Grass jelly with attap seeds ($1.70)!
Tiong Bahru hawker dessert: chin chow grass jelly cubes with translucent attap seeds (palm seeds) in sweet syrup, served ice cold. $1.70.
Dessert at Tiong Bahru. Grass jelly + attap seeds, $1.70. SG cooling. πππΌ
What was in the cup:
- Grass jelly (chin chow, δ»θ) cubes: glossy black, wobbling, cut chunky rather than shredded
- Attap seeds (attap chee): the translucent white ovals on top, glistening in the syrup
- Light sugar syrup + ice: tying it together
Grass jelly is made from the Platostoma palustre herb, boiled down and set into the black jelly. In TCM logic itβs a βcoolingβ food, the antidote to Singapore heat, which is why every old-school dessert stall keeps a tray of it. The herbal bitterness underneath the syrupβs sweetness is the point; jelly that tastes of nothing but sugar is the lazy version. This one kept the herbal note.
Attap seeds are the fruit of the nipah palm, the same palm whose sap makes gula melaka. The seeds are boiled in syrup until translucent and chewy-soft. Once a kampong-era staple harvested from mangrove palms, now mostly imported, they survive in ice kacang and old-school jelly cups like this one.
$1.70 for a real dessert with two heritage ingredients is the kind of pricing that only survives at the older hawker centres. The same cup at a mall dessert chain would be $4-$5.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. πππΌ Cheap, cold, properly old-school. The attap seedsβ chew against the jelly wobble was the simple pleasure it always is.
