Saturday hawker brunch with BB — went hard at the local food centre with nasi lemak + har cheong gai wings + otah for $28.10 total. The Singapore brunch classics, hawker-stall executed.

We ordered:

Nasi lemak (with the full standard set)
Har cheong gai wings (prawn-paste fried chicken wings)
Otah (grilled spiced fish paste)

Total: $28.10 for the spread.

Nasi lemak was the foundation — coconut rice, sambal chilli, fried chicken wing or fish, ikan bilis, peanuts, cucumber, fried egg. Proper coconut-rice fragrance (made with santan and pandan leaves), sambal with real chilli-shallot-belacan depth, all the standard accompaniments. The Singapore nasi lemak is at its most reliable at hawker stalls.

Har cheong gai wings was the star order. Har cheong gai (虾酱鸡) is fermented prawn paste chicken — wings marinated in shrimp paste (har cheong), salt, sugar, garlic and white pepper, then deep-fried until the skin goes golden-brown and crispy. The fermented prawn paste gives the chicken a distinctive umami-funky-sweet flavour that’s unlike any other fried chicken format.

These wings were the proper version. Skin crackled when you bit in, juicy meat inside, with the unmistakable harcheong-marination flavour coming through. The salty-umami funk hits the back of the tongue, and you reach for the next wing before you’ve finished the current one.

Otah was the third component. Spiced fish paste (mackerel mixed with chilli, lemongrass, galangal, candlenut, kaffir lime, turmeric) wrapped in banana leaf and grilled over charcoal. The banana leaf imparts a subtle char-and-smoke aroma to the fish paste, and the spices give it the proper Peranakan flavour profile.

Each piece of otah eaten by unwrapping the banana leaf and scooping the soft spiced fish onto rice. The smoky-spicy combination against the coconut rice and the umami-fried chicken is the kind of Singapore brunch spread that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Overall: 4.2 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Solid hawker brunch — would re-order.

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