, and you think — or you could be forgiven for thinking — ‘Gee, maybe a one-party system is just what we need.’ You look at all the social problems and ethnic strife, street crime, drugs that Singapore has managed to avoid and you could think, ‘Is this the life we want?’ It ain’t my system, it’s not the world I want, but damn — it has its appeal.”
Cue the spring of 2025.
Supplementary reading:
https://explorepartsunknown.com/singapore/bourdains-field-notes-singapore/
https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-singapore/
https://www.jimhamill.com/anthony-bourdain-singapore.html
https://explorepartsunknown.com/singapore/recipe-pork-satay-with-pineapple-sauce/
Supplementary viewing:
CNN