Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: Singapore

Author: My Husband

After spending two weeks in India, my colleagues and I went our separate ways. One decided to fly home via Frankfurt (effectively flying around the world to get to/from India), and the other spent the weekend in HK before continuing on to Vancouver. I was the laziest and decided to simply spend the weekend in my transit city, Singapore, for some personal R&R before heading home.

In the foreground is the symbol of Singapore – the Merlion. The tall building in the background is the Swissotel Stamford, which used to be the tallest hotel in the world. In the middle is the Esplanade (also affectionately know as the durian for its spiky exterior), which serves as Singapore’s stage for cultural events. To the right of the Esplanade are the hotels at Marina Bay.

Being in Singapore is a treat, and despite my being away for years and years, it always feels like home every time I’m back. It is all too easy to slip back into the warm embrace of the country, of family, and of my childhood sights, sounds, and tastes; once I step through the sliding doors of the airport terminal, I’m back in familiar territory.

When in Singapore, I would usually take a room in one of the hotels at Marina Bay, and over the years, I’ve stayed at most of them. However, Marina Bay is a little out of the way and I wasn’t interested in spending the bulk of my 2 days commuting, so I decided to put up at the centrally-located Intercontinental this time around.

The hotel boasts a fusion colonial/peranakan theme. It feels quite genteel and thus appropriate for an Intercontinental. However, uncharacteristically for an Intercontinental, the service was not always all that it should have been. My favourite Intercontinental is still the Paris Le Grand in France.

The hotel is attached to the Bugis Junction mall, which boasts of a fully air-conditioned “shopping street”. The mall was built around several blocks of restored Peranakan shophouses, and a portion of it was enclosed with a glass roof and air-conditioned.

The glass ceiling and walls enclosing the space between the restored shophouses.

The interior of Bugis Junction. These used to be real shophouses. In days of yore, the shopkeepers would operate their businesses on the ground floor of these buildings and live on the second and third stories.

Across the street from the hotel, you can still see some of the unrestored, un-gentrified shophouses. This stretch of shops are mostly traditional coffee-shops and eating houses. I’m sure the food at these places are very good, but I’m just not used to eating hot foods in 30+ degree weather anymore…

My first full day in Singapore, I met up with some close relatives and had lunch and dinner at the Shang Palace and Palm Beach respectively. These will be featured as quick takes in the next couple of posts. The next day, I went to Orchard Road to pick some items up for my wife, and I again took the opportunity to have lunch at… Food Republic. I had my aunt and uncle with me that day, and the three of us really went to town on the food at the Wisma Atria FR outlet…

FR… again…

Thye Hong hokkien prawn noodles. These were savory, but with a slight tinge of sweetness imparted by the prawn stock used to cook the noodles. The mix of noodles gave this dish differing degrees of al-dente’dness.

Also from Thye Hong. Imho, these were even better tasting than the prawn noodles. Expertly fried with plenty of “wok hei” and fresh cockles, this was the best cha kway teow I’ve had in quite some time. Our Vancouver readers can find an approximation of this dish at the “Curry King” stall at the Osaka supermarket mall foodcourt.

This is the local fried radish “cake”. The “cake” is made with a slurry of rice flour and grated radish, and then steamed until solid. The “cake” is then sliced up, and fried up with eggs and other seasonings. This is a personal favourite, and I’ve never lost the taste for it after all these years. As far as I know, nobody makes a dish like this in Vancouver.

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Location: Kedah House Restaurant and Cafe   
1652 Marine Dr. SE
Vancouver, BC
604-321-1114

Author: my husband

Isn’t it strange how the things we overlook usually happen to be right under our very noses? For me, such was the case with the Kedah House Restaurant. I drive by the place on the way to the office, but I have never given it more than a cursory glance. Certainly, it did not strike me as somewhere that I should eat at. Kedah House was more of a prop, a waypoint on the drive to work, a reminder that there is still 20 minutes of commute to go.

