Rainy day curry rice ($4.80 each)!
Tiong Bahru Hainanese curry rice on a rainy day: rice flooded with curry and lor (braised gravy), fried pork chop, braised tau kwa, long beans and chap chye. $4.80 each.
Rainy day lunch at Tiong Bahru. Curry rice x2, $4.80 each. πππΌ
What was on the plates:
- White rice flooded with curry + lor: the yellow curry and dark braised gravy run together into the signature murky pool
- Fried pork chop: the cream-cracker-crumbed slices, scattered red-brown over the top
- Braised tau kwa (firm beancurd): chunky pieces soaked in the braising liquid
- Long beans: stewed soft in the curry
- Chap chye-style cabbage (bottom plate): the braised vegetable layer under everything
- Scrambled-egg-and-gravy corner: where the curry met the rice
Hainanese curry rice (ζ΅·εεε±ι₯) is the deliberately ugly Singapore classic. The whole point is the flood: a scoop of rice drowned under ladles of mild yellow curry and dark lor (braised soy gravy), the two mixing into a brown-gold swamp that looks like a mistake and tastes like home. Food writers call it βugly deliciousβ; the uncles just call it curry rice.
The format: point at your sides (pork chop, braised pork belly, tau kwa, cabbage, egg), the auntie piles them on one plate, then comes the double-ladle flood. No dish separation, no plating pride. Everything soaks into everything.
The fried pork chop is the same Hainanese cream-cracker-crumb cutlet that shows up in the Western-style pork chop plates, sliced thin and laid over the rice where the crust half-soaks in curry. The contrast of still-crispy edges against gravy-soft middles is the dishβs best texture moment.
Tiong Bahru is one of the heritage curry rice neighbourhoods (the market and the surrounding coffeeshops), alongside the famous Beo Crescent cluster a few streets away, where the queues run out the door by noon.
At $4.80 a plate with pork chop, tau kwa and vegetables, this is heritage-hawker value that barely exists elsewhere in 2022 Singapore.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. πππΌ Proper rainy-day comfort. The curry-lor flood over the pork chop was the standout. Would re-visit.
