Por Kee Eating House (波记海鲜)
69 Seng Poh Lane
Tel: +65 6221 0582
I have been on a real tze char kick lately – I honestly believe it is the true test of the chef’s ability – so when it fell to me to suggest the venue for the latest get-together amongst some old family friends, I came up with the amusingly named Por Kee. I had heard many good things about this place, which is a stone’s throw from another famous tze char house – Sin Hoi San. Most of all I had heard that the har cheong kai (prawn paste chicken) here was excellent; and not having tasted any good versions lately, I was dying to try this one.
Por Kee is located on a small street opposite Tiong Bahru market – itself a haven for foodies – and on the same street as an old school bak kut teh place which is pretty damn good. In short, it is situated in a hotbed of culinary destinations, and so had great expectations to live up to. At first glance it looks rather run-down – and this impression did not change. But the best food is often in this sort of ramshackle surroundings, and so we sat down filled with a sense of anticipation.
Typically, you know a tze char place is good when lots of old people frequent it. At the risk of generalising, the older generations, by sheer dint of eating more meals than their younger counterparts, often have a better sense of what is good and what is not. There were lots of old people at Por Kee, and this gave me great hope.
After all these years of ordering food family-style, I still never know how much is enough. So I have always been amazed at how the captains and waiters at these places can always estimate, with uncanny precision, just how many dishes to order, and in what quantities. We left the major decisions up to the nice lady who assisted us, while making sure to try some of our favourites and the dishes that had been recommended to us.
The big draw at Por Kee is apparently their champagne pork ribs (贵妃骨). We ordered this as part of their appetiser platter, which also included spring rolls that were decidedly mediocre, and a jellyfish dish that was downright terrible. The pork ribs themselves were bite sized and just good enough not to disappoint, but upon reflection (and of course, with the benefit of a second piece), were a tad too sweet. Perhaps we might have been better off ordering the full ribs instead of the riblets. We saw a platter of those go by us and they looked charred and glistened in the evening light.
What is absolutely a must-try, though is the house-made tofu. The skin had just enough texture to offer a wonderful contrast against the silky smooth tofu, and it had a sweetness I could not place. Paired with mushrooms and a base of oyster sauce, it was quite delicious. The har cheong kai also lived up to its billing, with a crisp, deep-fried exterior giving way to moist, tender white meat. Our family used to frequent a stall in the Amoy St market that made fabulous har cheong kai, and this was good enough to rival that version, which has long since deteriorated.
But the other dishes at Por Kee were tremendous disappointments. The two vegetable dishes we ordered were forgettable – one less so than the other only because it was too sweet. We ordered a dish of fish slices in ginger and spring onion, which tasted as though the ingredients had been cooked separately and only thrown together on the plate. Missing was the sense of harmony of ingredients that wok cooking over high heat is supposed to create. We also ordered a classic Cantonese tze char dish (and one of my personal favourites) – deep-fried yam ring with assorted seafood (佛钵飘香). The yam was done rather well, but the filling of seafood was cooked unevenly. In wok cooking, you are supposed to bring ingredients together to create a dish that is more than the sum of its parts, but this was sadly not the case for most of the dishes at Por Kee.
It was pretty telling when someone at the table remarked offhandedly that the beer was probably the best thing to pass his lips that night. That may have been an exaggeration, but for all its hype, Por Kee was quite poor. Perhaps the big ticket seafood items like lobster and crab were its specialties, but at this rate I will never find out. It seems cruel to condemn a place after one unsatisfactory experience there, but the Singapore scene is unforgiving, and there are so many other places to try. Why would one go back to a place that’s mediocre?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Too big to fail?
Big Eater Seafood (大食家海鲜)
34 Jalan Pari Budong
Picardy Gardens
Tel: +65 6245 7268
One of the most difficult things in eating, for me at least, is knowing when to stop – and I think the same applies to restaurants. I think the older generation of restaurateur mostly still subscribes to the growth-at-all-costs model, and often pursue expansion at the expense of retaining their authenticity. Growing is a process not to be rushed, and only so few that I have seen do it well.
I was at Big Eater Seafood the other day for a simple dinner with my mother, and it struck me immediately how quickly this place had grown. From a corner shophouse before I left Singapore all those years ago, to taking on one additional shop space, to its current three shop spaces – and that was just the one outlet. I believe they have since opened three other outlets as well. They are doing well, no doubt, but at what cost?
