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Featuring Bee Cheng Hiang Grillery 美珍香, O’TAH, Star Yong Kwang BBQ Seafood (Alexandra Village), Master Crab Seafood Restaurant (Ghim Moh), Yassin Kampung (Clementi)
Thint T
Thint T

For me, har cheong gai is a quintessential order at any zi char establishment. Not doing so is akin to walking out of a theme park without having been on a single ride. This would’ve simply been one of those easily dismissible family meals on a Saturday evening, if not for a plate of what I believe to be one of the best har cheong gai dishes that I’ve tasted to date.
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📍THE PLACE
Glance right while you’re senselessly staring into the abyss wondering what to have at Ghim Moh Market & Food Centre, and you’ll notice a signboard. It says “Master Crab”. Hanging lanterns and red on gold on red on gold remind you of a glorious Chinese New Year, and all the money you’ve lost playing Ban Luck and In-Between.
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🍽 THE FOOD
1️⃣ Salted Egg Crab (seasonal price) - Placed an order for this as it happens to be the most popular preparation of crab available at Master Crab. It was alright, but to their credit, the golden salted egg sauce was not overpowering and played well with the mild sweetness of the more-than-subpar crab
2️⃣ Shrimp Paste Chicken ($9/$13/$17/$21) - The showstopper, this was har cheong gai done right. Executed to fundamental perfection with a crispy, thin batter that shattered with every bite to reveal the tender flesh underneath glistening with flavours of shrimp and chicken. Fantastic stuff.
3️⃣ Claypot Frog with Dried Chilli ($16/$24/$32/$40) - very similar to dried chilli chicken, taste and texture wise
4️⃣ Fried Asparagus with Fresh Scallops ($16/$22/$28/$32) - a disappointing handful of 3 or 4 morsels of scallops in a classic mix of fried asparagus, mushrooms and carrots
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🤔 THE VERDICT
For a zi char joint selling zi char food at a zi char price point, their signature dishes could use a breath of life and more wok hei. Granted, the har cheong gai here remains to be hidden gem of sorts.

Some might say that I am truly unreliable in pushing out content within a specified deadline. Others might worship my infidelity with time as a social construct and awe in admiration as I continue to revel in this dolce far niente while fulfilling my destiny to inform the masses about restaurants. In the words of Rupi Kaur, “To hate Is an easy lazy thing But to love Takes strength”. If poetry can be generalised as art and art as a matter of perspective, I’d safely say that in my glorious eyes my detestation of existence stems from my wilful laziness. In other words, it also meant that Kaur was wrong, for no effort is required to say that I loved and remain to love the food served at Yassin Kampung.
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Walking around the corner of their Clementi Street outlet immediately brought up images deep within the confines of my juvenile memories, flashbacks of ferrying to the rural landscapes of my grandfather’s kampung while running my palm through the tides. The soft lighting and woven seats were subtle touches that proved essential in creating a wonderfully rustic and charming setting for the meal that followed.
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Yassim Kampung offers diners with sets that include some of their signature dishes, dishes that struck a chord within the homely soul. The afternoon was blessed with an order of their Set B ($68++), which included a beautifully crispy 3 Flavoured Fish, a bold and robust Tom Yam Soup, Kang Kong Belacan, Onion Omelette and Butter Milk with Salted Egg Yolk Chicken. Tom Yam has always been a big part of my life, descending as a bloke from the neighbouring country of its origin, so it is with a sharp tongue and a satisfied palette that I say that this is one of the best, if not the best Tom Yam that I’ve had the pleasure of tasting.
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Other dishes from their vast menu included a rather ordinary but delicious serving of Hotplate Black Pepper Beef ($13/$20++) alongside the perennial necessity to have something fried and crunchy, which led us to order their Crispy Oat Sotong ($13/$20++) and Fried Butter Prawn ($18/$28++).
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Perfect place for an authentic taste of the kampung.

