Biased thoughts on food in Singapore

Hmm, basically I have just recently changed my mind regarding the food here in Singapore.
As a person from Medan, a city in Indonesia, I have always mentioned that the food here in Singapore sucks big time. I have always said that "Okay, for variety, Singapore indeed has a lot of various types of foods; But for quality, food from Medan tastes nicer"
So when I say this, we would share the topic on food from the other cities that my Indonesian friends are from. And they always agreed that food from Indo is always nicer than food in Singapore.

Now, I have put more thoughts on it and I start to think that the food are nicer in our minds simply because some of them are indeed delicious and very unique only to certain places of our home country.
Like "Ak bihun" (Uhk-bee-hoon) which literally means duck beehoon(some sort of rice made noodle), it's nothing like noodle with roasted duck on top of it, like the ones in Singapore. Instead they use duck essence soup plus fried garlic for the soup and for the duck itself it's almost boiled duck but the taste of the duck is still maintained inside the flesh.
As I know, native only to Medan. I asked my friends who are from Penang (which is very similar to Medan, hokkianese, their food style, etc.), they don't have such dish there either.
So again, if I were to compare, and if my basis is duck noodle, my comparison would be pro-my hometown.

But now, I must say that each countries has their own unique food and we can't just generalize that Singapore food is not nice compared with Indon food or other countries.
Maybe the places that we always hang out for food are not that good and in fact we spend most of our time only around university.
Or Maybe we have the mindset of not to spend too much money on food, so you don't really know that in Singapore good food sometimes are expensive.
For the first time in my life, I've just tried turtle soup from a small restaurant called turtle house: www.liveturtle.com and it was quite nice, though I must say that it's not as cheap as school canteens. Don't tell me that turtle is protected or whatever, blame the restaurant not the consumer (:p) , but the flesh was soft and tender and the soup was incredibly good. I don't think I can find such shop here by myself in Singapore if my auntie hasn't taken me there.

Another good one was the bak gut teh (pork ribs tea) is like soup with pork ribs and garlic and normally accompanied by some small snacks like the you tiao, or some really nicely stirred veggies. When I went to see my parents few months ago when they came here, where they stayed at Quality hotel around bugis or orchard, I remembered that we walked around and saw this very long queue at Balesteir (or however you spell it) road. We were eager to know what was the small land house doing there, and we soon found out that that's a bak kut teh house.
We joined the queue and had some bak kut the, and it was fabulous! Like an exclusive taste with very nice smell. The meat, soup everything was perfect.

One funny thing about Singapore is that when some restaurants are super famous already, you'll know it very well after you go there because they'll show off the picture of the boss with lots of local actor or actress or even sometimes from Hongkong, Taiwan, etc. And they would display it so that you can see them, and you'll know that this eating place is not bad.

I bet there are lots more of tasty food that we haven't encountered yet in Singapore, like the spicy sauce cooked srilangkan crab, toad/frog porridge, etc etc.
Fish n co. is not in Medan too; Carls Jr.; and other tasty junk food (:p)

So, i don't think that Singapore's food are not nice at all compared with the food from Medan. We just have to know where to eat. hahaha