We were there for their famous KL-style hokkien mee, different from the Singapore kind in that the dish is typically made with thick, udon-style noodles, coated in a sweet black sauce and topped with all manner of seafood. It takes some imagination, but Big Eater is actually quite a nice place to eat seafood. It is not by the sea, but in fact situated right beside a large canal which - thankfully - does not smell. There aren’t that many high-rises around, so you actually get good wind, and dining al fresco there is not an unbearable as it is in other parts of Singapore.
The food at Big Eater was good – the KL hokkien mee had dropped in standard but was still better than anything you could find in Singapore, and better even than one version that we had had in KL itself. The tofu skin rolls with minced shrimp were excellent. The vegetables (we had kang kong) were cooked well and had good wok hei. Vegetables are always the best gauge of a tze char chef’s ability. You need to cook them such that they absorb the flavour of their accompaniments, yet not too much that they lose their texture. And because the cooking time is usually short, it is rather difficult to taste and correct for your seasonings. The cooks at Big Eater were no amateurs, that much is certain.
But the wait to find that out was unbearable. We waited an entire 45 minutes for our food, as did the table next to us who had been seated at the same time. As we proceeded with the meal it was evident that this was happening to almost everybody in the restaurant. The sad part was that it wasn’t even close to full, only about 70% packed, so I cannot imagine what would have happened had they been at capacity. The man at the table next to us was positively livid, and called his waiter over many times, only to hear the same helpless answer each time. Not even the best food tastes any good when you are angry, and it was only this thought (and the fact that I had had a mid-afternoon snack not long before dinner) that prevented me from similarly losing my cool.
I didn’t have a peek into the kitchen, but it seemed that they had neglected to expand that even though they had expanded the shop space by three times. To their credit, they had made full use of technology to reduce human error – the waiters each carried a handheld device with which they took orders, in turn wirelessly transmitted to the kitchen. Yet cooking anything takes time, and once a kitchen gets backed up it is hell to get back on an even keel. 45 minutes is too long to wait for a meal – there is only so much conversation you can make before your stomach reminds you of what you were there for in the first place.
At a less busy time on a less busy day, I am sure Big Eater would have been a pleasant experience. It was decorated with a sense of humour, and the staff that attended to us were friendly and efficient. The food, too, was good – or perhaps we were just hungry from the long wait. Yet it seems to have grown too fast and too big to be able to ensure the same quality of experience for its customers – finding parking, too, is absolute torture. As it is I have marked this place down as one to avoid on Friday and Saturday evenings.
34 Jalan Pari Budong
Picardy Gardens
Tel: +65 6245 7268
One of the most difficult things in eating, for me at least, is knowing when to stop – and I think the same applies to restaurants. I think the older generation of restaurateur mostly still subscribes to the growth-at-all-costs model, and often pursue expansion at the expense of retaining their authenticity. Growing is a process not to be rushed, and only so few that I have seen do it well.
I was at Big Eater Seafood the other day for a simple dinner with my mother, and it struck me immediately how quickly this place had grown. From a corner shophouse before I left Singapore all those years ago, to taking on one additional shop space, to its current three shop spaces – and that was just the one outlet. I believe they have since opened three other outlets as well. They are doing well, no doubt, but at what cost?
We were there for their famous KL-style hokkien mee, different from the Singapore kind in that the dish is typically made with thick, udon-style noodles, coated in a sweet black sauce and topped with all manner of seafood. It takes some imagination, but Big Eater is actually quite a nice place to eat seafood. It is not by the sea, but in fact situated right beside a large canal which - thankfully - does not smell. There aren’t that many high-rises around, so you actually get good wind, and dining al fresco there is not an unbearable as it is in other parts of Singapore.
The food at Big Eater was good – the KL hokkien mee had dropped in standard but was still better than anything you could find in Singapore, and better even than one version that we had had in KL itself. The tofu skin rolls with minced shrimp were excellent. The vegetables (we had kang kong) were cooked well and had good wok hei. Vegetables are always the best gauge of a tze char chef’s ability. You need to cook them such that they absorb the flavour of their accompaniments, yet not too much that they lose their texture. And because the cooking time is usually short, it is rather difficult to taste and correct for your seasonings. The cooks at Big Eater were no amateurs, that much is certain.
But the wait to find that out was unbearable. We waited an entire 45 minutes for our food, as did the table next to us who had been seated at the same time. As we proceeded with the meal it was evident that this was happening to almost everybody in the restaurant. The sad part was that it wasn’t even close to full, only about 70% packed, so I cannot imagine what would have happened had they been at capacity. The man at the table next to us was positively livid, and called his waiter over many times, only to hear the same helpless answer each time. Not even the best food tastes any good when you are angry, and it was only this thought (and the fact that I had had a mid-afternoon snack not long before dinner) that prevented me from similarly losing my cool.
