I have seen the light, and it is glorious

Having never lived anywhere in Singapore but the East side of town, I naturally maintain an irrational allegiance to the foods that can be found here. For the longest time I thought myself backed up by fact, for it’s hard to argue with the assorted wonders of Geylang, Katong, Joo Chiat, East Coast, Eunos – I could go on. But this past week my eyes were opened to some of the hawker foods found in other parts of town, and I humbly stand corrected. It is not just the East – you can find good food in any neighbourhood.


Foong Kee
6 Keong Saik Road

I had heard about this famous wanton mee and roast meats stall for the longest time but never had the opportunity to try it, for my allegiance to all things East resulted in a rather insular pattern of eating. But since I found myself in the neighbourhood of this institution, I decided to give it a go. I arrived as the lunch hour was winding down, so street parking was easy to find, and a seat miraculously opened up exactly as I stepped into the store.

It’s become cliché by now to refer to hawker stalls as “no-frills”, but there is really no better descriptor. The lack of frills is evident not just in the décor, but also in the whole setup of the establishment. This is eating at its most efficient: you come in, you place your order, take a drink from the cooler if you fancy one, then find your own seat and wait. Sometimes you share a table with complete strangers. Communal mugs of chopsticks and other utensils are whisked from table to table and you take what you need. Unless you’re a fan of peeling wallpaper, there is nothing about your surroundings to inspire aesthetic appreciation. If you’re lucky, your food arrives in five to ten minutes, and you scarf it down wordlessly. There is no room for sentimentality, no need for conversation or pause. It feels almost wrong to dally or take a photo of the food. For someone that enjoys dinner table conversation and post-dessert lingering almost as much as the food itself, it’s strange that I enjoy this mode of dining so much.

And boy have I been missing out. The noodles here are springy and alive, coated generously in a black sauce more savoury than sweet. The char siew is the piece de resistance – marbled with fat and charred to a crisp on the edges. The other components leave much to be desired – wantons are nothing to write home about, and the soup is purely utilitarian – but it all makes for a rather satisfying meal nonetheless.


Siang Hee
Blk 89 Zion Road, #01-137

It is imperative to find and maintain a group of people – amongst your network of serious foodies – with whom you can eat tze char. This mode of dining is best with more people – 5 or 6, or more – since you can order many dishes. Unfortunately, a bigger group means more scheduling difficulties, more individual dietary restrictions or preferences to cater to. It’s hard to find a group of people who you can count on to always be there for good tze char, and are always game to try anything.

I met up with my tze char buddies the other night at Siang Hee after discovering that Bernard had never tried it. It had been a while since I’d been there too, so I was curious to see if it had changed. It had not. It was the same dingy corner in the same block of flats along Zion Road. The clientele was exactly the same – a group of taxi drivers meeting for dinner, either at the end of their day shift or the start of their night one; assorted couples and families. The menu was still the same, and the famous dishes – I am glad to report – have not lost their lustre.

Siang Hee is famous mainly for two things – their roasted pork knuckle (or ter kah) and the deep fried prawns in pumpkin sauce. Both had not changed a lick, although the pork knuckle was a little dry on this occasion. We also had the French beans and a dish of their house-made toufu, but while passable they were not as transcendent as the two star dishes. We also ordered a plate of hor fun with fish slices, which was a little disappointing.

In any case, as long as they keep making their two specialties, I will continue to come here. Parking is cheap and easy, the breeze makes outdoor dining bearable, the auntie who runs the place is friendly and the food is cheap. That last factor is the true winner, I think.


Sungei Road Laksa
27 Jalan Berseh (Top 33 Kopitiam)

For someone who has grown up in the East, I guess it was complacent to think that versions other than Katong laksa could never compare. I had heard of the famous Sungei Road laksa, but I must have sampled an inferior knock-off once and written it off since. So when two of my colleagues, whose love of laksa and appreciation of quality are beyond reproach, both chose this as their favourite laksa, it was time for a re-evaluation. After ascertaining the location of the true Sungei Road laksa, I was off.

I was told that two things would guide me to the true Sungei Road laksa – the long queue, and the huge pots of gravy warmed by charcoal fires. I reached the place mid-afternoon, so there was no queue, but the sight of the huge pots and the smell of the coal fire were unmistakable.

The Sungei Road laksa has adopted a different business model – to sell cheaply to many – from the Katong laksa franchises – which practice product-price differentiation. The Katong stalls, whichever the original one may be, price their product higher and in fairness, do give you more quantity and better quality ingredients like prawns and thicker, better slices of fishcake. The Sungei Road version comes in small bowls and is priced at a ridiculous $2, but has no prawns, and only a few measly thin slices of fishcake. That is no matter, though, because the true star here is the gravy. Less lemak, and more oily than Katong, it is nevertheless better balanced and delivers a more powerful kick of umami. The noodles here, too, edge it slightly – the ones used here retain flavour better and are cooked to the perfect texture.


As a lifelong Eastie it pains me to say this, but I think I might prefer this version to the Katong laksa.

The fabric of community

Restoran Oversea
No. 100 Beach Road, #01-27 to #01-37,
Shaw Leisure Gallery, Shaw Tower
Singapore 189702
Tel: +65 6294 2638

I have begun to feel more and more that doing business, as it were, is about so much more than just dollars and cents. It’s about, among other things, making an imprint on the fabric of society – about bettering the lives of others through your product or service. The best business ideas come out of making someone’s life just that bit easier, efficient or enjoyable. It sounds trite, but it is, I think, rather apt especially in the restaurant world, or small business in general. You don't just go to a restaurant because you want to take it easy and not have to cook or wash up; you go because you want to enjoy yourself and have a good time eating out. The best restaurants, in my view, are the ones that transform their local community and become an indelible part of it. They become – slowly, bit by bit – part of the lives of their customers, until a community coalesces around them. Families trooping to a particular restaurant for regular Sunday dinners, or couples going back to a place because it’s the restaurant they went to on their first date – a restaurant is often so much more than just a place to eat.

So when restaurants close, the loss is not just the loss of a place to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a fan of regeneration as anyone else, because it also means that a new set of folks are pursuing their dreams, making their own imprint on the landscape and community. I can only hope that the ones who were there before have moved on to bigger, better dreams. In any case, the ground floor restaurant space at Shaw Leisure Gallery – for so long Ah Yat Seafood Palace – was recently opened again as the first Singapore branch of Restoran Oversea (海外天), the famous Jalan Imbi restaurant in KL renowned for its char siew.

I met Winnie for dinner there last night, and the new owners had definitely spruced it up a little bit. A sleek if somewhat overwrought bar counter defined the room, and the fish tanks that had housed Ah Yat’s live seafood were replaced by booths. A ceiling to floor screen marked out what was for all intents and purposes a private room. There was a reasonable crowd for a restaurant that had only been open for a month, but it was by no means packed.

You have to pre-order the char siew, as you do with their 功夫汤 – a soup specialty of theirs, which Winnie had done. When the char siew came it glistened under the bright white lights of the restaurants, and it was all we could do to hold off attacking it while we took a photo for posterity. I’ve met people who are religious about taking photos of their food and I always wonder what they do with the photos, and why they take photo-taking to the extents that they do. Some don’t even consider the aesthetic quality of their subject. I’ve seen people take photos of green bean soup, which looks – even if you do it well – like an unidentifiable green mush. Why do they do it? I can never understand. For me the enjoyment of the meal comes first, and sometimes I am so overwhelmed by the urge to eat that photos be damned. And if the photo-taking puts off what happens to be perfectly charming conversation and the mood of the moment, then I often think better of it. In this case I had promised my colleague that I would take a photo of the char siew just to show him the quantity you get, which isn’t a lot for twenty bucks.


But I suppose you do pay that sort of money for quality, which the Oversea char siew definitely is. Fatty, succulent and carved into substantial enough cubes to be a gloriously meaty bite, it compared very well with the version in KL and indeed other versions elsewhere. It was a little sweet at first taste, but then I found that eating it together with the Chinese parsley added tartness and improved the experience.

The 功夫汤 – gongfu soup – was a cheesy take on gongfu tea: medicinal soup double boiled in clay teapots. What this meant was that by pouring the soup out into miniature teacups, you could drink the soup on its own without the ingredients. Of course, you could also open up the teapot to get at the various pork cubes, dried scallops and all other manner of goodness hidden within. It was certainly a very interesting presentation and it didn’t hurt that the soup was delicious – intensely flavoured, yet light and refreshing.

I think that since it is early days for the restaurant, they are still working out what their popular dishes are, and the right quantities of ingredients to stock. As a result, they had run out of several of the things I had wanted to try. The XO duck tongues, claypot pork ribs and roast duck were all out. We wound up ordering a couple of other "second choice" dishes to round out our meal, but they didn’t hit the heights of the char siew and the soup. The sambal eggplant could have been great, but they hadn’t salted the eggplant enough beforehand so it was still a little bitter; and they hadn’t cooked it long enough, for the skin on the eggplant was a tad too firm for my liking. I like my eggplant mushier. The teppanyaki beef rib was well flavoured and tender, but alas, nothing out of the ordinary.

