Char siew + roasted pork rice ($9.90 each)!
Clarke Quay char siew and sio bak rice bowls: caramelised char siu, crispy-crackling roast pork belly, lava-yolk eggs and pickled vegetables over rice. $9.90 each.
Lunch from Clarke Quay. Char siew + roasted pork rice x2, $9.90 each. ๐๐๐ผ
What was in the bowls:
- Char siu (ๅ็ง): the dark-edged caramelised slices, the charred bits glistening
- Sio bak (็ง่, roast pork belly): thick-cut pieces with the crackling layer intact, fat-lean striping under it
- Lava-yolk eggs: halved, the orange centres just past molten
- Pickled vegetables: cucumber and carrot strips with a chilli-flake dressing
- White rice base + sauce drizzle, with sweet chilli and a pickled green side in tubs
The two-roast bowl covers the Cantonese roast shopโs two pork philosophies in one container. Char siu is about the marinade and the char: pork (ideally the fattier ๅ่ฅ็ฆ cut) glazed with maltose, soy and five-spice, roasted until the sugars blister dark at the edges. Sio bak is about the skin: belly scalded, dried, salt-crusted and roasted so the skin puffs into crackling while the layers beneath stay juicy. One sweet and lacquered, one salty and crisp.
The crackling test: good sio bak knocks audibly when tapped and shatters when bitten, even after a delivery ride. These pieces held their crunch, which is the hardest thing for boxed roast meat to pull off.
The modern bowl format (lava egg, pickles, sauce-drizzled rice) is the 2020s update on the roast-meat-rice plate: the pickles cut the fat the way the old shopsโ cucumber slices were always supposed to, and the egg yolk does the sauce work.
At $9.90 a bowl this sits above hawker roast rice ($4.50-$6) but the double-roast portion and the egg account for the gap; Clarke Quay rent does the rest.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. ๐๐๐ผ The sio bak crackling surviving the box was the standout. Solid two-roast fix. Would re-order.
