Memoirs of wet markets and eels

Brian Kennett

Amateur Chef and Foodie Extraordinaire

Memoirs of China Town Wet Market and Eels

I would like to give you a series of interesting blogs about a recent trip to ChinaTown wet market here in Singapore. A second foray in to the use of video as a media thanks to my mates Spencer and Emily Campbell. Now this will be a series, and #1 of that series is ‘Memoirs of wet markets and eels‘. Yes the day before Pie n Mash with Mr C aka The Shamen – remember that one? An absolute cracker for me that one.

So this day, at 7am, I get collected from home and we’re off to ChinaTown wet market.

Now let me just explain a few things in advance of this and this blog series;

It was 7am;

I had been out the night before and was hungover;

In fact I think still a little tipsy;

This smelt in here guys;

Maybe not as much as my breath right about now; and

I am not a lover of fish as you already know.

So here I am arriving at this non-Mecca of mine. Emily my guide/translator stated; “We’re here Brian…” They say a picture paints a thousand words, well I think a video paints about 4,500,000 including quite a few swear ones to boot, ha ha. Dear me this was a bit of a shock to the system with 0700am beer breath and sore head. Also what you can’t see is the giggling camera man, hmmm thanks Spencer, and quite a few others mingling about laughing at the Angmo.

So apologies for the profanity on the videos, and baggy eyed photos – I wasn’t on top form shall we say. But I gave it my best, despite my guide/translator and camera man really putting me through it one by one, as you’ll see.

Memoirs of Wet Markets and eels — I love these little guys, NOT!!!

As I said Spencer was driver and camera man, and Emily was guide and translator.

Yours truly was guinea pig. I think you can see that from the picture above. Holy cow. These things were truly gross. It took a while to realise that you grab the head and hold gently or they just shoot out of your hands. So for the camera man I had to grab the three biggest I could find in the box, do some video and then do some posing. Cheers “camera man”…

This is where we went. Fish Wong. I agree with this sign so much. Fish Wong, well they’re certainly not Right (Sorry). Actually really really nice people that got involved with us three having a giggle and filming and all that. I was trained by the best. And here she is with me harvesting the three I needed for the liquor and jellied eels. Spencer were you proud of me mate?

Last time I looked like this I was barfing down the big white porcelain telephone. To be honest right at that moment I was not far from it. Man these were really quite nasty things. Want to see more clearly what I am kneeling down and staring at? Are you sure, are you really sure. Again to the film Jaws; “I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat!!”

Oh boy – come on Kennett, you are The Semi-Naked Chef, you can do this. All you have to do is reach in and grab one, that’s it. Have some backbone – funnily enough unlike the eels do. So completely reliant on the lady behind the jump I did succeed. We got our 3. I am now The Semi-Naked Chef aka The Eel Whisperer. As you can see!!!

I reckon now I have done this I can do most anything.

Oh yeah baby, revenge is indeed sweet. That’ll teach you to mess with The Semi-Naked Chef. Well basically, not me, but the guy behind the counter that hacked them up for me. Here they are, I think a kilo of freshly butchered eels. Luckily it’s not gory or anything like that hey. Yeah all good clean fun here at ChinaTown wet market and Memoirs of wet markets and eels.

You know what these poor ‘little’ blighters now need?