Sinpopo at Joo Chiat Road

In Singapore's highly competitive restaurant scene, it is quite difficult to write about food because somehow they get outdated quite fast!

Fortunately, unlike some other establishments I've written about, Sinpopo is still going strong.  Although, it looks as though they expanded the menu since I went...

Sinpopo is run by the folks behind Awfully Chocolate but this is completely different in concept, serving "old style" Singaporean food with a twist.  I came here with two lady friends and we had a good gossip, over luncheon meat crisps (terribly unhealthy), deep fried wantons  (scarcely less so), the crab meat bee hoon (my fave) and for dessert, gula melaka cake and brown butter sugee cake.  Washed down with Katong Jelly drink (red agar agar jelly in a 7-Up and soda mix).

Whilst I did feel that the gula melaka cake really brought out that gula melaka flavour, I was not sure that the brown butter flavour was really that prominent in the sugee cake.  Rather, the brown butter flavour was more obvious in the thin layer of butter cream icing the cake.  I was intrigued however by the whole idea of "updating" sugee cake using brown butter and so I was inspired to make my own version of brown butter sugee cake!

First of all, I had to learn how to brown butter.  Fortunately there's a pretty good guide here on Serious Eats.  Briefly, butter is melted and then boiled over the stove till the water evaporates.  As the melted butter continues to boil, tiny little particles of milk solids emerge and as these brown, they impart a nutty, caramel flavour to the butter.  However, you need to watch it carefully to make sure that the little flecks of milk solids don't burn!

My Brown Butter Sugee Cake

Having browned the butter, I then went on to make my sugee cake, which I've written about here.  I soaked my semolina in the browned butter and then made my sugee cake as per normal.  As usual, I did not put any icing or butter cream on the cake which enabled me to taste the "natural" flavours of the cake.

The verdict?  The colour of my sugee cake was a little darker than in the past - not so much a bright sunny yellow but a slightly browner shade.  As for flavour - well, I enjoyed the buttery flavour of the cake, but again the brown butter flavour did't really emerge.  I suspect that with the traditional marzipan and royal icing, the buttery flavour would be overpowered by the strong almond flavour.  It's probably better to take it to a different flavour profile altogether, add brown sugar in place of some of the white, and top with buttercream made with browned butter.. hmmm, seems to be what Sinpopo has done :-)

URA to conserve 100 buildings in Joo Chiat/Katong area

Here's a more positive post to balance off the previous depressing post.

URA has decided to conserve about 100 more buildings in the Joo Chiat/Katong area, as announced in this news release.

Hopefully the preservation of more of this lovely part of Singapore will also increase awareness of the history and heritage of the area.

Another Gem of Joo Chiat

This is not supposed to be a food blog, but if you live in Katong you eat in Katong and so entries about food are inevitable. We went to a relatively new restaurant, Tasty Buds, the other night and had a really good meal! It has been reviewed by ieatishootipost - in fact the review had been printed out and put up outside the restaurant - but I found that there were so many other things to say about the place that I thought I would write it up too.

Tasty Buds is a clean, bright white restaurant, with the walls adorned by sprays of flowers alongside pictures of the food (by ieatishootipost). Service is pleasant and the food comes fairly quickly.

We had four dishes, the beef rendang, squid in special sauce, pork ribs and papaya curry and ladies' fingers with a hae bee (dried prawn) topping. Three of the four are captured in the photo collage - I've started using Picasa which has this rather handy feature. In brief:

• Rendang - beef was tender, moist, in the tasty thick rendang curry gravy. However, it is not really that unique compared to the other three dishes.


• Squid in special sauce - squid were cooked just right, no hint of rubberiness. Sauce was quite tasty, too.


• Ladies fingers with hae bee topping - a winner here! The hae bee was pounded with shallots and sprinkled with lime juice. Pounded chilli was served on the side so you can add as much as you like.


• Pork Rib and Papaya Curry - my favourite dish of the night. The curry gravy had the distinctive taste of laksa leaves, with a little hint of assam and lemon grass. The papaya was sweet and succulent and went surprisingly well with the curry. I'd absolutely want to eat this again.

