If you have Food Network Asia on your cable TV, you would have watched the promo clips reminding people to catch Pat and Gina Neely’s fourth season of their show, Down Home with the Neelys. The Neelys are owners of Neely’s Bar-B-Que in the United States. They are known as the King and Queen of BBQ of Memphis, Tennessee.
If you think Gina’s a bit loud and funny on air, she is in person too! Pat is more controlled just like on TV. MissTamChiak and I got to meet them and their team in person recently. It was a bit daunting when we were asked if we would eat with them. We were to bring the BBQ King and Queen to try local BBQ in Singapore.
I guess MissTamChiak and I did quite all right. We met them at Singapore’s most famous Hawker Centre with tourist worldwide, Newton Circus Hawker Centre. Here is a picture of them enjoying BBQ Skewered Meat – Satay!
We walked them around the food centre showing them what food’s around. They were quite amazed at the different kinds of food in we can get here and also the food that we usually eat. Gina’s a funny girl, she squeaked in her high pitch voice when she saw the long tail of huge stingray when we showed it to her as we passed one stall having it on display.
One of Singapore’s most loved BBQ Food. BBQ Chicken Wings.
BBQ over charcoal (for most stalls), these marinated wings having an intense heat therapy over hot charcoal produces one of the most delicious food around. Gina who was sitting opposite me agrees!
She loves the spicy lime-chilli sauce that goes with it. This girl can take the Singapore heat as well the heat from chillis!
The BBQ King and Queen loves our BBQ Chicken Wings!
We also ordered a variety of Satays for them to try. Yup, putting it in a language that they will understand, it’s BBQ pieces of marinated meat on bamboo skewers. What a mouthful, Satay is so much shorter!
It was a test of our skills trying to explain what’s in a dish! How do you explain Satay sauce? Peanut based sauce with chilli and tamarind juice. It’s good that I have seen mum prepare all these things before!
The BBQ King and Queen loves our Satay too!
MissTamChiak whose day job is a newspaper reporter have all sorts of facts about Singapore and other stuff food related. Do you know how many hawker centres are there in Singapore? MissTamChiak can just spits out all these facts when asked! *kowtow to her*
Pat and Gina and her team was game to try everything that was ordered. The ugly looking stingray was grilled over banana leaves and it was so soft and tender. Pat says banana leaves are a great idea. Who knows, they might be using banana leaves in their BBQ in future?
Pat seems to like the Hokkien Mee! Laksa was also all right with him. He ordered the famous Singapore Beer, Tiger Beer!
Gina did not like our sugar cane juice. She found it too sweet for her. From just a meal, you can tell that Gina does not like things too sweet. She had some Rojak and found it too sweet too. It was interesting how we see and describe things differently. We described rojak as a fruit salad with dough fritters mixed in prawn paste sauce. Gina described it as fruit with molasses. Interesting eh?
Enough of our stories. We found out quite a bit about them too. Interesting things that happen behind the TV shows. That’s for us to know. 😉
Want to know more about them and watch them cook on TV? Catch “Down Home with the Neelys Season 4” on StarHub SD Channel 433 and HD Channel 468.
You can click on FoodNetworkAsia website to find out more about them and the schedule of their show.