I didn’t have a peek into the kitchen, but it seemed that they had neglected to expand that even though they had expanded the shop space by three times. To their credit, they had made full use of technology to reduce human error – the waiters each carried a handheld device with which they took orders, in turn wirelessly transmitted to the kitchen. Yet cooking anything takes time, and once a kitchen gets backed up it is hell to get back on an even keel. 45 minutes is too long to wait for a meal – there is only so much conversation you can make before your stomach reminds you of what you were there for in the first place.
At a less busy time on a less busy day, I am sure Big Eater would have been a pleasant experience. It was decorated with a sense of humour, and the staff that attended to us were friendly and efficient. The food, too, was good – or perhaps we were just hungry from the long wait. Yet it seems to have grown too fast and too big to be able to ensure the same quality of experience for its customers – finding parking, too, is absolute torture. As it is I have marked this place down as one to avoid on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Travel log: Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
I recently came back from a weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur (KL), which must have shaved a few years off my life. Nothing screams living in the moment more than binge drinking and indiscriminate consumption of unhealthy but delicious foods. Unfortunately for me that sounds like an apt description of much of my life.
KL is a popular destination for Singapore foodies, especially those in search of richer, more authentic hawker food. We set off for the trip armed with recommendations of what to eat, and over the three days and two nights it felt as though I was continually ingesting either food or drink. By the end I felt like I had aged considerably – such was our excess – but it was worth it, and then some.
Yet after all that it would be hard for me to say that KL food is better than Singapore’s; the stand-outs were, of course, memorable, but there was the odd mediocre dish. I didn’t eat enough to compare the average standards, so there is nothing left to do but make a second trip! And third, and fourth trips, of course.
Overseas Restoran (海外天)
Located near the fringes of the busy Bukit Bintang area, this sleepy little Chinese restaurant was the first stop we made, and filled us with nothing but excitement and anticipation for the rest of the trip. We arrived just a little bit before they opened for dinner, and walked in to see the waiters and cooks having their staff meal in a corner of the restaurant. They welcomed us with gracious smiles, apologised for not being ready to serve anyone yet, and asked if we were willing to sit down and drink some tea while waiting for the kitchen to start up again. Their inviting manner won us over, and we settled down for what became a leisurely wait for our food.
The roast meats are the specialty at Overseas Restoran – whose name became all the more appropriate when the waiter told us that the bulk of their business came not from locals but from out-of-towners coming in from Singapore and Hong Kong for a taste of their famous char siew. We had to get an order of that, and also picked the roast duck, but not before we opened our palates with a helping of herbal soup.
This was the char siew. Unbelievably fatty, and coated with a syrupy glaze of barbeque sauce. Clearly the concept of carcinogens had not entered the consciousness of the kitchen, for the exterior was covered in delicious black char. I got the same feeling as I did when I was dining at 2941 in DC and eating Mishima beef. Back then, I remember thinking that I was swallowing butter instead of chewing into muscle fibre – such was the tenderness of the beef – and also concluding that comparing it to normal beef was just inappropriate. This was in a whole different category. The same thing applied to the char siew at Overseas Restoran – it did not fit the preconceptions of char siew that I had, and as such comparison was unfair. It was very, very good though.
But the true star was the roast duck. I could not explain why and how this was so good. The exterior wasn’t crispy like how I usually like it; the meat was not tough, but yet not overly marbled with fat. But it was exquisitely seasoned, and everything was just done perfectly to create amazing bite-sized bursts of flavour and texture. I racked my brain to figure out what it was that was so special about the roast duck and still could not come up with an answer. I think sometimes you don’t have to have perfect technique, or execute everything with such precision; sometimes a dish cooked with care, and with the selfless conviction of providing pleasure to the diner can result in a very tasty meal indeed.
Wong Ah Wah
Our next stop for Part 2 of dinner that night was Jalan Alor, formerly the red light district but now a street of outdoor food stalls and restaurants. The “mamak stalls” never cease to amaze me – the entire workstation, including the stove top, is usually no wider than the armspan of an average person. And yet, standing in front of the stall and in all probability not moving his feet for the entire duration of the night, the average hawker can whip up a variety of meats, noodle dishes, vegetables. Jalan Alor is alive in the sense that you can feel the hunger in the air – the hunger of the people there who are in search of good food, on the cheap, in bustling, ramshackle environments. They just want to eat, and eat well.
