Jewels of the East, Part 1

After living in the US it seems a little silly to refer to the opposing ends of Singapore as the East Coast and the West Coast, since you really only need an hour to drive between them. I grew up in the East, and like many other friends who did, have a certain amount of Easterner pride. I like to think that our surroundings have a large part to do with who we are, and that is why so many of my close friends are also Easterners; but in reality it probably has more to do with going home from school together and bumming rides from each other's parents. I think we all can agree though, that nobody likes the folks from Bukit Timah.

What I refer to as the East Coast (whatever runs along the parallel arteries of the ECP, Mountbatten/East Coast Rd and Geylang Rd/Sims Ave) is really a hotbed of culinary excellence and diversity. Geylang - the most well known of the red-light districts in Singapore and oozing a certain underbelly charm - is not coincidentally also a wonderful area for late night food. Bedok Town Centre, in what is a traditionally Malay-dominated residential area, houses many hawker stalls among which I would be hard-pressed to pick a favourite. The Eunos/Sims Ave district has amazing Malay staples. But what I thought I would do is compile a short (and ever expanding) list of some of my favourite foods and the best places to get them on the East Coast.

Curry Laksa

I have always been fascinated by Peranakan culture - a mix of cultures brought about by the assimilation of traditional Chinese immigrants into the historically Malay populated Straits Settlements. Peranakan food tends to be spicy, a little on the sour side, and dominated by such exotic ingredients as kaffir lime, coconut milk, galangal, lemongrass and belachan. The resulting palate is almost overwhelmingly intoxicating and overpoweringly flavourful. One of the traditional Peranakan dishes is laksa, a spicy noodle dish served in a coconut curry broth and garnished usually with coriander and sambal.

The best place to get laksa on the East Coast, and maybe even all of Singapore, has to be Katong, on East Coast Road right across from Roxy Square. Spurred by the phenomenal success of the original 328 Katong laksa, several other imitators have sprung up around the area - one even bold enough to set up shop right across the street. To be fair, I once tried all the other places that claimed to be the original Katong laksa, and they were all actually pretty decent. The original, though, beats them all hands down.


Katong laksa is served with shrimp, fish cake, and a healthy dollop of sambal belachan on the top. The latter is a chili paste, made by pounding red chili peppers and shrimp paste in a mortar and seasoning with salt, sugar and lime juice. True believers can eat sambal with anything. Absolutely anything. If done well, it has a spice and a tang that adds heat to any dish and elevates its flavour profile. The sambal is done well here, but the true star is the coconut curry broth, dominated by the distinct flavours of kaffir lime and lemongrass, but rounded out with the sweeter notes of the coconut milk. This place is one of my first stops whenever I return to Singapore, and with good reason.

Bak Kut Teh

Traditionally eaten as a breakfast food, bak kut teh translates literally as "meat bone tea" and is basically a broth boiled with pork ribs and spices like star anise, cinnamon, cloves as well as a whole host of medicinal herbs the names of which I never knew and never will. When I was younger my family would take road trips up to Malacca and my father would always take us to this ramshackle roadside shop just off the highway, about an hour or so outside of Malacca. He had discovered it once making the same trip by himself, and had made it a point from then on to make a stop there whenever he could, regardless of who he was with. That bak kut teh remains the best I have had and was miles better than anything you can find in Singapore, but there is a place on Joo Chiat Road that almost approximates it.


Sin Heng Bak Kut Teh is closed on Mondays but open 24 hours the rest of the week, and I have spent many a late night or early morning there winding down a night of drinking. It has a spartan layout - tables, chairs, an open kitchen - but in my mind it is the 4am Shangri-La. They do it the right way here, in that they make the broth a lot more medicinal than most places, use more garlic than most places, and also boil it with beef bones so you can occasionally find bits of marrow in your broth.

I brought the lovely Karen Lee here, shocked that she had not been here despite it being a two minute drive from her house. It was remarkable how quickly we reached an agreement on our side dishes. One of the downsides of ordering food "family-style" is that one always has to make compromises on the choice of dishes. It is very rare that everybody at the table ends up with their first choices. Invariably somebody will be allergic to shrimp, or won't touch liver - so when Karen and I spontaneously agreed on what else we wanted, it made me very happy.

In addition to the bak kut teh, we also ordered a side of braised pig's trotters in a dark soy sauce. There were heaping amounts of fat on the trotters, which fell away almost instantaneously at the tenderest of touches.


We also got a side of brinjal (also known as aubergine or eggplant) in sambal belachan. I came late in life to the eggplant - when I was younger I used to shy away from it with a vehemence that my mother always found funny and frustrating. Now I am trying to make up for lost time - I can't get enough of the stuff.


Bak kut teh is typically eaten with white rice, and is not complete without both dark and light soy sauce as a dipping condiment for the meats, spiced up by crushed garlic (optional) and thinly sliced red chilies (not optional).




Sin Heng did not disappoint. The broth was undoubtedly the star of the show - intense garlic and medicinal herbs, and a dark, mysterious colour not typical of the dish. We asked for a refill of the broth, and because Karen has a winning smile and a charming manner the waitress kindly obliged. Every time I eat there I enjoy myself, yet every time I eat there I can't help but think of that ramshackle roadside stall on the road to Malacca.

Black Bean Beef Hor Fun

Karen repaid the favour by introducing me to her favourite version of beef hor fun, at Kim Moh in the Laguna Park estate. I personally have always gone to Geylang for my beef hor fun, but Karen assured me that the standard there had dropped, and that this place was much better. Her opinion was borne out as we took another lunch trip on a lazy Friday afternoon.


Hor Fun is a dish of flat, wide rice noodles, typically stir-fried with meats or seafood and most times covered in a sauce that has a gravy-style consistency. One of the most popular local versions of beef hor fun involves preparing it with a sauce made from fermented black beans, which have a unique sweet and salty taste to them.

Karen waxed lyrical about how in the perfect beef hor fun - the sauce should be a little gummy but not overly starchy, while the noodles should each be individually coated with the sauce, so much so that they slither and slide about as you try to maneuver them into your mouth. This sometimes makes for a messy meal, but I am sure babies around the world agree with me when I say that food you can play with - always tastes better.

We ate this with a side of kang kong - a green leafy vegetable also known as water spinach. I think kang kong is not grown much elsewhere in the world because it looks like a weed to some. But it has a natural mildly sweet taste - unlike the bitterness of other vegetables like kale or chard - and is a perfect foil for many local flavours.


One of the things that they do right with the beef hor fun at Kim Moh is that they do not skimp on the sauce. The noodles are submerged in it - a rich, thick soupy mix of black beans, garlic, red chili peppers, soy sauce and oyster sauce. They gave us so much that we hit upon the brilliant idea of mopping up the remains with some zha man tou - basically sweet bread rolls that have been freshly deep-fried. There is something almost primordial about mopping up sauces with bread - it is truly one of the joys of eating.

To Be Continued.....

In the next installment of our food tour of the East Coast, we'll take a look at Still Road pepper crab, the Beach Road hae mee that is now on East Coast Road, and the beef noodles with soup at Laguna hawker centre.