Expanding overseas (pardon the pun) is never an easy thing, especially for restaurant chains. Setting up a whole new supply chain, sourcing and procuring ingredients, hiring, dealing with a whole new set of regulations, approvals, permits – it is a significant investment of time and resources. So you shouldn’t do it if you’re not planning to stay. I hope Restoran Oversea is here to stay; from what I have seen I have no doubt that they do good work and can become a local institution. For their sake I look forward to many more families trooping there for their Sunday dinners and couples headed there for first dates or anniversaries.

What would you pay for?

Waku Ghin @ Marina Bay Sands
10 Bayfront Avenue
Singapore 018956
Tel: +65 6888 8507

So despite all my rhetorical remonstrations about the rising price of fine dining in Singapore, in the end I’m still a sucker for it. I still want to be wowed, I still want to be shown a good time. Maybe those good times don’t come along as often as I’d like, but they represent a luxury that I am unwilling to forego completely. Shanaz was in town the other week, and we took the opportunity to try one of the celebrity chef restaurants at the Marina Bay Sands casino – Waku Ghin, by Tetsuya Wakuda.

What is it that you pay for, anyway, at these places that see fit to charge such astronomical prices? The way I see it, I’d gladly pay such high prices for several things. First – the cost of quality, fresh ingredients. It is not cheap air-freighting, say, fresh-caught seafood from miles and miles away on a daily basis, and ensuring that the seafood reaches your table in a time better measured in hours rather than days, all the while making sure it stays fresh. Secondly, I’d pay for talent. If the guy’s a good cook, you’ve got to hand it to him. But seriously, I know these restaurants have to pay a little more to attract skilled front and back of the house professionals, and the staff-to-customer ratios at these places are often really low – to ensure an unforgettable, pampering experience for the diner. Then there are the costs of training and retaining these folks – not an easy thing to do in the rough-and-tumble culinary world where turnover is unlike any other industry. So, I really can’t begrudge a few dollars on menu prices if the people are good at what they do. Thirdly, I’d pay to see effort. The effort chefs put into developing, honing, fine-tuning their recipes; changing them seasonally. The effort that the waitstaff puts into creating a magical evening for me; or the effort that the dishwasher makes in ensuring spotless dishes or cutlery. If people are busting balls, I would willingly pay what it took to get them to do so.

It seems a little callous to reduce the cost of a good meal to such basic elements – there are other things you might pay for as part of the fine dining experience: a good location or view for instance. Or you might think the extra work, research and development needed for molecular gastronomy may be worth paying a few extra dollars for. Or perhaps the costs needed to maintain a comprehensive winelist may be something you’re willing to foot (although I’m pretty sure that the markups on wine more than cover those). In any case, after our meal at Waku Ghin it was abundantly clear which of these elements your money was really going towards.

Waku Ghin is Chef Tetsuya Wakuda’s first establishment outside of Australia – his flagship restaurant being Tetsuya’s in Sydney. The concept here though, is different from the Sydney restaurant. At Waku Ghin, food is prepared and served teppanyaki style, at one of a few counters with immaculate iron griddles and granite countertops. Each of the counters is enclaved away from the others, and there is a drawing room in the corner of the restaurant – overlooking Marina Bay – where you retire to have your dessert and petit fours after your meal, which is in itself part meal, part demonstration.

The interesting thing about Waku Ghin is that they welcome and are even happy for you to take as many photos and videos as you want. I didn’t bring my camera, so I had to be content with taking the odd iPhone shot while Shanaz went a little obsessive compulsive with her photo-taking. She’s promised to send me the pictures, but she’s also promised me lots of other stuff before, so we’ll see if she makes good this time.

At the start of the meal our chef brought out the fresh seafood in a carton for us to ogle and I must admit I was slightly aroused at this sight. (I did not, of course, disclose this to my dining companions.) The ingredients, with their deep, rich, natural colours, looked as if they had only been caught hours before. Not even at farmers’ markets or wet markets had I ever seen ingredients this fresh, this succulent, this appetising. It was all I could do to stop myself from reaching out to caress them.

We started with a terrine of duck and foie gras which was technically excellent but unfortunately not memorable. To be fair, it’s not the best lead-in going from oohing and aahing at raw lobster tails, a two foot long trout, and other assorted tasty ingredients – to eating two tiny cubes of terrine and foie gras. They were delicious, don’t get me wrong, but our thoughts were unfortunately elsewhere. I will also say, though, that this dish was, like everything else, meticulously and scrupulously executed. There was just the right amount of vinaigrette on the frisee, just the right balance of greens to protein – no more, no less. I couldn’t help but think that everything had been painstakingly measured, portioned and prepared and it was a tone that carried through the rest of the meal.

The next appetiser was raw Botan shrimps marinated with sea urchin and topped with caviar. Now, you and I both know that appetisers are supposed to be flavour bursts, to open your palate in preparation for the main course(s), but there was little that could have prepared us for the explosion of umami that was this dish. The waitress touted it as one of Waku Ghin’s signature dishes, and I certainly enjoyed it very much. It came with a little spoon you were supposed to use, and I took a little-boy pleasure in cleaning off the dish.


Marinated Botan Ebi with Sea Urchin and Oscietre Caviar

We then moved on to a dish of trout, slow cooked to a deep orange, tenderly placed atop a Belgian endive and paired with a Japanese seaweed sauce. There was a healthy cracking of black pepper atop the trout, which I loved, and which made the kick from the seaweed sauce more pronounced. This was no ordinary peppercorn, it was woody, tart and spicy beyond the pepper you and I use at home. By itself this might have already been my favourite dish of the night, but what sealed the deal was the salad of endive leaves and pear that accompanied it. The vinaigrette for this dish was spectacular – a perfect balance of sweetness and sharpness. I asked the waitress to find out what was in it and she came back with the perfunctory answer of ‘red wine vinegar, honey and olive oil – that’s it’. Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if that is really it. There has to be crack cocaine in it, because it wasn’t even funny how fast I inhaled that salad.


Slow Cooked Tasmanian Petuna Ocean Trout with Witlof and Yuzu

At this point, the first of the chef’s theatrics began on the griddle in front of us, with the cooking of Alaskan king crabs atop a bed of sea salt and covered with bamboo leaves. They were finally served drizzled with lemon scented olive oil, but to tell the truth they were – while very good – a little bit of a letdown after the elaborate show of preparation.

The next course was lobster braised in stock, and involved yet another intricate kabuki. First, the lobster pincers and tails were sauted with garlic and shallots, before lobster stock and fresh tarragon added. Our chef made a big show of ladling the stock over the lobster pieces with a spoon but the entire time he was doing it Shanaz was cringing on the edge of her seat. From where she was sitting she could see the ends of the lobster meat curling up, and her worst fears were realised when – after le montage au beurre and the addition of lemon zest – the lobster was served to us a tad overcooked. This set Shanaz off wailing about the injustice of this callous treatment of such quality ingredients, and for good measure she threw in a jibe about tarragon being a ‘common’ herb. (What can you do; women, they’re always throwing in something completely unrelated when making their point, and making the argument about something else instead.) I knew better than to come back with a snide remark, though, and so kept my mouth shut, and when I looked over at her plate after a while she had finished the dish anyway.


Braised Lobster with Tarragon

Snide remarks aside, I do have to agree with her that our lobster was overcooked, and that it was a terrible way to treat ingredients of this quality. The final product was still pretty tasty – it was pretty hard for it not to be given the ingredients – but the knowledge that it could have been better coloured our enjoyment of it slightly. I remarked to Shanaz that never in my life had I had the opportunity to work with such premium ingredients – and indeed, few home cooks ever will.

The next two courses were of beef – first a piece of Japanese Wagyu striploin rolled into a tiny pillow of awesomeness, served with maitake mushrooms. The beef was incredibly fatty, with salt and pepper the only adornment it needed. After that came cubes of Australian Blackmore steak with fresh grated wasabi and citrus-soy. The star of the show here, I thought, was undoubtedly the fresh wasabi. It was not as pungent or spicy as the processed wasabi we were used to eating, but had an almost soothing burn when paired with the beef. My steak was a little overcooked for my liking, but I wolfed it down nonetheless. (Shanaz’s, I thought was perfectly rare so there were no complaints from her this time.)


Grating wasabi

We then had a course of chicken consommé with rice and small fillets of snapper, which was impressive for the pure and strong taste of the consommé. Clearly this was not a consommé made from your average industrially raised farmbird. I don’t know what exactly it was made from, though, and by this point I was too full to care. Before dessert we had a shot of Gyokuro tea, an expensive kind of green tea that differs from the normal green tea in that the leaves are grown under shade or at least shielded from the sun for at least two weeks before harvesting. This gives it a distinctive sweet aroma, while producing a leaf with less catechins (the source of bitterness in teas) than normal green tea. It was made with lukewarm water, and in all made for an interesting experience to drink.

