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Where Sultan Gate remembers royalty, there lies a feast that speaks to our plurality—Permata Singapore, jewel of appetite. Some places demand poetry, and Gedung Kuning is one of them. This remarkable building in Kampong Glam, now home to what many consider the best halal buffet in Singapore, represents something essential about our island story.​ I've lived through Singapore's transformation from sleepy port to glittering metropolis. Along the way, we've gained much and lost

In the long sweep of history, certain buildings bear witness to the great tides of human affairs. Gedung Kuning, the Yellow Mansion at Sultan Gate, is such a structure. Built in the 1840s as a residence for Tengku Mahmud, grandson of Sultan Hussein of Johor, it has weathered colonization, occupation, and the relentless march of modernity. Today, it houses Permata Singapore, where one discovers the best halal buffet in Singapore.​ I approached this establishment not as a casua

There's   something deliciously subversive about dining in a place that once housed Malay royalty. Gedung Kuning—the Yellow Mansion—stands at 73 Sultan Gate in the heart of Kampong Glam, a silent witness to Singapore's messy, complicated history. Today, it houses Permata Singapore, where the best halal buffet in Singapore unfolds across multiple stations, each one telling stories that textbooks conveniently forget.​ I arrived on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, the kind where

Hello, foodies and friends! Today, I'm on a mission. A mission to find the best Arab Street food. And when I say "best," I mean the kind of food that makes you want to do a little happy dance in your seat. The kind of food that makes you forget about your diet, your bills, and that embarrassing thing you said at the office party last week. (We've all been there, right? No? Just me? Okay, moving on.)   Now, Arab Street. What a place, eh? It's like a giant, open-air costume par

They say you can't eat history. But here, on Arab Street, they've certainly made a business of it. The air is thick with the ghosts of spices, the phantom scent of attar of roses, and the very real, very modern smell of money. It's a place of beautiful contradictions, this Kampong Glam. A place where you can buy a Persian rug and a bubble tea in the same breath. A place where the call to prayer is a backing track to the latest TikTok dance.   I walk down the street, past the

Another Tuesday, another ghost. This one, a phantom of my former self, haunts the five-foot-ways of Arab Street. He's younger, of course, and impossibly thin, clutching a well-worn copy of some obscure poet I no longer remember. He's searching for something, a feeling perhaps, a taste of something real in a world that feels increasingly like a faded photograph. I follow him, this ghost of me, past the textile shops with their bolts of silk shimmering like promises, past the p