(Just as an aside, why is it that all the good food always sprouts up around the red light districts, especially in Asian cities at least?)
These are the BBQ chicken wings at Wong Ah Wah at the end of Jalan Alor. The perfect marinate of honey and soy sauce, cooked over a charcoal fire. I thought they were delicious, but then again I think all wings are delicious. Buffalo wings, teriyaki wings, barbeque wings, they’re all good.
In the middle is spicy la-la, and in the foreground is kang kong. There is absolutely no combination like spicy food and cold beer. It is one of life’s greatest pleasures. I feel for people who do not eat spicy food, because they will never get to experience the immense satisfaction in numbing your taste buds with searing heat, before cooling them down with an ice cold beer. You don’t even need good beer, in fact the beer should in fact preferably be cheap and light. Just thinking about that combination makes me hungry.
Sek Yuen
For dinner the next night we went to Sek Yuen, another recommendation for good Cantonese tze char cuisine. Now this place is something else. It is legitimately stuck in a decade from long ago. And when I say long ago, I mean it. The restaurant takes up two shophouses, and one is clearly a later addition – it looks cleaner and is actually air-conditioned. But it is the other that I recommend eating at, for an experience tinged with history.
The feeling you get at Sek Yuen, apart from that of stepping into a time warp, is one of going to someone’s house for dinner. The staff all have that motherly/fatherly/grandmotherly/grandfatherly look, and are constantly scurrying around trying to anticipate your needs, as if you were a visitor from afar who had dropped in unannounced in hopes of a good meal. There is no menu, so you order what you want to eat, and if they can accommodate you they will. It is an interesting concept, and one that I wanted to take advantage of. But I figured that since it was our first (and only) time at the place, we should defer decision-making responsibility to the kitchen, and order what they felt to be their own specialties.
This place really should be a National Heritage Site of some sort.
You know the food is good when it is all gone and you realise that you have forgotten to take pictures. This is the only one I managed to snap, of the deep-fried garoupa in sweet and sour sauce - after we had devoured it, of course.
The standouts here include the fish dish that we had, and also a Cantonese staple of braised pork with yam slices. My mother loves this dish because when she first moved in with my dad and his family, this was one of the first dishes she ate that she had never tried before. My dad’s family’s maidservant at the time made this dish particularly well, and to this day it brings back fond memories for my mom, of her newly-wed days and the initial pages of what was a new chapter in her life. For my part I just like to eat it, so I am happy when anybody makes it for me. It is deceptively difficult to do well, just like all Chinese food, so when I find a good version I make a mental note of it.
We had a lot of other stops along the way too, but these I felt were the standouts. Perhaps I shall continue this in time to come, with a write-up of the other places we visited in KL. For now, I would recommend these places as must-tries for any visitor to KL.
KL is a popular destination for Singapore foodies, especially those in search of richer, more authentic hawker food. We set off for the trip armed with recommendations of what to eat, and over the three days and two nights it felt as though I was continually ingesting either food or drink. By the end I felt like I had aged considerably – such was our excess – but it was worth it, and then some.
Yet after all that it would be hard for me to say that KL food is better than Singapore’s; the stand-outs were, of course, memorable, but there was the odd mediocre dish. I didn’t eat enough to compare the average standards, so there is nothing left to do but make a second trip! And third, and fourth trips, of course.
Overseas Restoran (海外天)
Located near the fringes of the busy Bukit Bintang area, this sleepy little Chinese restaurant was the first stop we made, and filled us with nothing but excitement and anticipation for the rest of the trip. We arrived just a little bit before they opened for dinner, and walked in to see the waiters and cooks having their staff meal in a corner of the restaurant. They welcomed us with gracious smiles, apologised for not being ready to serve anyone yet, and asked if we were willing to sit down and drink some tea while waiting for the kitchen to start up again. Their inviting manner won us over, and we settled down for what became a leisurely wait for our food.
The roast meats are the specialty at Overseas Restoran – whose name became all the more appropriate when the waiter told us that the bulk of their business came not from locals but from out-of-towners coming in from Singapore and Hong Kong for a taste of their famous char siew. We had to get an order of that, and also picked the roast duck, but not before we opened our palates with a helping of herbal soup.
