Corner Coffeeshop to Gourmet Gastrobar

Katong is slowly becoming gentrified.  Humble coffeeshops are giving way to gastrobars, restaurants, cafes, all-day breakfasts - the eating scene is changing slowly.  Interesting new ideas and concepts are starting to evolve. The new AliBabar is one good example of this slow evolution.

Once upon a time, at the corner of East Coast Road and Joo Chiat Rd, was a humble little corner coffeeshop, called AliBaba, famous for selling tau kwa pau. But there was something special about this humble little corner shop. Over time, it gained a reputation for incubating new restaurants. Aston's started out here.  Casa Bon Vento (Eurasian-Peranakan food) took up residence when it wanted to return to the East. A little French stall (Saveur) also had its start here before gaining popularity and moving off to the CBD. As such, one entrepreneur felt that it was timely to do up the place a little and introduce a new concept marrying the tradition of the old coffee shop with its reputation of being a place where one could get good food at hawker prices. Enter AliBabar, coffee shop by day, bar at night!

A longer review is available here, so I'll just give a brief run down of what's available. Just like a normal coffeeshop, there are a few stalls serving their fare- Le Petit Paradis, the new French stall, a   Filipino stall and a fried noodle stall (my uncle swears by the fried mee sua).  The first two are open for both dinner and lunch, but the fried noodles are only available during the day. At the time I visited, there was one more stall which was not opened yet..And, of course the bar.

I had dinner at Petit Paradise, a really nice pork collar with sauerkraut on the side.   The pork was nicely cooked - moist, savoury and tender.  It went really well with a glass of Silly Saison - did I mention that the bar sells specialty Belgian brews?

Variety, choice, new types of eateries are indeed very nice to have.  But I do hope that some of the traditional corner coffeeshops stick around for a long time to come.

The NUS Baba House

Front Door
Originally uploaded by Taking5

First post of 2011!

I visited the Neil Road, NUS Baba House last month, together with my Dad's three sisters (aka Tua Kor, Ji Kor and Sar Kor - as you can see we use the typical family naming conventions).

The NUS Baba House came about through a donation by the youngest daughter of Baba Tun Tan Cheng Lock, who wanted to preserve a little Baba/Nonya culture in modern Singapore.  The house has been carefully restored to what a typical Peranakan house would be like in the 1920s. This photo featured is of the "pintu pagar", the front entrance door. This particular door is so beautiful - the carvings are so detailed and the gold and silver paint only serve to bring out their beauty. 

Sadly, no photos are allowed inside, so there are not many more photos to feature.    And, in addition to my earlier post on Peranakan houses, I've found this very detailed description online of the typical Peranakan house, so I'm not going to go into that either. I will just give a quick account of the visit and how we experienced the Baba House. 

The four of us were part of a small group touring the House together with a guide.  The group included a small family group of three people - one Baba and two Nonyas (one obviously the little old matriarch of the family) currently residing in Australia but originally from Malaysia.  They were on holiday in Singapore and wanted to take a look at the Baba House.  The rest of the group were "ang mohs".  The guide said that one of the nice things about taking groups around, is that the Peranakans in the group often chime in with their own stories and experiences. (Of course, I can imagine the downsides too). 

We started off in the reception room in the front of the house, where we heard a little on the restoration work done on the house.  Our guide explained that the colour of the house (a bright blue) was similar to the original colour, detected when layers of paint were stripped off.  Whilst the colour might appear a little bright, it would fade over time to a more muted colour. 

Walking into the next room, we looked at the photographs of the former residents of the house.  We were told that the founder of the family first came to Singapore some time in the late 1800s.  The house however was purchased by one of his son's wives.  So it was only the third generation of the family which stayed in the house.  Upstairs, we visited the main bedroom where the old lady would have stayed.  Her marriage bed was against one wall, a smaller day bed against another.  There were a number of cupboards, where I assume she would have kept her sarongs and kebaya, plus a special cabinet for her handkerchiefs.

Whilst we walked through the house, my aunts reminesced about our family home, which was in the city centre (Choon Guan Street, just behind International Plaza) and as such sadly has been torn down and (I think) a tall condo block has taken its place.  We looked at the carvings on the screen dividing the entrance reception room from the rest of the house and they started talking about how, as little children, they had to clean the carvings using a tissue on the end of a chopstick.  We walked through the courtyard, and they talked about the well which used to be in the centre of their courtyard.  They looked at the bedroom, and started talking about their grandmother's (my greatgrandmother's) bed which is of course now in the Peranakan museum.

