A Little Taste of Singapore in Toronto

I first heard about how amazing the food scene was in Singapore from watching an episode of Layover with Anthony Bourdain. The sites, sounds and how seriously they took food there really caught my attention. I immediately added Singapore to our bucket list of places we must visit! Fast forward to November of 2018, we made that trip happen and all my wildest food dreams came true!

Singapore is a foodie heaven! The food is so multicultural you will never get bored of eating there. People in Singapore take food very seriously and often eat out for every meal as they live very busy lifestyles and don’t have time to cook! There are over 100 hawker centres throughout Singapore and so many different restaurants around that you can probably eat at a different place for every meal for a very long time!

chili crab

After travelling to Singapore and eating all the amazing food, I was sad to come home to no more hawker centres, no more $3 plates of food that is made with love and care! I was on a search to find something similar to the food that we had in Singapore and came across Lion City in Mississauga.

Front entrance of Lion City Restaurant in Mississauga

Lion City have been around for quite some time (over 20 years to be exact) but since I never searched for Singaporean food, I never came across it. The current owners, Greg and Elle took over the restaurant about a year ago and kept a lot of the same dishes but decided to add a few other favourites and classics to the menu to make it even better!

Greg and Elle lived in Singapore for many years before moving to Toronto due to a job transfer. Once they got to Toronto, they started missing the delicious foods of Singapore (who could blame them? I miss it even though I was there for only a week!!) With the couple missing the food so much from home and wondered why no one else was doing Singaporean food here in Toronto, they decided to share a piece of their country with their new home.  And thank goodness they did!

Even though I would love to go back to Singapore as soon as possible, I am not sure when I can make the trek back there, so I am very glad to have found Lion City to at least satisfy my Singaporean food cravings!

They have almost everything you can get from a Singapore hawker stand, including drinks like Milo Dinosaur, delicious Mee Goreng noodles to the famous Hainanese chicken rice.

I had to try all my favourite Singaporean dishes when I visited Lion City and let me tell you, everything was cooked with love and passion and it did not disappoint at all! Check out all the amazing eats!

Every single dish was so flavourful and if I closed my eyes, it really feels like I was back in Singapore enjoying some amazing food! If you have to try only one dish from Lion City, I would recommend Greg & Elle’s favourite dish, the Laksa! Laksa is a noodle dish swimming in a deliciously rich, spicy coconut broth. It has thick rice vermicelli, tofu puffs, fish cake, chicken, shrimp, cucumber, and laksa leaves. It is to die for!! But really any dish you order from Lion City is a winner! Don’t forget to wash down your meal with some teh which is a traditional pulled tea drink, the pulling of the tea (from pouring it from one vessel to another) brings down the temperature of the tea to the perfect drinking temperature and mixes the tea and condensed milk perfectly! Southeast Asian countries take their pulled tea seriously, they even have competition of tea pullers!

Lion City is located in Mississauga, but if you don’t venture into the suburbs too often, you are in luck! Lion City will be opening up a spot at the Stackt market in Toronto sometime in May of 2019!

If you have the chance to travel to Asia, make sure you add Singapore to the list of your places to visit. But in the meantime, if you don’t have any travel plans, check out Lion City in both Mississauga and Toronto to get a taste of the foodie capital of Asia in our backyard.

Have you been to Singapore before? What is your favourite dish there? Comment below!