This was the char siew. Unbelievably fatty, and coated with a syrupy glaze of barbeque sauce. Clearly the concept of carcinogens had not entered the consciousness of the kitchen, for the exterior was covered in delicious black char. I got the same feeling as I did when I was dining at 2941 in DC and eating Mishima beef. Back then, I remember thinking that I was swallowing butter instead of chewing into muscle fibre – such was the tenderness of the beef – and also concluding that comparing it to normal beef was just inappropriate. This was in a whole different category. The same thing applied to the char siew at Overseas Restoran – it did not fit the preconceptions of char siew that I had, and as such comparison was unfair. It was very, very good though.
But the true star was the roast duck. I could not explain why and how this was so good. The exterior wasn’t crispy like how I usually like it; the meat was not tough, but yet not overly marbled with fat. But it was exquisitely seasoned, and everything was just done perfectly to create amazing bite-sized bursts of flavour and texture. I racked my brain to figure out what it was that was so special about the roast duck and still could not come up with an answer. I think sometimes you don’t have to have perfect technique, or execute everything with such precision; sometimes a dish cooked with care, and with the selfless conviction of providing pleasure to the diner can result in a very tasty meal indeed.
Wong Ah Wah
Our next stop for Part 2 of dinner that night was Jalan Alor, formerly the red light district but now a street of outdoor food stalls and restaurants. The “mamak stalls” never cease to amaze me – the entire workstation, including the stove top, is usually no wider than the armspan of an average person. And yet, standing in front of the stall and in all probability not moving his feet for the entire duration of the night, the average hawker can whip up a variety of meats, noodle dishes, vegetables. Jalan Alor is alive in the sense that you can feel the hunger in the air – the hunger of the people there who are in search of good food, on the cheap, in bustling, ramshackle environments. They just want to eat, and eat well.
(Just as an aside, why is it that all the good food always sprouts up around the red light districts, especially in Asian cities at least?)
These are the BBQ chicken wings at Wong Ah Wah at the end of Jalan Alor. The perfect marinate of honey and soy sauce, cooked over a charcoal fire. I thought they were delicious, but then again I think all wings are delicious. Buffalo wings, teriyaki wings, barbeque wings, they’re all good.
In the middle is spicy la-la, and in the foreground is kang kong. There is absolutely no combination like spicy food and cold beer. It is one of life’s greatest pleasures. I feel for people who do not eat spicy food, because they will never get to experience the immense satisfaction in numbing your taste buds with searing heat, before cooling them down with an ice cold beer. You don’t even need good beer, in fact the beer should in fact preferably be cheap and light. Just thinking about that combination makes me hungry.
Sek Yuen
For dinner the next night we went to Sek Yuen, another recommendation for good Cantonese tze char cuisine. Now this place is something else. It is legitimately stuck in a decade from long ago. And when I say long ago, I mean it. The restaurant takes up two shophouses, and one is clearly a later addition – it looks cleaner and is actually air-conditioned. But it is the other that I recommend eating at, for an experience tinged with history.
The feeling you get at Sek Yuen, apart from that of stepping into a time warp, is one of going to someone’s house for dinner. The staff all have that motherly/fatherly/grandmotherly/grandfatherly look, and are constantly scurrying around trying to anticipate your needs, as if you were a visitor from afar who had dropped in unannounced in hopes of a good meal. There is no menu, so you order what you want to eat, and if they can accommodate you they will. It is an interesting concept, and one that I wanted to take advantage of. But I figured that since it was our first (and only) time at the place, we should defer decision-making responsibility to the kitchen, and order what they felt to be their own specialties.
This place really should be a National Heritage Site of some sort.
You know the food is good when it is all gone and you realise that you have forgotten to take pictures. This is the only one I managed to snap, of the deep-fried garoupa in sweet and sour sauce - after we had devoured it, of course.
The standouts here include the fish dish that we had, and also a Cantonese staple of braised pork with yam slices. My mother loves this dish because when she first moved in with my dad and his family, this was one of the first dishes she ate that she had never tried before. My dad’s family’s maidservant at the time made this dish particularly well, and to this day it brings back fond memories for my mom, of her newly-wed days and the initial pages of what was a new chapter in her life. For my part I just like to eat it, so I am happy when anybody makes it for me. It is deceptively difficult to do well, just like all Chinese food, so when I find a good version I make a mental note of it.
We had a lot of other stops along the way too, but these I felt were the standouts. Perhaps I shall continue this in time to come, with a write-up of the other places we visited in KL. For now, I would recommend these places as must-tries for any visitor to KL.
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