Dessert was steady if not spectacular – a chilled strawberry shortcake served in a martini glass, followed by the house cheesecake, which was almost too fluffy in texture. We then had several cubes of Japanese melon with cracked black pepper on top – which was interesting because the melon was not only incredibly sweet, but had also had something done to it such that it completely disintegrated in your mouth upon contact. The experience was a mixture of eating a solid piece of melon and drinking melon juice, and one that was very interesting indeed.

For the most part, Waku Ghin is spectacular food that will please you if only for one reason – the quality of its ingredients. I take nothing away from the ability of our chefs and waitstaff for the night, but with ingredients this spectacular, you don’t have to do much to them, and Waku Ghin wisely refrains from doing so. But you pay a pretty penny for the luxury of these ingredients - $400++ a person. I personally don’t know they manage it, but to be able to get crab legs from Norway, lobster from Canada, trout from Tasmania, Wagyu from Japan and Blackmore steak from Australia – delivered fresh daily is an incredible accomplishment. (Sure, the environmentalists will have their say, and with good reason too.) The trick that Waku Ghin pulls is therefore not one of cooking, or presentation, although they have those tricks in abundance too. The trick it pulls in rather one of procurement. Chef Tetsuya has undoubtedly built up an impressive network of suppliers who can get him these premium ingredients with the timing and regularity he requires. That, in the end, is what you pay for, at Waku Ghin.

Haute cuisine, haute price

Bonta Italian Restaurant & Bar
207 River Valley Road, 238275
#01-61 UE Square River Wing
Tel: +65 6333 8875

The recent price inflations in the Singapore dining scene can roughly be divided into three phases – what I like to call the French wave, the Japanese wave and the casino wave. The first wave probably started about 10 or so years ago, wrought by the classical haute cuisine places like Le Saint Julien and Saint Pierre and characterized by a marketing gimmick called the degustation menu. At the time you were looking at paying $150 - $180++ for these fancy meals. Then about 5 years ago the top Japanese places started muscling in on the high-end market, with their kaiseki and omakase dining, and the magical 200-dollar psychological barrier was broken. Suddenly, thanks to places like Akashi, Shiraishi and Goto, the price point for fine dining got pushed up to $200 - $250++, and in the boom years of ’06 and ‘07 $300++ was not an uncommon sight. Finally, last year, the casinos opened, and brought with them the high-end celebrity chef restaurants. That just blew the church doors wide open and today, a meal at Kunio Tokuoka will set you back $750++.

Now of course you have to adjust all these for natural inflation, but even then the upward tick in fine dining prices is significant enough to cause the average foodie some worry. I may exaggerate a little by only listing the prices of the top-end places, but the reality of the situation is that many of the second-tier or middle-of-the-road restaurants follow the lead of these places. It used to be that your average middle-income earners could still look forward to a fancy dinner for two on birthdays and anniversaries, but the way things are going, fewer and fewer folks are going to be able to afford that luxury.

I bring all this up because of my recent meal at Bonta Italian Restaurant. Bonta, of course, is the restaurant that generated much controversy when they started doing a white Alba truffle promotion during the fall months. Now, Bonta is otherwise probably considered an above-average Italian eatery, with prices slightly on the expensive side but nowhere near those of the places mentioned above. But September through December of 2009 they offered what they called the Ultimate Indulgence Menu – a six course feast incorporating sinful amounts of white truffle and Beluga caviar – which they priced at $1000++. Yes, that is the per-person cost, before wine and taxes. It was, naturally, immensely popular and has since become an annual affair, but also caused much consternation among foodies for breaking new ground price-wise.

In any case, I finally visited Bonta for the first time when we took several business associates visiting from Japan there. It is a charming space, if rather narrow, with deceptively high ceilings and dark, lustrous velvet curtains beside a ruby red wall motif. We were seated in the smaller private room, which was cut off from the main dining area and as a result, quiet throughout dinner; or should I say, only as noisy as we were ourselves.

One of the must-tries at Bonta is their famous goat cheese soufflé bread. This is an incredibly light roll that comes in a cup, but which has risen to twice the height of the cup. The goat cheese adds a decent flavour, but the true quality of this bread lies in its impressive crumb structure and texture. Large pockets of air, wispy grain, and pillow-soft to the bite – it was all I could do to stop at one.

(Note: the secret to creating such bread lies in a few factors. Yeast is very important. In Singapore, you cannot get fresh yeast, so the handling of your dry yeast must be spot-on to achieve light, voluminous bread. Yeast is most effective between 30-35 degrees Celsius, and must be given time to grow, so where and how long you proof your bread is key. Then you have to be very careful with the water you use. Hard water inhibits yeast growth, which results in dense bread; but if the water is too soft it prevents the formation of flour gluten, which you need for a crumbly texture and good bite. Finally, you have to mould your dough cross-grain, in order to create that wispy effect. There is clearly a skilled baker at work in the Bonta kitchen.)

We had deep fried zucchini flowers filled with mushroom ragout to start, served over rocket (arugula to some of you) and I was silently glad. Despite the little I had heard about Bonta I was half expecting another one of those frou-frou places that uses its food to make a statement – whether about the chef’s cooking philosophy or some other exalted ideal. What I found at Bonta was simple, uncomplicated, yet very refined Italian cooking – the kind that I associate more with New York City than Italy, really, but the kind that I absolutely adore.

Our second course was angel hair shrimp scampi, to which the chef recommended adding sliced chili padi. An unusual twist, but not so unusual once you find out that Chef Luca, prior to coming to Singapore, spent five years in Jakarta (and can speak Bahasa Indonesia), and loves spicy food. The pasta itself I thought could have been done a little better, but the addition of chili padi gave it an interesting kick which elevated the dish. It was, however, a twist not recommended for persons with palates unused to spice, as our Japanese associates quickly bore testimony to.

The main course was bistecca alla fiorentina, and Chef Luca had prepared a huge haunch of meat. He explained that the beef he used came from Chianina cattle, a large and muscular breed of cattle prized for its high quality. Again, the beef was simply done – olive oil, lemon, balsamic – and I could not complain. We also had a side of goose leg confit, which I thought particularly well done. Traditional confit calls for curing the meat with salt before cooking, a step which some actually omit. Salting it preserves it for longer and adds flavour, but dries out the meat, so you have to be quite careful with this step. Chef Luca had done a wonderful job.

To accompany dinner we drank a Tignanello (vintage unknown) that we had brought – the drinking of which by any sane measure should constitute an occasion. But later in the night we moved on to a 1999 Tua Rita Redigaffi, which was so sensational that nobody could go back to the Tignanello. Redigaffi is 100% Merlot, which makes it an anomaly amongst the Super Tuscans, but I felt it married the brio of Tuscan terroir with the stateliness of Merlot wonderfully. It had an intoxicating bouquet and was a huge wine, rich and velvety and very sensual.

So at the end of the night the food bill came to around $1000 for the seven of us, which was rather reasonable I suppose. The other reason why fine dining is so expensive in Singapore, which I failed to mention before, is because everything has to be imported, and Bonta – like many other places which emphasise quality and authenticity – is very guilty of taking this to its natural extreme. All the key ingredients, the cheeses, the balsamic vinegar, even the beef – are imported from Italy. Not only do you pay for transportation, but – especially for the fresh ingredients – you also pay a premium for processing and proper storage of the ingredients so that they remain fresh and suitable for use.

Bonta aside, at the end of the day, are such prices worth it? And even if they aren’t, what can the consumer do about it? Precious little, I’m afraid. Sooner or later these price increases will trickle down to the casual eateries and the mom-and-pops. I only hope that by then, my wages will have seen a corresponding increase!

Calling for teams to compete in chili cookoff!

It was inevitable. One of my favourite events of the year when I lived in DC was the annual chili cookoff that my friends and I organised. If there was one thing better than a hot, spicy bowl of red in the dead of winter, it was getting to eat many spicy bowls of red all in the same sitting. That's why I loved the chili cookoff. That, and the daytime drinking.

So even though it's not really right for it in Singapore - I'm bringing it back! Chili cookoff in January, y'all - see the flyer below for more info.


We are now looking for participants to compete in the Chili Cookoff. If you think you make a mean chili and have the cojones to prove it in the heat of competition, please email chilicookoffsg(AT)gmail(DOT)com for more information. You can enter individually or as a team of up to 5 members.

We are also looking for judges! If you’re from Texas and enjoy a good, spicy bowl of red, please also get in touch with us at the email address above and tell us exactly why you deserve to be a judge for the event. If you don’t have Lone Star heritage but want to be a judge, by all means write us too, but you should at least know the difference between real Texas chili and the crap that passes for chili in Cincinnati.

Let the trash-talking begin!

A restaurant by any other name...

