White pepper pork stomach chicken paofan ($13)!
Jalan Besar paofan: white pepper pork stomach and chicken soup over rice with crispy rice puffs, shiitake, fish maw and wolfberries, served in a cast iron bowl. $13.
Lunch at Jalan Besar. White pepper pork stomach chicken paofan, $13. 😋👍🏼
What was in the cast iron bowl:
- Milky white-pepper broth: the cloudy, collagen-rich soup with the pepper heat building at the back of the throat
- Pork stomach strips: sliced thin, the springy-chewy texture
- Chicken pieces: poached tender in the broth
- Shiitake mushrooms + fish maw strips: the braised-soft umami layer
- Wolfberries (goji): the herbal-sweet dots
- Crispy rice puffs: poured over the top, crackling as they hit the soup
- Rice underneath: soaking up the broth
Paofan (泡饭), literally “soaked rice”, is the Singapore comfort-food wave of the early 2020s: cooked rice submerged in a rich poured-over broth, finished with crispy rice puffs for the wet-crunchy double texture. It went from a Teochew home leftovers habit to a full restaurant genre, with seafood paofan specialists opening across the island.
The white pepper pork stomach soup base is the classic Cantonese-Teochew tonic soup (猪肚汤): pork stomach scrubbed clean, simmered for hours with whole white peppercorns and chicken until the broth turns cloudy and the pepper heat infuses through. Traditionally a confinement and cold-weather soup, prized for “warming” the body. Pairing it with paofan format is the clever move here: the peppery broth is exactly the kind you want your rice drinking up.
The pork stomach test: badly prepared stomach is rubbery and smells of offal; properly cleaned and simmered, it goes springy-tender with no funk. This bowl passed, the strips bouncy and clean-tasting.
The crispy rice puffs are the paofan signature: fried rice grains that float, crackle and slowly soften, so the bowl has three rice textures going at once (soaked, softening, still-crisp).
At $13 this sits at the standard paofan price point, cheaper than the seafood versions ($15-$25) and arguably more interesting than most of them.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Warming, peppery, comforting. The broth’s slow-building white pepper heat was the standout. Would re-order on any rainy day.