They were not alone.  We looked at photos of a Peranakan wedding, including the heavily decked out bride.  The litttle old Nonya in our group chipped in to say that the 10 layers of clothing were so heavy, that most nonyas of her generation had stopped wearing most of them.

In some ways, we are indeed in a transition period when many older nonyas and babas are still around and can still relate stories of how they lived, and how their parents lived, so many years ago.  But this generation will not be around forever, so we have only this short time to listen to and record their stories.

The Baba House is only open by appointment, so do check the website for further details if you are interested.

Deepavali at the Sri Senpaga Vinayagar Temple

I took a morning walk around East Coast Road this morning and spotted the crowds around the well-known Sri Senpaga Vinayagar Temple in Ceylon Road. Hindus were starting off their Deepavali with a morning visit to the temple.

The temple is of course quite a well-known building on Ceylon Road - a temple building was first built on the site in about 1850. The site was chosen because a statue of the god Vinayagar had washed up under a Chempaka tree by a pond in this area. Devotees were largely from the Ceylon or Sri Lankan Tamil community (hence the name of the road). The temple has been rebuilt a few times and underwent major renovation and re-consecration a few years ago. It is a true landmark of Katong, and indeed of Singapore.

I'd walked inside the temple on a previous excursion. As it was not then a festive occasion, the temple compound was quiet and peaceful. The columned hall within had a brightly painted ceiling, telling stories of Lord Vinayagar (after whom the temple is named) from the time of his birth till marriage.

Today, the temple was indeed a busy place with people coming and going all the time. Cars and taxis dropped off their passengers, people walked to and from East Coast Road. The devotees seemed to be mainly men - likely, from the foreign worker community. They stood in groups here and there outside the temple dressed neatly in well-ironed shirts.

There were also a number of family groups - the women in colourful saris and punjabi suits, and children in their best clothing too. It was amusing to see one family come in their best clothes - all except their footwear, which appeared to be old slippers and sandals. Of course, I guess I would have done the same. I've never liked putting my shoes outside the temple where anyone could get at them.

The website has the history of the temple, and more photos. Reading the website, I found out that of the $6m required to renovate/rebuild the temple, some $500,000 was donated by Singaporeans from other faiths. What a precious treasure is religious harmony - and how sad that in Ceylon itself, this religious harmony has been shattered.

Here's wishing our Hindu brothers and sisters a Happy Deepavali!

P.S. More photos of the temple here.

Opening of the Peranakan Museum

Well, yesterday was an exciting and most memorable day for the Nonyas and Babas of Singapore. The opening of the Peranakan Museum in the old Tao Nan School in Armenian Street was an important day for the community here.


My cousin and I had been awaiting this day for some time. We went down at about 2pm and met the crowd first in the "BaBazaar" which was on the carpark next door and then in the Museum itself. Many Nonyas and Babas came dressed for the occasion, chitchatting with friends, looking at the stalls and sampling the food. I have to admit that I did not try the food. It looked just the stuff I get around home - Chilli Padi (on Joo Chiat Rd), Guan Hoe Soon (Joo Chiat Rd), Rumah Kim Choo (East Coast Road) - you get the picture. There were also stalls there from the Peranakan Association and the Penang Peranakan society. There was also a lovely jewellery stall selling modern versions of the gorgeous old pieces - but the prices were such that put me off impulse buys. We also stuck around for the chendol making demonstration, of which more later.

The queue into the museum itself was pretty long, stretching outside the building and next to the BaBazaar. But we were happy to wait. The crowds just inside were also quite substantial and we went straight to the second floor, skipping the first room on "origins". The second floor features mainly the Baba and Nonya wedding rituals, whilst the third floor, the activities of daily life - the clothing, the jewellry, food and crockery, religion, and a special exhibition, "Junk to Jewels: The Things that Peranakans Value". Lots of lovely examples of beautiful beaded work (photo shows one sample). One special exhibit: Dr Goh Keng Swee's golf club, with which he had hit his third hole-in-one. There are also lots of interactive elements, mainly for children.