Chin Lee Restaurant
Block 115 Bedok North Rd, #01-285
Singapore 460115
Tel: +65 6444 5554

What is a restaurant, anyway? Does it have to have white tablecloths, and fancy cutlery? Does it have to have waitstaff? Or bricks and mortar, for that matter? If it is just – a la Janette Desautel in Treme – one chef pushing her large portable grill around, is it any less of a restaurant if it puts out good, honest food that people enjoy and come back for?

I struggled with this question during lunch today at Chin Lee Restaurant. Despite the name, Chin Lee is most decidedly not where you would expect to find a “restaurant” as you understand it. Located at the void deck of a block of flats, it nevertheless has unequivocally modern trappings, even if the décor is a mishmash of garish colours and uncertain influences. (Winnie pointed out what seemed to be a Chinese watercolour ripoff of Monet’s Water Lilies – or “Chinese impressionism” as she put it.) I can only hypothesise that the place had to have grown from humble beginnings in that void deck – expanding and improving to its current, air-conditioned settings.

Karen had recommended this place for its excellent Teochew fare, and we all trooped there for a well-deserved lunch after our tree-top adventure at the nearby Bedok Reservoir. After all that scampering and ziplining we had built up quite an appetite, and I think even the waitress was shocked at the amount of food we ordered.

I will readily admit that I don’t know much about Teochew food, except for the usual ubiquitous dishes – hae zho, steamed pomfret with salted veggies and sour plums, etc. But the Teochews, along with the Hainanese and the Cantonese, qualify as one of those dialect groups who love their food, are fiercely protective of their own cuisine, and know quality when they see it. A good Teochew restaurant – or one that has, like Chin Lee, built up a staunch following – seemed certain to promise much.

We started off with two quite delectable appetisers – pork jelly and fish maw soup. The former was pig trotters boiled down to gelatin, then frozen along with solid pieces of braised pork, into a jelly. This was firmer than some versions I’ve had elsewhere (suggesting the use of lecithin or some other emulsifier) but was nonetheless quite tasty. The fish maw soup – like all soups in Chinese restaurants – came woefully underseasoned, which was invitation enough to douse it with black vinegar and pepper. There wasn’t enough fish maw, and despite a strong (to quite strong) shot of black vinegar, the soup lacked the kick I expected.

The rest of the food arrived thick and fast – and disappeared with similar speed. The pomfret was nice and light (but cooked too long, I felt), and the hae zho, while one of the larger versions I’ve seen and containing large water chestnut pieces, was just this side shy of the version at Joo Hing. The tofu with straw and button mushrooms came in a rich, silky sauce that made my heart ache for some white rice to eat it with.

Special mention must be made of the coffee pork ribs, which were beaten and tenderised to the right point – enough not to present a difficulty eating them, not too much that it lost its chew. They were also flavoured wonderfully, showcasing the smoky, bitter tang of coffee. I tend to shy from ordering this dish because while it can be excellent if done well, the potential for disaster is high and I have had some pretty terrible versions of this dish. Chin Lee gets it right on the money, for my money.

The fried mee sua and luo han zhai were flat notes in an otherwise enjoyable experience, and by the time it came to dessert I was tapping for mercy. I still pulled my shit together to take a bite of orh nee, though. Now, I like orh nee (yam paste), a Teochew dessert classic, and I would venture to say that many others do. But it’s become one of those dishes that I continually taste and reject. I think subconsciously I have built up this idealised notion of the perfect orh nee – I’m not sure based on what, even – and every version I taste now can never come close. Every time I eat orh nee I always wind up pushing the bowl away, often empty, and saying it was good, but not great. I don’t know what it is I’m looking for in orh nee. Hopefully someday I will find it.

The version at Chin Lee is – you guessed it – good but not great.

It is hard not to call Chin Lee a restaurant. What else could you call it? An upscale hawker stall? A swanky coffeeshop? After eating at Chin Lee I am more and more swayed to the belief that if you put out hot, piping food and have people clean their plates and ask for more, then you can call yourself what you damn well please.

A room with a view - wasted

Si Chuan Dou Hua
80 Raffles Place
#60-01 UOB Plaza 1
Singapore 048624
Tel: +65 6535 6006


I believe strongly that the design of any place should incorporate its greatest and most distinct assets. In the case of Si Chuan Dou Hua @ UOB Plaza, this is the spectacular view of downtown Singapore. Along with that is the wondrous natural light that it gets, being at the top of one of Singapore’s tallest skyscrapers and – unlike other restaurants closer to the ground – bathed in sunshine that is unfettered by the collection of other buildings around it.

Unfortunately, the designers of this place chose to hide these assets behind a labyrinth of thick walls. Granted, these walls are of dark, sensual teak, and very good to look at in their own right, but one can’t help feel cheated after travelling 60 floors – via two elevators, three if you come from the basement carpark. I expected a grand view, and I didn’t get it. The windows are aesthetically well designed too, but ultimately not enough to let in the light, and inexplicably fitted with blinds and framed with cross sections.

For the crowd that the restaurant targets, though, it might make the most sense. I imagine that the restaurant serves mostly the business lunch crowd – who want to feel cocooned away in private rooms, with only occasional reminders of the heights they occupy. Indeed, the perimeter of the restaurant – the areas with the most access to the view and the outside light – had largely been set aside for these private rooms, leaving the inner chambers of the restaurant with little natural light and without an inkling of the tremendous view that lay beyond those teak walls.


I was at Si Chuan Dou Hua recently for a workshop, after which they fed us with dim sum. I have to say, the dim sum here is surprisingly very competent. One wouldn’t expect a Sichuan restaurant to be well versed in what is a primarily Cantonese genre, but I found out that the chefs (Malaysian) had trained in Hong Kong, and you can’t get much closer to the source than that.


The pastries that I tried – a pancake of chicken floss and a seafood sesame bun – were exquisite, and the pastry itself was first-rate. Working in my line I have begun to develop an appreciation of the possible highs and lows of texture, of crumb structure and of mouthfeel that bakers can accomplish – and I can say that the chefs at Si Chuan Dou Hua know what they are doing.

Because prawns are an integral ingredient in so many dim sum staples, exercising care in the choice and use of this ingredient is paramount. The ones used at Si Chuan Dou Hua are juicy and succulent – especially in an excellent beancurd skin dish – and if they had ever been frozen, I certainly could not tell.


There were a couple of missteps, though. The dan dan noodles came in a sauce which was all heat and no flavour. Spice is well and good if it accentuates, or imparts flavour, but to numb the tongue and not offer a reward with that shock is just cruel. Another disappointment was the house beancurd. I bought a couple of orders to take away, and – conscious of the importance of consuming them “fresh” – sat down to eat it at the earliest opportunity. But the beancurd was not as smooth as some versions I’ve eaten, and also came in a syrup that was not sweet enough by some distance. It was actively disappointing, and for a restaurant that references beancurd in their name, quite a letdown indeed.

Of pedigree, and tradition

Roland Restaurant
Blk 89 Marine Parade Central, #06-750
Tel: +65 6440 8205


There are people for whom eating is a fad. For these people, it is important to keep up to date on the moving and shaking in the restaurant scene, and try the new restaurants as soon as they pop up. I, however, place myself squarely in the opposite camp. I like to search out the old restaurants – the ones that have been around for ages, the ones with tradition. In the restaurant business, time is the greatest arbiter of quality. You can’t keep customers coming back through good times and bad, if you didn’t put good food on the table. You just can’t. Don’t get me wrong: to suggest that just because a restaurant has been around for a while, their food will necessarily be spectacular is questionable logic at best. But you can’t go very wrong.

Roland Restaurant is one of those restaurants in Singapore that have pedigree up the wazoo – Chef Roland is from the family who used to run the famous Palm Beach Seafood Restaurant along Upper East Coast Road. This was back in the days when Upper East Coast Road was literally along the coast, before they reclaimed some land and built the ECP. Palm Beach was one of the several seafood places along that stretch, which all started from the same humble beginnings – in attap structures with zinc roofs, providing good food in mosquito-infested, “al fresco” settings. You have to drive down that stretch to get to my house, and I remember trundling down that road as a kid in the back of my dad’s beat up Datsun 1207. As I grew up, the restaurants slowly left one by one, to make way for condos and fancy residential developments. (The only one left standing today – Hua Yu Wee – is still going strong, in that beautiful colonial bungalow-on-stilts of theirs. I always mean to go back there, but the word on the street is that the quality has taken a tremendous dip, and so I am afraid of ruining my impression of the place.)

In any case, Palm Beach eventually closed for good, but Chef Roland eventually trained at the famous Sin Leong Restaurant. When Chef Sin Leong decided to hang up his wok, he left the restaurant to his disciple, who renamed it after himself. To this day, they are in the same, quirky location – at the top floor of a multi-storey carpark in Marine Parade.