Happily, a confluence of recent events helped me to break out of this rather unthinking state of mind. It started when Christina and I watched an episode of Chua Lam’s “蔡澜逛菜栏” where he featured a popular rojak stall in Singapore. That got me thinking about scoring some rojak, which led me to google for places in Vancouver that served this particular dish. The search resulted in a hit on an eGullet article that mentioned Kedah House serving rojak. Armed with that information, as well as a positive review of the restaurant on Chowtimes, we made our way there…

The restaurant is located in a strip mall just off SE Marine Drive. We got there well after 6pm on a weeknight, which was great because the other businesses were closed for the day and parking was plentiful. Not having to deal with the challenge of finding parking, I strolled into the restaurant in a rather relaxed state of mind – hey, dinner was off to a good start already!

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The place was pretty quiet that evening, with two or three tables occupied. Several customers (regulars judging from their familiarity with the staff) came through while we were having our meal, but it never came close to being a full house. That’s all for the best then, because we counted only 1 cook in the kitchen and 1 staff for the front of house. I’m not sure if they could have handled any more customers that evening. The décor was pretty plain, and reminded me of any number of home-style Malay restaurants one would find in Singapore. But that said, the place was clean, the staff friendly, and most importantly, the customers that came through had Singaporean and/or Malaysian accents. That last point is almost as good as an iron-clad guarantee that the food at this place will be pretty authentic.

Every table was set up with a jug of water and two empty glasses. I suppose this reduced the need to have more front of house staff, and we didn’t mind it. Besides, it’s a good thing to have lots of water within easy reach when you are having spicy food.

We ordered three dishes to taste. Rojak (woohoo!), Beef rendang and Tahu goreng.

The rojak was first up and we were mighty pleased with it. While not as good as that which can be found in Singapore, Kedah House’s version is authentic enough. For those readers new to rojak, it is a salad made with (usually) jicama, cucumber, deep fried tofu, bean sprouts, pineapples, you-tiao and a full-bodied dressing. The dressing is a concoction of primarily balachan and tamarind paste, which gives it wonderful pungency and complexity. It isn’t much to look at, but when the whole works come together, it is a mélange of sweet, tart and savory flavours interspersed with many interesting textures. It just works. And we enjoyed it.

Next up, the rendang. This is one of Christina’s favourite SE Asian dishes, and we would never think of visiting a SE Asian restaurant without trying their version of it. For readers not familiar with it, rendang is a (usually) beef dish made with coconut milk and various spices. Conceptually, it is very much like a cooked-down stew. Kedah House’s rendang is drier than most, but the sauce really hit the spot with strong galangal and lemon grass flavours coming through. The beef is a little more chewy than we would have liked, but it was still a good dish.

So far so good then. The tahu goreng was served last. Tahu goreng is a deep friend tofu dish, dressed with cucumbers and bean sprouts, drenched in a chunky peanut sauce. As much as we tried, we didn’t enjoy this much. The tofu was too firm and the peanut sauce too runny – the whole affair tasted rather bland. Oh well.

We finished the meal with an ice kachang. Ice kachang is a dessert made with shaved ice (really important – the ice has to be shaved!) and flavoured with a mix of syrups. As far as we’re concerned, the one thing that makes or breaks ice kachang is gula melaka, or palm sugar. Gula melaka imparts a smoky caramel/coconut flavour that elevates the simple shaved ice (well… any dessert really) into something far more special. It’s almost like tasting the essence of coconut itself! We had high hopes for the ice kachang since the rojak and rendang were good. But alas, it was not to be. First, the ice wasn’t shaved – it was crushed in a blender, and not well enough because there were pretty big chunks of ice still in it. Second, there wasn’t much (if any) gula melaka in it, just a bunch of coloured syrup. In truth, it was more of a (poorly blended) smoothie than an ice kachang. Again, oh well.

Still, we quite enjoyed the food at Kedah House. On this visit, we did not find all the dishes to our liking, but what we did like more than made up for those that we didn’t. And well, just you try finding rojak someplace else in Vancouver….