Mala collagen soup ($18) @ A Hot Hideout, KINEX!
A Hot Hideout at KINEX, Paya Lebar: mala collagen soup, $18. A creamy orange mala broth with sliced pork, instant ramen, beancurd skin, fried tofu, quail egg and greens.
A big bowl of mala collagen soup from A Hot Hideout at KINEX, $18. 🌶️🍜😋
What we had ($18):
- Mala collagen soup, $18
A Hot Hideout started as a mala stall in NTU and has since grown to around a dozen outlets, calling itself the Singaporean kind of mala. This one is on the ground floor of KINEX on Tanjong Katong Road, an easy stop if you are around Paya Lebar. There are three soup bases to choose from, tomato collagen, plain collagen and the mala collagen, and the last is the one they are known for.
The collagen soup is a different proposition from the usual mala xiang guo or the thin red oily broth: it is slow-simmered until it turns thick and creamy, so it is a soup you actually want to drink rather than just a vehicle for chilli.
You order it the mala way, picking your own ingredients from the chiller and having them weighed, which is how a bowl comes to $18. It arrives in a heavy black bowl, the broth a cloudy orange, with a small dish of chopped spring onion on the side to tip in yourself.
The broth was rich and rounded, numbing and spicy but softened by that creamy body so it coats everything instead of sitting as oil on top. Into it went thin slices of pork, a nest of instant ramen soaking up the soup, sheets of fried beancurd skin gone silky at the edges, a cube of fried tofu, a quail egg, broccoli, long beans and leafy greens.
The fried items are worth choosing here. Beancurd skin and tofu that have been fried before they hit the soup hold their shape and drink up the broth without falling apart.
At $18 it is more than a hawker bowl, but you are building it yourself and it is a full meal. The collagen base is what sets it apart.
Overall: 4.2 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Creamy, numbing broth you can actually finish, and you get to build the bowl. Would re-order.