If being the progeny of two famous franchises isn’t enough, consider these additional titbits: the family that ran Palm Beach Seafood is widely credited with inventing chilli crab – a dish that has now achieved ubiquitous, “national dish” status in Singapore. Also, Chef Sin Leong, Chef Roland’s mentor, was one of the four “heavenly kings” of the culinary world back then who created yusheng – the raw fish dish that is a must at Chinese New Year dinners now. Put all this together, and it is like saying Roland Restaurant is like Man O’War, Citation, Secretariat and Ruffian all rolled into one. I struggle to think of another franchise with as much pedigree as this one.

In any case, we got together for Sophia’s farewell the other day, and it fell to me to suggest a place. I hadn’t come back here in ages and, unsure of the quality, was a little hesitant about recommending it. But after considering the other options for good crabs in the East, there didn’t seem to be many other options: Eng Seng would have sold out by the time we got there, the seafood stretch at East Coast Park was a little difficult for everyone else to get to, and No Signboard at Geylang was in a pretty dodgy area. It was a good thing that Sophia seconded the suggestion, but she also cautioned that the place was sometimes hit-and-miss.

It might literally have been twenty years since I last visited the restaurant, and upon walking in I had no recollection of how it used to look like or how it had changed. What it does look like now is your standard banquet-style Chinese restaurant. For a Friday evening, it was surprisingly empty – apart from us there were only about six or seven other tables, and the restaurant was less than half full. I did a double take – surely this was not a good sign?

I needn’t have worried, because the food that Roland puts out is still – and I hate to use such a cliché but it is rather appropriate while eating crabs – finger-licking good. Roland has amassed a small array of signature dishes – culled from the history of Palm Beach and Sin Leong, and these do not disappoint. The prawns in soy sauce were succulent and flavoured well, while the braised pork ribs melted off the bone. Deep-fried you tiao came crispy and had good volume, without being too oily; and the sambal watercress was strangely addictive. The Peking duck was a little dry, and perhaps the most lacklustre of the dishes, but by then the kitchen had earned a reprieve.

And the crabs – who could forget the crabs? We ordered them two ways: in their signature chilli sauce as well as in a salted egg batter. Now, chilli crab may be a national dish, but it is one of those things that have as many variants as chefs, and nobody can agree on what the truly definitive version is. Some make it sweet, some make it spicy; some add crab roe, others add egg. Roland’s version was very good and had impressive amounts of crab roe – which I liked – but may have been a little too sweet for me, and definitely not spicy enough. The salted egg treatment was also, unfortunately, quite mediocre. The crabs themselves were meaty and fresh, though, so say what you will, but those dishes still disappeared in a flash. Li Jade was thoughtful enough to stop by even though she had eaten already – but she was unfortunate enough to arrive just as the crabs were served, so nobody paid her any attention.

Obviously, the best part of eating crabs is getting to dip mantous into the sauce and slurp it up. Roland’s mantous are bite-sized, which make them easier to handle with chopsticks, and also easier to polish off. I lost count of how many of those little buggers I ate, and by the end of the meal the serving dish with the chilli sauce was absolutely spotless.

The highlight of my night was the fried seafood mee sua at the end of the meal, to fill whatever empty spaces in the stomach you could possibly have after eight or nine courses of protein. It was fried well, had good, understated, nuanced flavour – and the noodles were very tasty.

We were there for quite a while – during what we thought would have been a peak hour – but the crowd never got larger. I felt a little sad for this bastion of the culinary scene. They’re still around, so they can’t be doing too badly, but I can’t help but feel that all the new restaurants popping up are dealing significant blows to the old ones.

My opinion may be coloured by nostalgia and love of tradition, but it isn’t too coloured that I cannot admit – Roland is not amazing. They will, sadly, not blow you away. The signature dishes are very good and very honest, but they are clearly not one of the big boys in the restaurant scene any more. From a subjective standpoint, I like Roland, and would go back in a heartbeat – because the food is satisfying and good value for money. But from an objective, professional standpoint – the place lacks the exquisite treatments of the finer restaurants around, and the oomph of the better tze char places.

As the demography of Singaporeans changes, and their tastes along with it, Roland is slowly but surely becoming outmoded. You and I from a certain generation may still appreciate their signature dishes, and the way they cook these dishes, but sooner or later more and more will beg to differ. It’s like watching Roger Federer play tennis now. He is still a wonderful player, but no longer the best, and try as he might it is only a matter of time before he is surpassed by more and more up-and-coming players. Watching him play is only going to get more and more painful for his fans – maybe not now, but surely in two or three years’ time, if he plays on for that long. The only question is – how much longer can he, and Roland Restaurant, continue to trade on their pedigree?

Walking in the Garden

Au Jardin Les Amis
1 Cluny Road
EJH Corner House, Botanic Gardens
Tel: +65 6466 8812

A very good friend of mine once said about women, “You can’t live with them, and you can’t kill them.” I think that must be how chefs think about events – corporate luncheons or dinners, weddings, rehearsals, what-have-you. For these events. chefs often have to cede some measure of creative control over the menu, and they can be quite taxing on the kitchen because large orders of the same dish have to go out all at the same time. Yet they are a necessary evil, especially for restaurants with little walk-in traffic, and on slow weeknights. You have to do them to survive.

This is especially the case for Au Jardin, at the Botanic Gardens. It is a Les Amis restaurant, which means it comes from pedigree. (To explain, Les Amis at Shaw Tower is the grande dame of Singapore fine dining, akin to a Tour D’Argent in Paris or Le Cirque in New York: it’s been around for ages and by this point is surely more institution than restaurant. Whether or not the food is good is no longer relevant.) But Au Jardin (French for “in the garden”), one of their sister restaurants, is also tucked away in the deep recesses of the Botanic Gardens, in an old colonial bungalow surrounded by lush, well-manicured greenery. Needless to say, there is little to no pedestrian footfall, unless you count joggers and bird-watchers. In a sense it is more a “destination” restaurant than anything – everyone who eats there has made a pre-meditated decision to do so. So since it’s pretty far from likely than a random jogger is going to walk into Au Jardin after his run and ask for the degustation, doing events is an absolute must.

I went for an event at Au Jardin last evening (and in the process turned down an invitation from Karen to eat beef hor fun at Kim Moh, shucks). The whole converted pre-war colonial bungalow in the middle of nowhere concept has been done before (and failed before – see Alkaff Mansion, and that other famous restaurant that was in one of the old black and white bungalows along Scotts Road, but whose name escapes me). Au Jardin hews closely to the successes of these illustrious forebears. Stately teak-on-whitewash, little ornamentation, as much natural light as possible – all great things, and all make for a wonderful setting. It’s a little formulaic, but by no means unenjoyable.

It is always a tough thing organizing events over dinner. Do you have your speeches or presentations before, during or after dinner? If you have them before dinner, people get hungry and restless. If you have them during dinner, nobody pays attention. And people tend to leave once they are fed, so you can’t have them after dinner. It’s a no-win situation. Some people do the events in between courses, but that isn’t optimal either. Unfortunately, I haven’t been to an event where this has been handled gracefully, and I don’t have any ideas. It’s a tough one, this.

The food at Au Jardin was not bad, but ultimately quite disappointing. This was not the French cooking of bars and bistros, with their heavy sauces and their often lengthy, complicated processes. This was supposedly refined French cooking, with light touches and innovative flavour pairings. And one cannot fault them for trying, I suppose. All three courses – two appetizers and a main – were well thought through, not overly complicated, and promised fine ingredients. Lobster salad with vine-ripe tomato. Seared Hokkaido sea scallop with poached egg in a truffle emulsion. Wagyu beef filet. But the thing about cooking like this is that it demands quality, fresh ingredients. I assume the sea scallop was really from Hokkaido. Now I don’t doubt that if you eat sea scallop in Hokkaido, it might be a life-changing experience. But once that sea scallop is chilled, air-freighted, and transported to Singapore – travelling thousands of miles and changing hands several times – it loses a lot of what is good and great about it. The scallop I wound up eating in the Botanic Gardens of Singapore was cooked precisely, and flavoured well, but it paled in comparison to some of the fresh seafood I have had in the past.

(Side note: I don’t know where the Wagyu beef was from. These days the term is bandied about so casually, who knows what you are getting any more? But I do know that it cannot have been from Japan, since Japanese beef imports to Singapore have been suspended since late April, due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease at a cattle farm in Japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture. In any case the beef that I wound up having was a long way short of Wagyu beef standards, and for some reason looked deceptively blood-red. I think they poured some of the juices on top of the filet to make it look red, but when I actually bit into it, it was a lot less rare than it looked. A very strange phenomenon.)

The other thing I noticed about Au Jardin was the uncannily stealthy, almost ninja-like efficiency of the waitstaff. Plates were whisked away, drinks refilled, cutlery replaced – all wordlessly and unnoticeably. I don’t know if this is a good thing – sometimes I like a little banter with my waitress (especially if she’s cute). At Au Jardin you strangely get none of that – all the waitstaff are trained to remain silent and expressionless, and to go about their duties speedily and with no fuss.