I don't really intend to go into the details of the collection. What really struck me was the strong feeling of connection which visitors seemed to have with the exhibits. There was an old, dainty Nonya walking around the museum hand-in-hand with her grandson. Dressed in her sarong kebaya and kasut manek, she was commenting about the exhibits to him. You hear people say comments like "Didn't my mother have something like this...." Truly, this is a people's museum indeed.

More photos of the museum found here.

Old Space, New Place

Katong used to be the civic hub of the East Coast. In a way it still is - the churches, the temples, the mosque are still around in this Katong/Joo Chiat area. We also used to have our own Joo Chiat Police Station, near the junction of East Coast and Joo Chiat Roads (opposite the TBG shophouse featured in an earlier post). But the police station moved away long ago, and subsequently the Immigration Department moved in and set up its Field Office (and, I think, a temporary lock-up) there. I visited it once and recall the thick walls of the cells, the large iron-grilled doors, the rather sterile atmosphere of this government office.

Immigration department has long moved out also. The fences and gates surrounding the complex have come down and it has become Katong Village, home of many little restaurants and shophouses. There was an attempt at putting a food centre here - somehow, it did not have staying power although I recall it being fairly popular at one point. Other restaurants came and went. But today, there seems to be a certain new life emerging. Waraku Japanese Restaurant, Samba Brazil Steakhouse Churrascaria, Samy's Curry (of Dempsey Road fame), have all set up shop in this area, together with the pool hall and the one or two pubs which have somehow hung on. It remains to be seen as to how they will survive - I have hopes of Waraku which is pretty crowded whenever I go there. Samy's Curry - not so sure. I think that afficiandos would flock to the "mother restaurant", and in Katong the fish head curry competition is a fierce one. Whilst Samy's have their signature fish head curry, many zi cha stalls will give you a choice between Thai style, Assam, Hongkong style and so on.

Finally, the main office of the old Police station has a new tenant, a Hongkong style noodle restaurant. The home of law and order has transformed into a rather more fun space. Pictures of cantopop stars adorn the walls, and stacks of magazines to read encourage people to hang out here. This place is one of the few which sells my old favourite, beef hor fun in black bean sauce, complete with onions and green capsicum, topped with black pepper. (I acquired a taste for this in my student days where it was the staple of all the Cantonese restaurants in London's Chinatown.) And of course it sells instant noodles with various meat toppings, Yinyang coffee/tea mix, hot coke with honey and lemon etc etc. But their function rooms (for rental) and the outdoor alfresco dining area are often empty. Surprising, as compared to the Hongkong restaurant further down East Coast Road, it is probably better value for money and has better car parking facilities to boot. I suppose only time will tell.

Tay Buan Guan

When I was a child, Tay Buan Guan was the one and only supermarket in Katong and it was here my family went to do our supermarket shopping (in addition to going to the old Siglap wet market). The selection of items was good, and the ready access to the ample carparking nearby was also very convenient.

Tay Buan Guan (also called TBG) was situated just behind the row of shophouses on East Coast Road which continues into Joo Chiat Road; it could be reached through three of the shophouses. One of these shophouses was a confectionary. My mother used to order my birthday cake there, plus other pastries to serve at the family party. The other two shophouses had different uses - can't remember exactly what but I do recall that for some years one was used as a thoroughfare into the main East Coast Road. Near the entrance to this particular building was a games arcade. The first games arcade I'd ever been to. I remember driving around the circuit and shooting some sea monster, under the supervision of my father.

Unfortunately for Tay Buan Guan, new players came onto the Katong supermarket scene - Cold Storage off Amber Road (in the old Seaview Hotel compound - it has now shifted to Katong Mall), Emporium departmental store and supermarket in Katong Shopping Centre (now closed down), and finally, the building of Parkway Parade which was and still remains the dominant player on the retail scene in Marine Parade. My family did continue going, off-and-on, to Tay Buan Guan over the years, particularly when my sister was very young. But we were often the only ones going down the aisles. Finally Tay Buan Guan closed its doors. Today, a condominium development is on the old supermarket site.

As for the shophouses? Well, these too were sold off, I believe. One is now Rumah Bebe, a retail shop selling Peranakan beaded shoes, kebayas, porcelain and other knick-knacks. The faded Tay Buan Guan sign can still be found on the pillar outside the shop, though partially hidden by a trishaw.