What's in a name?

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?