I don’t know if I would go back to Au Jardin (especially after looking at their prices online). I have no doubt of the chef’s talent, and their cuisine is one that I enjoy. It’s just that for their cuisine to work, fresh ingredients are paramount. And in Singapore – that is a little difficult. It’s still a very enjoyable place to sit down and have a meal though, and you really feel cut off from civilization even though Orchard Road is only two minutes away. I suppose it’s a good place to impress someone with, but the more discerning of companions will be able to see that you’re trying too hard.

So long, for now

Pavilion Restaurant
20 Craig Road
#01-02, Craig Place
Tel: +65 6557 2820

There are very few things I am willing to wake up early on Sunday mornings for. One of them is the practice of yum cha – going to restaurants and eating dim sum. I absolutely love doing this. Sometimes it seems that weekends wind up being busier than weekdays are – with one commitment after the other. Going for a nice leisurely dim sum brunch relaxes the mind and body like nothing else, and it is one of my favourite activities.

I got back from Sri Lanka Sunday morning at 8am after a red-eye, and any other reasonable person would have headed straight home for a deserved forty (or eighty) winks. But Victor had organised a brunch – to be his farewell before he leaves for Taiwan for a year – and it was one I could not miss. I headed home to shower and managed to close my eyes for an hour or so before it was time to head out again.

(Besides, he was buying, and I am cheap like that.)

Victor is one of my trusted foodie friends and eating kakis, and can always be counted on for good judgment when it comes to all things gastronomic. Our tastes are also quite similar in that we have an unabashed love of hawker food, and when it comes to restaurant dining we tend to prefer classical Chinese cuisine, with its soups and roasted meats. His departure may have meant just one less person in my network of scouts, but one who was a significant contributor. His presence will be missed.

He deferred to me for a choice of restaurant, and I suggested Pavilion. I had heard about it a little while ago from an acquaintance – and had wanted to wait till it had been open more than four or five months before trying it. Victor’s farewell came at just about the right time, and he was gracious enough to acquiesce to the suggestion – so off we were!

Pavilion is situated in an area with quite a bit of character, the Duxton/Keong Saik area, just a few doors down from Pasta Brava. It is pretty interesting coming here for dim sum on a Sunday because nothing else in the area – littered with bars and shady KTV pubs – is open at the time. Add that to the fact that it is smack on the fringes of the Central Business District – desolated on Sundays – and you have a restaurant that is bathed in an eerie calm as we approach it.


The inside was just as empty as the streets outside were, and for a minute we did a double-take, wondering if we were at the right place. But the restaurant soon filled up, and through our meal we saw a procession of families, groups of foodie friends – young and old alike – come and go. The clientele was decidedly eclectic, and it had the feel of a restaurant that had not come into its own yet, still finding its own gaggle of regulars.

The food surprised and spluttered in equal measure, alternating between the sublime and the shoddy. We started out really strong, with a cold dish of homemade beancurd with red cherry shrimp and century egg completely knocking me off my feet. I didn’t bother taking a photo of this since it was not much to look at, but one taste and I was reminded not to judge a book by its cover. The beancurd was soft and silky, and topped with a sauce made from century egg – so imagine white slabs covered in a gooey greenish-brown sauce. It didn’t look very appetising, but it was quite stellar.


Compared to the version at Victoria Peak, the siu yoke was at least cubed in sizeable portions, and paired with a decent Dijon. We also had a soup of crab meat and fish maw, which was very well executed. I don’t know why, and it may be just me, but restaurants never put enough pepper and vinegar in their soups. You may think it’s a personal taste thing, but I have never seen anyone drink soup from a Chinese restaurant without adding to taste. We all do it. It’s never seasoned enough when it comes out of the kitchen. Why wouldn’t chefs just adjust, and season the soups a little more? Perhaps it has now become a psychological mind-game, and chefs deliberately under-season the soups because they know diners will adjust it themselves anyway.



The dim sum dishes that we ordered were very impressive. I have to say Pavilion goes all out for some of these. Their siew mai was larger than any other version I’ve seen, and had large pieces of scallop in them – an appreciated twist. In contrast, the liu sha bao was tiny – the size of a golf ball – and despite the custard not being runny enough for my liking, was a very creditable effort. The deep fried spring rolls tasted rather ordinary, but at least didn’t taste oily or greasy.



It is right about here that the meal went downhill. We had ordered a set menu – at $78++ a very reasonably priced dim sum set menu for 4 – and rounding out the dim sum was a trio of “normal” dishes. The steamed kailan with beancurd and mei cai (preserved vegetables) was just passable, saved by the burst of umami that the mei cai gave the dish. The belly-rib “Zheng Jiang” style was battered and deep fried well, but somehow the taste just didn’t agree with me. This could be just a personal thing, for Daselin had many good things to say about the dish.



But what was severely disappointing was the wok-fried hor fun with pork and chye poh. Dry, dreary in colour, and lacking in wok hei, it really almost felt like an amateur had cooked it. There was nothing bringing together the dish, no harmony of flavours, no cohesion. By themselves, these are very cheap ingredients – rice flour noodles, strips of pork, and chye poh – and it really felt like it. I could only take two spoonfuls before I had to push the bowl away. Victor polished his bowl and joked that he didn’t like to waste food, but shook his head in disgust when I offered him the rest of my bowl to finish off.

The hor fun reinforced my innate distrust of set menus. Very often, restaurants will offer their star dishes as part of a set menu, but the line-up will invariably be rounded out with other disappointing dishes, or dishes on which they make the highest margins. At Chinese restaurants, you are almost always better off ordering a la carte.

Dessert was similarly uninspiring – two servings of tofu ice cream topped with a sesame and a lychee syrup. This place seems to really like the soybean, by the way.

Despite all that, I actually rather liked Pavilion. It is nice and cosy, and that first beancurd dish won them enough brownie points to forgive one or two misses. (Not the hor fun though, nothing can excuse that.) The service staff was efficient and attentive, and kind enough to let us stay long after the lunch hours – filling our teacups without asking.

So it is goodbye for now for Victor, and as we eventually trudged off from the restaurant there was a little sadness lingering. But we took comfort in two things: knowing that he would be back, and the fact that he could unearth more good eats in Taiwan. Consider this his overseas scouting mission, then!

The wisdom of crowds

Two Chefs
Blk 116 Commonwealth Crescent #01-129
Tel: +65 6472 5361

These days, the ease of expressing one’s opinion via a variety of media online has made the views of crowds instantly accessible. There is just one thing wrong with this: the crowds may not always be right. There is a site called hungrygowhere.com which serves as an aggregator of reviews on eating places in Singapore. Now, there are many good things about this site which I like. It is very comprehensive, and can normally be counted on to provide good, up-to-date information on all manner of establishments – from the one-man-operated kiosks to the hundred-seater banquet halls. I have to say that I post my reviews there sometimes (I want to be heard too you know, I believe I am entitled to that conceit). Yet I have found myself disagreeing many times with the collective opinions of certain places, and so when push comes to shove I am inclined not to trust this site.

I still believe in the masses’ general tendency towards accuracy – as in, the collective opinion more often than not points in the right direction, good or bad. But it is a blunt instrument, and cannot provide the level of precision serious foodies need. There is a world of difference between great and good, between divine and satisfactory, and that precision is lost when truly discerning opinions get mixed in with a whole bunch of others that are not so.

One of the dangers of this “crowdsourcing” is the tendency for aggregation to amplify certain attributes. It is human nature to want to know the opinion of others, and human nature for those opinions to subtly influence our own. If we read other reviews that echo our own opinions, we subliminally reinforce, and in some cases intensify, our own impressions of the place. In that way, what was maybe a decent-to-good, two-star restaurant at best, suddenly gets elevated to a three-star.

But as the saying goes, two heads are better than one, and that may be the rationale behind this stalwart of the tze char scene in Singapore. Two Chefs is actually opened by a pair of brothers, who have come together to bring you this no-frills, salt-of-the-earth eating place in the Commonwealth area. So far, and to my knowledge at least, they have not gone the way of countless other family businesses or hawker dynasties, and the two brothers look to be doing quite well together. I’ve heard that lines start forming by 6pm for dinner, and the wait for a place can hit the 45-minute or 1-hour mark. For good, simple, tze char comfort food – that is a long wait.

Two Chefs is an undisputed media and blogosphere darling. Almost every online review of it is generous to a fault, and the place was lauded by the Sunday Times as one of the best tze char places in Singapore. I rarely venture out of the East for food, so until recently had not had the good fortune to try it. But it was recently suggested as a venue for a midweek get-together, and despite there being other, more familiar names tossed in the hat – I plumped for this one just to check it out.

I was quite disappointed, for the food was very average. The one dish that everyone goes there for is the butter pork ribs, which are cutlets of pork breaded and deep-fried, and then coated with a powdery mixture that looks like grated parmesan cheese but is actually a secret formulation made from butter and sugar. This was not bad, I have to say, for the meat was tender and moist, and the buttery powder neither overly sweet nor cloying. But while it won high marks from me for innovation, it didn’t quite deserve the unadulterated adulation of the blogging community.

