(Halal) Nasi Padang

Nasi padang is the Malay version of a mixed rice stall, serving Malaysian or Indonesian dishes. Just pick and choose from various dishes with your rice.

Halal, Nasi Padang

Oct 2020

Longstanding nasi padang shop with excellent dishes, especially Beef Rendang, which I rate as one of the best.

This used to be Kartika Jaya Indonesian Food, which had been here for ages and served decent Indonesian food and where I like to get my beef rendang fix. Thankfully, the beef rendang here tastes the same, in fact, what they have to offer looks the same! Turns out the chef is the same person, just a change in management.

Tender and chunky but cut into edible portions, the beef rendang here suits me very well, exactly the way I like it taste wise and size wise. Slightly sweet, good flavour and mix of rendang marinade, it is also important that the beef is tender and chunky. The curry and chilli sauce is also comfortable, not too spicy but gives me a good kick and makes me sweat a little.

The curry chicken isn't too bad either, as well the Ayam Merah (red curry chcicken). Curry chicken is nice tender and tasty, and the ayam merah has this softened fried chicken texture, which I love, and it's good taste wise too.

I always used to have one of their epok (crispy) curry puff after a meal, but the curry puff now it’s not so epok and the filling not as tasty so I will be giving it a miss in future, but would definitely be back for their excellent beef rendang, again and again!

Metor Nasi Padang

31A East Coast Road, s428752

6am - 6pm, closed on Mon

PagiSore

Nasi Padang

Jan 2021

Best Otak fish in the world (no joke!), and please bring back the cumi bakar (jokingly serious...)!

My office was near their outlet and my colleague and I once went over for lunch, on our way out, we noticed that every table order this steamed fish that looked like it was swimming in mud. We found out it was their otak fish. We didn't have that, and it looked like we should....

Their otak fish (ikan ota kukus) is one of the best thing ever made by human kind! It is a steamed leather jacket, the fish, not the clothing…. It is so called as it has a thick leathery skin. The fish has little stray bones, like a promphet, just the spine so it is easy to consume. It is steamed with otak splattered all over the dish. Otak is a fish paste with various spices.

The fish is always perfectly steamed, and the taste of the otak I can never get enough of. The texture of the leather jacket (the fish...) is perfect for this as well. Tender yet with a solid enough texture, I cannot imagine using other types of fishes. And the Chefs here (Mrs and Junior Mr Tan) certainly think so too, this popular dish would not be served if they can't get hold of the leather jacket.

Otak is a paste made from fish and some spices. The paste is usually made into a broad strip, wrapped in leaves and grilled. It is used differently at Pagi Sore. The Otak paste here is simply delicious. Combines very well with the fish. Despite having plenty of it, I can never get enough of it. The otak itself would hold it's value as the usual grilled pieces, but combined with the fish, it is the best thing ever.

It has yet to happen but I always dream of eating this dish all by myself! It is not big, probably about 300g each? So it won’t be an effort, even if I order two…..

Besides the otak fish, their brinjal (terong tao chio) is another must try. I didn’t like brinjals before trying the one here, after this, I learned to enjoy this vegetable, and I have yet found anyone anywhere make this better. Served with what seems to be diced pickled turnips, a bit of oil with spring onion and chilli, it is a mixture of wonderful tastes in your mouth with the soft eggplant. The texture nice, the taste better!

Another must try dish here would be the Bali chicken, nicely grilled chicken cooked in a sweet sauce. It is always tender and juicy. They used to have an octopus grilled in the same sauce, despite this, I always ordered both, and the octopus was always the better choice for this style. Not available anymore, I still ask for it every time I visit. Once the manager smiled as I walked in, telling me the octopus was still not available.... 🤣🤣

I’m not a big fan of their tauhu telor or beancurd fried in egg (omelette?), but I have to admit, it is brilliantly done here. Comes in a shape like a top hat, breaking it apart is like cake cutting and a process to enjoy… it is actually brilliant with nice crispy egg pieces all over the soft bean curd. Comes with a sweet sauce.

Also very nice are their beef rendang and chicken gulai. The beef is always tender, and the rendang sauce wonderful, one of the best rendang beef.

The curry made with the chicken gulai is very tasty. It is a good "bargain" dish, with the price a lot lower as compared to the other dishes.

They used to serve petai as a standalone dish but it is now served with prawns, which makes it a "luxury" dish, and slightly less recommended. Especially considering the Boss's dad does a mean sambal prawn and petal...

The desserts here isn’t half bad either, especially the avocado with gula Melaka. Sweet and well blended, it is smoothier than a smoothie, and thick like a milk shake.

They are all very outstanding dishes, each dish can be considered one of the better ones in Singapore, but the otak fish is a world champion, in a class of its own.

Pagi Sore

88 Telok Ayer Street, s048470

Daily 11am – 3pm, 6 - 10pm

http://www.pagi-sore.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pagisore/

HJH

Halal, Nasi Padang

Nov 2020

Nasi Padang restaurant with a huge variety of choices, including titbits, drinks and desserts.

Very popular nasi padang outlet at Geylang Serai. Occupying 3 shop fronts, it is impressive. They seem to have a queue every time I happen to drive pass and obviously I have to give it a try some day. The day finally arrived….

After being in the queue for 45 mins on a Sunday at 1115am, we finally got in and was immediately presented with a huge variety of dishes to choose through a window.

