Tingkat - When you've too small a kitchen to cook (Or are too lazy!)

It's a strange thing - newer flats usually means smaller kitchens. Go see the showflats for some of the recent developments... their 2-3 bedroom flats have kitchens that are made for.. well, for show really. They are not designed for proper Chinese (or Western) cooking, even though it might have the swankiest kitchen electrical items. But anyone who's cooked knows that...

1. You need space, lots of space, to prepare your ingredients.
2. You need a well-ventilated kitchen area when you're cooking Asian food, particularly chilli, spicy or dishes that uses a lot of strong herbs.
3. You don't want your neighbours cursing at you for making them hungry with the wafts of your excellent culinary dishes, or for stinking up their laundry with your twenty-spiced quadruple-cooked essence soup.
4. You need space to keep your ingredients and utensils.

Viz kitchens are small. They're meant for breakfast cereals, microwave meals, instant noodles, coffee making. They're not meant for cooking 8 course meals for guests, and I'm sure people here struggle to cook their dinners in the limited kitchen space (how many pack and store your kitchen items elsewhere?).

So design-wise, our kitchens are not cooking-friendly. Which gives us 3 choices:

1. Grin and bear it.. cook in that cramped space. Helps if you don't have to do the cooking (ie you have a live-in maid or a very obliging husband/wife!)
2. Eat out.. Some people just find it more convenient to eat at the numerous hawker centres or restaurants and then come home.
3. Tingkat!

Tingkat (I think) literally means 'tiered carrier'. It's a metal container comprising of multiple, stacked, round containers (usually about 3-4 levels) which is sealed at the top, and used to carry food around. In the old days, people would cook their food in the morning, and bring them to work in such tingkats.





Nowadays, it's a term used to mean "home-cooked food delivered to your door so you don't have to cook". Something like that.

It's not 'takeaway food' (eg pizza, KFC, McD), but rather, the tingkat services pride themselves in cooking food that would taste like they're home-cooked rather than 'cooked-in-a-big-pot-that-can-feed-the-entire-Queenstown-Remand-Prison-guests'. It's useful for busy people, for mothers-to-be (whose hubbies are out working), for lazy people (like, erm, us), for people who are sick of deciding daily where to eat for dinner (like, erm, us).

There's quite a few tingkat services in Singapore. They usually have the following characteristics:

• They deliver dinners at about 3-4pm, which means if you get back at about 7pm, you'll need to microwave the food just to heat them up.
• They do change their menus (usually) monthly, and you can try to request for certain dishes (eg no meat dishes etc).
  
• Some have a 'trial' period of say 10 days, when you can try their meals for 10 days and if you don't like it, try another service or return to whatever you were doing to feed yourselves.
• Some pride themselves as being 'msg-free' or they use 'less salt or oil' etc. The more upmarket ones will feature better or larger varieties, or more interesting selections.
• You can usually cancel the food for the day (eg you have a dinner date) but that usually requires a day's notice (ie you can't spring a sudden dinner date or you'll find a tingkat at your doorstep).
  
• You can order with or without rice, up to 4 dishes with or without soup etc. Costs about $5 per person ($10 per couple) to $15 per person for the more posh ones.
• Some will provide the food in the metal tingkat containers, which you then wash and leave outside the next day for them to collect. Others will heat-seal the food in plastic, disposable, containers.
  
• They have specific areas where they will serve.

The last point is a bit annoying for Viz Hollanders. When we decided upon going the tingkat route, we contacted all the tingkat services that were within the reasonable range (about $10-20 per couple). We found that (a) not a lot of them have heard of Viz Holland (b) many do not serve the Queensway area that we are at.

There's two tingkat services that can/do serve our estate - First Cuisine, and Four Seasons. We've tried both and preferred one over the other. Without biasing people, I'd suggest that you give it a go yourselves if you wish to do the tingkat thang.

So here's some links for you to try out:
http://www.fourseasonscatering.com.sg/
http://www.firstcuisine.com.sg/tingkat.asp
http://www.houseofcatering.com/tingkat.htm
http://www.kimskitchen.com.sg/tingkat.html
http://www.jessie.com.sg/
http://www.empirefood.com.sg/tingkat.htm
http://www.select.com.sg/tingkat.htm
http://www.neogarden.com.sg/
http://www.lexin.com.sg/tingkat.htm
http://www.tongchiang.com.sg/delivery.htm

As mentioned, Four Seasons and First Cuisine will cater to Viz Hollanders, while the rest either refused to, or were not contactable at the time we were looking for one. Worth asking them though, if you want to.

You can read other forums which have some recommendations.. there are largely in the motherhood forums like this one here, here, or a women's forum here.

If you find others that service Viz, please put it in the comments. We're always keen to try them out ourselves!

Tags: tingkat, viz@holland, viz holland, viz @ holland, queensway, singapore