Other dishes were downright disappointing. The kailan hadn’t been blanched before wok-frying, and so retained a bitter pang. The tofu with golden mushroom wasn’t top-grade tofu, and the sauce tasted a little off. The drunken “dang gui” prawns were large and succulent, granted, but the Shaoxing broth it was in lacked oomph, and could perhaps have been rounded out with a fuller ingredient base.

We were so unimpressed by the quality (and quantity) of the food that we had to order a couple more dishes. To satisfy someone’s craving we got another treatment of pork ribs – this time a coffee pork ribs which was surprisingly good. But the three-egg vegetables that we got on the waitress’ recommendation only served to confirm that either this place was terrible, or the kitchen was having an off day. There is an art to cooking vegetables, for most leafy greens have little, or in some cases even unpleasant, flavour. Many cooks – in addition to their other seasonings – typically add a little sugar to the wok as the vegetables are cooking, which helps them to caramelize and adds both flavour and texture. This did not seem to have been done for the three-egg vegetables.

I do have to mention that the food came unbelievably fast. It felt as though we had only just finished ordering when the first dish came out the pass and was placed on our table. My hypothesis is that the kitchen – used to dealing with a full house on weekends – is such a well-oiled machine that cooking for a crowd of 60-or-70-percent capacity is a piece of cake for them. If that is true, then it is cause for admiration.

I really wanted to like this place. The heartland location, the utilitarian setup. The lack of pretensions, the honest fare. These are all good things, and true things. I tried to disassociate my appreciation of the place from what I had heard about it, to ensure objectivity and while true objectivity is perhaps impossible, I honestly did not think this place was all that great. It is not that it is bad, and I would be happy to go back there again since it is relatively affordable. But it is just not praise-worthy. I am sorry to say, the wisdom of the masses got it wrong on this one.

Easy peasy Japanesy

If there is one thing the Japanese are impossibly good at, it is exporting their food. Japanese, I believe, is as ubiquitous around the world as Italian or French cuisine – and the words “sushi” or “ramen” have become as well-known as “pasta”, or “confit”. The assault takes place on many fronts – first it comes in the form of products: Japanese crackers, or instant ramen, etc. Then the food service wave starts – first the “locally-adapted” restaurants start popping up. At the onset these are typically modified to suit the local palate, and will make concessions in taste or any other component to secure a local following. At the same time, if there are any Japanese expatriates at all in the area, you’ll also see the smaller, sole-proprietor shops popping up – with food that is typically more authentic – to cater to the Japanese diaspora. But once Japanese cuisine has entered the consciousness of the locals, the mainstream quest for authenticity starts. At this point the Japanese chains come in, and since they already have the brand equity they can afford to insist on product quality and consistency of the experience they sell. So you’ll see ramen chains abroad insisting on bringing the noodles, or even other ingredients, in from Japan; and refusing to use local substitutes. More Japanese food products get imported, people get more and more exposed to Japanese food, they get more and more curious about it, and it becomes a virtuous cycle.

It is interesting to appreciate this phenomenon in Singapore – from the point of view of someone who was away for a long time. To me, it seems that there are thousands more Japanese restaurants in Singapore these days as compared to before I left for the States. And the palate of Singaporeans is changing. There has always been a local fascination with Japanese food – and indeed, all things Japanese – aided no doubt by that bastion of television programming, Japan Hour. But while before, that fascination stemmed from a curiosity for the foreign and exotic, these days there is a subtle shift beginning. Locals no longer view Japanese as an exotic “other” but increasingly accept it as part and parcel of the local dining scene. How you can tell this is very simple. When you are planning a dinner out for a sizeable group, it is invariably difficult to pick a cuisine, much less a restaurant, that satisfies everyone. Someone might not like the spice of Indian food, for example. Or another might shun the carbo-rich Italian diet. Others view even more exotic cuisines like Mediterranean or Greek with a healthy dollop of mistrust. Yet almost nobody will complain when you suggest Japanese – and while that may be a result of this wonderfully diverse and amazingly agreeable cuisine, it is also testament to how assimilated it has become.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with all of this, of course, and I will be the first to raise my hand and say that I am quite the fool for Japanese myself. This past week I went on a bender of sorts – four days of Japanese food in a row – and lived to tell the tale.

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Tuesday – Aoba Hokkaido Ramen
2 Orchard Turn
#B3-25 ION Orchard
Te: +65 6509 9394

Nowhere is this proliferation of Japanese cuisine more evident than in the spread of ramen. If you mentioned ramen to anyone ten years ago, they’d probably be able to tell you what they knew – that it was noodles in broth, typically served with a slice of belly pork and an egg, and sometimes topped with seaweed or other garnishing. Some might even be able to describe that famous scene in the movie ‘Tampopo’. But these days, mention ramen to the man on the street and more likely than not he or she will be able to expound on the various types of broth – shio, shoyu, miso or tonkotsu – and the various regional noodle variants. He or she will be able to tell you that tonkotsu broth is made at a rolling boil for up to 10 hours or more, because the vigorous boil helps to emulsify the fat and water, creating an ultra-tasty, milky-looking broth. Knowledge of ramen has increased exponentially, as has the availability of different styles in Singapore.

Aoba is a franchise from the northern island of Hokkaido, supposedly where ramen is most revered. I believe this is due to the suitability of a hot bowl of noodles and broth to the harsh winters there. They have opened a couple of franchises here in Singapore – one of them at Ion Orchard – and after seeing the queue at Watami we decided to come here instead.

There are people who may not understand what all the fuss about ramen is. After all – it is just noodles in broth. These are the people that do not truly understand the Japanese approach to food and life. To the Japanese, simplicity is sacred, and perfection is a goal to be accomplished at all costs. When the Japanese put out a product, every single component of that product must be perfect. The Japanese do not subscribe to the 80/20 rule. They do not cut corners. To them, everything is a craft, and mastery of that craft is the highest ideal. Each product that they put out should be a work of art – so even if they are doing something simple, they do it well and they do it with pride. That is why ramen holds so much allure to the Japanese. It is simple, sure, but to take something simple and make it into a life-changing experience is anything but. And to be able to replicate that process over and over again is also far from simple. That is what the Japanese live for, and that is why they are obsessed with ramen.

By those lofty standards, Aoba falls a little short. I had the Shoyu ramen and while the broth had good flavour – the chashu was limp and uninspiring. The noodles were good taste-wise but lacked a little springiness. I did like the egg though – it had that mushy quality of the not-quite-hard-boiled eggs you typically get in ramen. As an overall product the ramen was above average, but a long way short of life-changing.

Wednesday – Itacho Sushi
2 Orchard Turn
#B2-18 ION Orchard
Tel: +65 6509 8911

By some quirk of fate, I found myself back at Ion Orchard the next day, and we decided on sushi this time. What’s odd about Itacho is that it is not a Japanese franchise, but instead originated in Hong Kong. The chain has since expanded to China, Taiwan and Singapore (they probably know better than to enter the Japanese market). Itacho @ Ion exhibits many of what is bad about chain restaurants – cookie-cutter décor being one of them – and some other faults not specific to chain restaurants. In an effort to maximize revenue, tables are jam-packed into the restaurant space – at times I almost felt as though the table next to us was participating in our conversation. Service is rushed and impersonal – understandably given the crowds and the turnover during the dinner rush – and when I cracked a joke to our waitress she seemed a little taken aback and did not know how to respond.

But it also exhibits what is so good about chain restaurants. They clearly have their processes in place – and have a very interesting cha chaan teng style of noting the table’s orders on a mini clipboard, which is kept on the back of one of the chairs at the table. More importantly, they must have great purchasing power, for their product is pitched at a very affordable price given its quality. The sushi is fresh enough, the quality surprisingly good, and each piece goes for around $2 or $3. It is not cheap, seeing as how I need about 20 of the little buggers to feel full, and some of the more expensive pieces can go up to $7 or more; but it is not ridiculous either. I’m not sure how they pull this off – especially since they only have the one Singapore outlet (for now), so there are less economies of scale compared to their network in Hong Kong.

Itacho smartly stays away from sashimi because the truly transcendent sashimi demands absolute freshness, which is often difficult and expensive. The focus here is on sushi, and the results of that focus are clear to see. The sushi with cooked seafood at Itacho is actually very good – what they do is they roast the piece of seafood gently so that only one side is cooked through, and when you do eat the piece of sushi you get the contrasting textures of cooked and raw at the same time. Overall the restaurant’s offering is far from exquisite stuff, and it is clearly a product for the masses. But the people at Itacho do not see the need to dumb down that product. A restaurant with lesser ambition would limit the menu to the cheaper products, or those easy to source, and wind up with the same six types of sushi you could get anywhere else. But Itacho understands that the average consumer demands much more than that. That’s why the wagyu beef is on the menu. That’s why you can get three grades of fatty salmon – with more or less tendon. Itacho cuts the right corners in order to strike a good balance between quality and cost, and the result is an impressive selection of decent sushi at affordable prices.