Indecision lies in everyone, a phenomenon that can result in wasted minutes, aching muscles and overall mental stress. Of the many techniques that I have employed in deciding and planning the places @thintbites would end up in the coming week, my second favourite shortcut method would be to simply go for something that reflects my earliest memories of food in Singapore. In this case, sambal stingray.
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Being one of the first spicy foods that I managed to successfully chow down in Singapore, the memory of the searing spice, the tangy lime, the barbecued char and the juicy stingray meat imparted a certain wisdom in me about the food culture in Singapore that I still carry to this day. Nothing can replicate the multi-sensory experience you can get from a table full of dishes served fresh and piping hot from the kitchen.
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My favourite spot for sambal stingray will still remain a personal secret (for now), but if I were to confidently declare a stall as one of the best seafood BBQ hawkers in Singapore with a sambal stingray to die for, that place would be Star Yong Kwang BBQ Seafood. Located along the edges of Alexandra Food Village, the stall spends its 7-hour evenings serving up some of Singapore’s favourite dishes. Of course, there is no doubt that their Sambal Stingray ($22) is the star (no pun intended) of the show. With the meat being as juicy and tender as it should be, the combination of their homemade sambal and lime was simply superb, complimenting the white ray meat with every bite.
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Another one of my favourite dishes to have alongside a fragrant bowl of rice is their Sambal Sotong ($16/28), with their signature sambal coating every morsel of the cephalopod and slivers of onion to bring it all together.

A household name recognisable far and wide as the leading empire in the bakkwa industry, Bee Cheng Hiang (美珍香) prides itself on offering the highest quality bakkwa one could come to experience all year round, and has become synonymous with the familiar thin square slices of marinated and barbecued pork in Singapore. With a rich heritage that traces back to the brand’s inception in 1933, Bee Cheng Hiang celebrates and elevates bakkwa in a dining concept called the Bee Cheng Hiang Grillery, an expansion of their flagship store featuring a bistro, a wine cellar and even a live grilling station to enjoy fresh-off-the-grill bakkwa.
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The evening’s dinner began with some of their housemade bakkwa served fresh from the grill, followed by some delightful tapas. Their Mozzarella Katsu ($10) featured panko-crusted Gourmet Fusion bakkwa with stringy mozzarella cheese, while their Gourmet Enoki Roll ($9.50) proceeded to delight everyone at the table with a single-bite experience that simply exploded with flavour. Marvellous introduction.
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A palate-cleanser of sorts came in the form of the Summer Salad ($14), with compressed orange-infused watermelon cubes and yuzu foam and shards of their Gourmet Fusion bakkwa. Refreshing. Then came a salad which I can safely say was definitely my favourite dish of the evening. Their Truffle Mushroom Salad ($16) was a blissful flavour and textural medley of earthy, creamy and crispy mushrooms coalescing with the sweet and savoury Sliced Beef bakkwa. Truly outstanding.
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And then there were four. Four mains, that is. The pièce de résistance of the meal has to be the DIY Sliders ($14), a fun and interactive dish that featured both pork and chicken Coin bakkwas with a sublime house-made sambal mayonnaise, which is rather similar to sriracha mayonnaise. While that remained to be a crowd-favourite, the other mains proved substantial, but nothing too fascinating.
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Overall, a wonderful meal that truly stands to be an elevated bakkwa experience for everyone. Many thanks to @burpple and @beechenghiangsg for hosting a delightful Eatup!

I love otak-otak. For me, it will always be one of the first morsels of food that I had the juvenile pleasure of tasting in Singapore, and one that thoroughly enlightened me for the years to come. Otak-otak is simply put, a grilled or steamed fish paste with blended spices, typically grilled while wrapped in banana leaves, which results in a distinctively smooth and delicious mousse-like street food. One might be surprised to find out that the term “otak” is used to refer to “brains” in Indonesian and Malay, due to the resemblance Indonesian otak-otak bears to brains. Of course, this is due to the natural white colouration the grilled/steamed product possesses without the addition of chilli, turmeric or curry powder, which would essentially be the Malaysian/Singaporean variant of the humble dish. One of the more popular producers of this traditional favourite in the glimmering heart of Singapore is none other than Lee Wee & Brothers, who recently opened up a small but exciting kiosk aptly named O’TAH in the very-much trending hotspot that is now the single most talked about destination for locals and travellers alike. That’s right, O’TAH is located amongst the crowd-drawing shops and restaurants in the brand new hub that is Jewel Changi Airport. Expect to find modernised presentations of the old-school otak-otak through O’TAH’s The Coconut Collection, featuring four distinctive preparations of the childhood favourite, with Cream Cheese & Corn, Pink Salmon, Scallop and lastly, Green Petai & Anchovy Otah ($26.40 for a box of 12). One can find other creative dishes on their menu such as Ben’s Burger ($11.90), essentially a classic hamburger but replacing the patty component with a mouth-watering mackerel fish otah patty.

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Thint T

Level 5 Burppler · 61 Reviews

if it’s good, it’s good

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