The ladies' fingers and the pork rib curry are a little more unique and not quite the run-of-the-mill perankan food served in restaurants here. It certainly has the stamp of authenticity in the subtle blending of spices and flavours in the sauces and gravy of the food. I sense (but am not too sure) Penang influences? Certainly the slightly more assam/limey flavour of the last two dishes suggests it.

In short - Tasty Buds is certainly a welcome addition to the Joo Chiat food scene, especially since we now bereft of Peramakan which has moved to larger premises in Keppel Club. The best time to go to this restaurant is probably on weekdays. The car parking situation is terrible on weekends. It's situated near the cluster of foodie joints mentioned in an earlier post.

Joo Chiat links

When I first started this blog, I googled around to check out what sites already existed on Katong and Joo Chiat and found that there were very few. In fact, that was one thing which motivated me to set up this blog. But now, as I continue with this blog, I find that there are more and more sites and blogs which also cover Joo Chiat and Katong. The latest one I have found is MyJooChiat.com, which is a community-based site and covers Joo Chiat news, businesses, restaurants etc. My list of links is getting longer....

Joo Chiat Road foodie joints

I read somewhere (can't remember where exactly) that Joo Chiat road was named after some wealthy plantation owner called Chew Joo Chiat. When then British government wanted to build a road through his estate, he willingly acceded - and then sold off the land on either side of the road at a handsome profit! The shops and houses along Joo Chiat Road are still there to this day.

There are so many nice eating places to try out along Joo Chiat Road. What has really made these places more accessible is the opening up of more car parks down the road. We've been to a number of them and maybe I'll give more details in a subsequent post. But some of my favourites are in this little cluster just near the old Maternal and Child Health clinic, now newly converted into a Scanteak furniture shop. I have always liked the look of this building, in particular its simple and clean lines, and its good to see that it is now back in use.


But back to the food. Straight across Scanteak is the Ayam Penyet stall. This "smashed" fried chicken dish is now a bit of a fad, but this is one of the first few stalls which started selling it. In fact this stall also sells fish penyet and beef penyet too! I like the fish penyet, as the fish is nicely fried - crispy on the outside, yet retaining its juiciness inside.


A few shops down, is the Lau Hock Guan Kee Bak Kut Teh stall - which is mentioned favourably in Makansutra for its fish head curry and which we like, of course, for its steamed fish tail! But that was not our intended destination that particular evening. Just next door is "My Mum's Place", another Makansutra-featured home cooking restaurant (and where else but Joo Chiat would you get two in a row). And if its a Katongite's home-cooked food, it is pretty good stuff. We have been there a few times, wolfing down their juicy, tasty prawn paste chicken, tender kangkong shoots in sambal, and crispy baby squid. This time we were eating their signature dish, seafood stuffed tofu balls - crispy on the outside, with a juicy filling of tofu and seafood inside (amongst other things), their kangkong (again) and their sliced beef with ginger (not a particularly unique dish, but well-cooked and tasty nonetheless). Service is good, and the food comes quickly to our table. Great choice for a family meal. But busy on weekend nights especially, good to go on a weekday evening. That's also when the carparks are less crowded.

There used to be a third restaurant next to Lau Hock Guan Kee and My Mum's - "Tasty Penang", which obviously sold Penang food. Somehow, despite the fame of Penang hawker fare, Penang food stalls have not done too well in Katong. Penang! Penang! opened in Lau's Arcadia along East Coast Road some time back but folded (I personally think their food was a little overpriced). Similarly, "Tasty Penang" didn't last too long. Whilst a lot cheaper than Penang! Penang!, perhaps the variety of dishes was not sufficient for it to keep up with the competition all around. It's a tough neighbourhood for restaurants but for Katong residents like myself, its a great place to eat! Where else in Singapore can you get great Eurasian, Peranakan, Chinese, Indonesia, Malay, Indian, and frankly many other types of food in one small little area!!