Thursday – Saboten
9 Raffles Boulevard
#P3-01 Parco Marina Bay, Millenia Walk
Tel: +65 6333 3432

Laura had told me earlier about this hidden enclave of Japanese restaurants at Parco Millenia Walk, and I had been meaning to try it out. So when the crowd consensus – not for the first time – fell to Japanese, I suggested going to this place to check it out. It is really hidden away, on the third floor of the department store, and since the shopping crowd had thinned by the time we got there, it was eerily quiet. But it gave us a chance to view the several Japanese restaurants – and one lone Italian place. Each of them had a different focus – there was a sushi place, two ramen places and of course, Saboten, which specializes in tonkatsu.

On hindsight I felt this was the standout meal of the week. Saboten does one thing and does it very well. The panko was crispy and flavourful, and the pork cutlet inside tender and juicy. The other breaded meats were uniformly excellent. You could gripe about the miso soup (standard-issue) or the rice (plain, when I expected vinegared) but both of those items are free flow, so it is hard to gripe about them.

But the most enjoyable thing about Saboten is the hand-chopped cabbage that they serve before the meal. They provide two dressings to eat the cabbage with – one a yuzu-flavoured soy sauce, and the other a sesame oil vinaigrette – the latter of which was quite amazing. ZJ commented that she had never been so eager to eat cabbage, and it was a sentiment echoed by everyone at the table.

What I also liked about Saboten was its attention to the little things. The salad bowls that they gave us came chilled. The tonkatsu came on a mini-grill, which meant that any residual oil would drip onto the plate below rather than cling to the pieces of meat. (For the record the tonkatsu at Saboten wasn’t very oily in the first place.) It’s the little things that separate the great from the good, and it was pleasing to see a restaurant take the time to give all things their due.

Friday – Waraku
6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#03-89/97/98 The Central @ Clarke Quay
Tel: +65 6327 8860

There are three so-called enclaves of Japanese food in Singapore that I can think of. First and foremost is the Cuppage Plaza area – the original Japanese expatriate hangout and the most authentic. Then you have the Parco Millenia Walk space where Saboten is. Finally you have the Central, right next to Clarke Quay. Here you have the generalist chain restaurants Ma Maison, Sun With Moon, Waraku and the ramen-yas Marutama and Santouka.

The Japanese chain restaurants all have the same formula: a little bit of everything food-wise, oversized bowls, glitzy menus with many photos and generally a greater emphasis on presentation. You’re not really going to these places for the quality, so it’s really a crapshoot picking between them. Waraku has booths with a nice quayside view, so that was where we headed. (Unfortunately the group wound up too big to sit at the booths, so we wound up without a view after all.)

It was a good thing I had already eaten ramen, sushi and tonkatsu earlier in the week because these aren’t very good at Waraku. I had a curry chicken udon which, I have to say, made me very happy. Unfortunately nothing else I tasted that night was impressive, or even any good. Michelle’s tuna tartare came smothered in an overly salty soy sauce, which destroyed the dish. The smoked salmon, avocado and asparagus roll had too little avocado, and the salmon wasn’t smoked, but raw. The soft-shell crab roll came in a tamago wrap which was rubbery to the bite. The agedashi tofu was bland and uninspiring. After a while I gave up trying to sample other people’s food. What was the point? It was all bad. I must have lucked out with the only decent dish on the menu.

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If there was one thing consistent about the Japanese places that I went to this week, it was that they were all doing brisk business. Singaporeans, it seems, just cannot get enough of Japanese food. It is all very well and good, but the day after my Japanese bender I ate some good old mee pok tar, and realized that when the rubber meets the road I would really rather eat Singaporean hawker food. Call me crazy, but it looks like I won't be moving to Japan anytime soon.

Real men of genius

Chu Fa (Pu Tian) Restaurant
楚发莆田（兴华）本地菜

In this era of ours where cooking as a profession, and food in general, has been slowly but surely fetishized – you get 24-hour networks dedicated to culinary shows, you get chefs enjoying a level of celebrity hitherto unseen, you get a million and one food blogs trumpeting the strengths and weaknesses of every new restaurant that opens. Don’t get me wrong, there are positive effects to this – chief among them being that, compared to generations past, the general populace is better informed and able to make healthy, sustainable choices in what they eat. But it can all get a little much for what is a pretty basic endeavour – feeding people.

It is easy to find reviews of the fashionable restaurants in almost any media these days – ranging from the pithy to the protracted. Almost everybody who has a camera or can string several words together is suddenly the next Fisher, or Liebling, or Reichl. And who am I to begrudge them their opinion? (I am, after all, one of those hacks.) But I have to say a large majority of the stuff you read is, unfortunately, noise. You can tell by the number of exclamation marks that are used, or the inability to describe anything beyond ‘good’ or ‘nice’ or ‘delicious’. Thankfully, there is still quality out there, the healthy smattering of blog posts that are able to provide one or more of the following: an honest-to-goodness opinion, a compelling narrative, engaging prose, and useful information – and the rare few blogs who can do so on a consistent basis.

I was thinking about this the other day and got to wondering about the restaurants that nobody likes to blog. Sure, everyone blogs the good restaurants. Some people blog the bad restaurants. And the new restaurants, especially those opened by famous chefs. But who blogs the middling restaurants – the ones that just get by with marginally decent food at affordable prices, tucked away in the heartlands with minimal publicity? These are the places just down the block that command the loyalty of your average Joe Sixpack, who takes his wife and two kids there on a Saturday night as a reward for the week’s labours. You don’t get fancy ingredients at these places. You don’t get elaborate preparations. You just get a hot meal, marginally better than what you could throw together yourself, in simple surroundings and at very reasonable prices. Who blogs those restaurants?

My mother took my brother and me to just one such place the other day, when none of us wanted to cook, or had an opinion where to eat. In her mind this place was cheap and decent, and if there is one thing my mother is a sucker for, it is value. She also loves Heng Hwa (Xinghua) cuisine, and had tried this place’s take on Heng Hwa lor mee, mee sua and beehoon. It wasn’t great, she cautioned, but it was good enough.

It was a little on the late side when we went, I suppose. Especially compared to New York, people in Singapore tend to eat dinner earlier, and 7pm is considered prime-time. By the time we got there it was nearing 9pm and the crowd at the restaurant – if there ever was one – had thinned to a couple of tables. This is not a place you go to for the décor, unless you are a fan of whitewashed walls and industrial tiling. One thing I wished they would change was their fluorescent lighting, which was bright, white and unforgiving. No restaurant should have fluorescent lighting. It kills the mood for eating.

Although this place puts out some Heng Hwa dishes, and is advertised as having Putian roots, they have expanded their repertoire to include all manner of Singaporean tze char staples (the ubiquitous yam ring, sambal kang kong, etc). In truth their cuisine was probably more akin to a foreign cuisine adapted to suit the local palate, and could not be called one or the other.

My mother, having been here multiple times, ordered two of her favourite dishes here – the spicy la-la, and the drunken prawns cooked in bamboo. Neither was very impressive, with the la-la particularly disappointing, but at least the prawns were large and fresh and the broth in which they came had the good, strong heft of Shaoxing wine. The Heng Hwa lor mee was poor – it had hints of the flavours that the dish was known for, but the overall taste profile was not a rounded one, and it felt a little uneven.

There was one thing here that surprised me greatly though. They did a wonderful preparation of deep-fried snapper. At least, I think it is a snapper – I’ve never known the English name, only the Cantonese one (马友鱼 ma yau yu). What they do is they slice the fish cross-sectionally instead of filleting it, so you wind up with oval-shaped pieces with a T-section of the spine in the middle. Then they dust it with flour and deep fry it. It’s a pretty standard treatment but difficult to do well, since the skin of the fish and the exterior have to remain crisp while the inside has got to cook through without drying out. The version here was flavoured just enough not to mask the natural flavour of the fish, and also deep fried to perfection. Also decent was the Heng Hwa mee sua – the noodles were springy and generously coated with the clam-based sauce.

I gave my mother a little stick for taking us here – and “wasting” a perfectly good meal on barely average food, but it was all in good fun, of course. As we left I mused to myself that this was a self-respecting business, with people doing good, honest work. There was no reason to let their limitations, real or imagined, diminish the dignity that they so rightly deserved. The family at the table across from us lingered for about half an hour after the last pair of chopsticks had been laid on the table, so they must have enjoyed it. And the enthusiastic goodbye of the waitress that showed us out could only have come from someone who felt a healthy dose of pride in her establishment and its offerings. Chu Fa may not be the next hawker made good, or the next blogosphere darling. But it is what it is, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise – so while criticism may be justified, it should be accorded nothing but the utmost respect.