Unless you know what you want, it’s easy to feel rushed (because you don’t want to keep people waiting….?) and get a little confused what to order. We came out of it with fried chicken, chicken merah (chicken in red sauce), sambal egg, ladies fingers, beef rendang, and a stingray in sweet sauce.

The fried chicken was a miserly palm sized thigh so we added another piece, when we tucked into it, I can say that it’s like a fashion statement, superdry! Not the best start.

The chicken merah (ayam merah, or merah chicken to be grammatically correct) is the opposite though. Meat is more succulent and the sauce delicious, although it’s a bit on the sweet side.

Fried chicken on top right corner

Ayam merah

The sambal egg is simply hard-boiled eggs in sambal sauce, the sambal is nice, slightly sweet and not spicy.

The ladies fingers is nicely cooked and tasty, it does look good when I saw it at the window.

The beef rendang is very good, most of the meat soft and succulent and the rendang is good.

The sweet sauce with the stingray is quite excellent, I believe you can order any type of fish with the sweet sauce, there is a variety to choose from. We ordered just one portion of each, 2 eggs and 2 fried chicken pieces (added one when we say the size of that first piece), it was good for 3.

The sambal belachan which is the chilli condiment is excellent. Very spicy, full of chilli seeds, your tears might start to flow from spiciness just by looking at it!

When we were leaving, one of us decided to take away a packet for her other half, while queueing again, this time with more patience, we noticed we missed out on the tauhu goreng (fried toufu egg), the Bali chicken or grilled chicken, and this fried lump of what looked like fried oxtail, turned out to be fried fish roe. Unable to control ourselves, we ordered one portion of the fried egg roe to take home.

I then went over to the dessert counter and ordered some samosas, curry puffs and a jemput sayur (mixture of vegetables in a batter).

The fried fish roe turns out to be very impressive! Definitely a must try! It is a bit fishy, of course, so it’s best to take it fresh, not advisable for takeaways, it is also a good big lump, size of a small fist. The samosas and curry puffs are nice too, crispy skins and delicious fillings. I will be thinking of the samosas. Hard crispy popiah skin on the outside and soft delicious curry paste inside, it’s small and you can easily pop the entire piece into your mouth but I have to bite half of it just to savour biting into something so crispy!

Fried egg roe

Assorted Malay cakes (Kuehs)

Halal

HJH Maimunah

20 Joo Chiat Road, s427357 8am – 830pm, closed on Mon

11 Jalan Pisang, s199079 7am – 8pm, closed on Sun

http://www.hjmaimunah.com/

https://www.facebook.com/maimunahfoods/

Nasi Pdng& Satay

Halal, Burgers, Roti John, Nasi Padang, Western, Dessert

Mar 2021

https://www.thesaturdaymovement.org/

https://www.facebook.com/saturdaysatlengkokbahru/?ref=page_internal

Saturdays @ Lengkok Bahru is made up of a group of volunteers who have proactively reached out to befriend the elderly residents residing in Block 55 to 61 at Lengkok Bahru estate and 3 blocks in redhill in Singapore.

In their own time and at their own cost, they organize a weekly food distribution service and serve delicious lunch/tea time treats held at the void deck of Block 52 from 10am to 12pm.

The initiative currently supports about 370 households in the area and some of the volunteers provide free tuition services for about 35 children (under 12 years) living in that estate.

We are strictly non profit and all the volunteers are doing it with a willing and joyful heart.

Interesting roti John and burgers.

What brought me here was the very interesting roti john on offer, the photos below will explain better than a thousand words.

First visit, roti john was sold out so we had a pasta with mini burgers, a chicken chop, satay and a chendol. The pasta was passable, something out of a simple home kitchen; the burgers quite excellent with some cheese drizzle on it, their cheese was nice, when offered with anything, go for it!

The chicken chop is a nice piece of chicken with tasty gravy, juicy and tender. Satay was a bit on the sweet side but prepared nicely with fresh meat. The chendol was quite excellent, nice dessert.

On a second visit around noon, we noticed something odd about this place. The fact that there was a crowd was not surprising even if we find the food just ordinary here. A Chinese lady dishing out nasi padang, she didn’t look like the boss nor a worker, and she would record almost every order, odd. We later noticed some voucher exchange, some advertising and marketing maybe? Then we found out this is a kitchen run by The Saturday Movement (see facebook pages and what they are about above), initially thinking it was just an advertisement, its emblem was distinct in the signboard.

Now we get why the food here seems to be a bit cheaper than expected.

We got the roti john, without the cheese, and some nasi padang on the second visit. Nasi padang was decent, nice beef cubes for the rendang, taste wise it was a bit sweet for my taste but I’m sure others will like it. The fried chicken was a bit tough but generally the others are the decent average lot.

The roti john was excellent, nicely toasted with some mince in it and fried eggs all around. The chilli and special sauce adding some extra punch to it. Even without the cheese, I kept going at it, although as I ate, I kept thinking how it would be better with cheese! I may not be exposed to a lot of roti johns but this is the best one I’ve eaten so far!

This place is like a coffee shop with a few stalls. Bajet Burgs sells satay, burgers and the roti John, a drinks stall and the nasi padang stall.

Come by for a decent meal and a great roti john, if nothing else, support the movement!

Nasi Padang & Satay

57 Lengkok Bahru, #01-01, s151057

11 am – 10 pm, closed on Sun