Bites: Restaurant Report: Immigrants in Singapore

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 25 November 2012 | 17.35

Immigrants

A squid dish at Immigrants.

In August, a peculiar sign went up among a row of squat shophouses on Singapore's narrow Joo Chiat Road: "The Migrants Are Coming," it read, with no further explanation.

The message was particularly provocative, given that tensions have recently flared in this city-state over the influx of foreigners moving to its shores. In September, however, the mystery was solved when Immigrants, a modern pub-style restaurant run by one of the city's most popular chefs, opened its doors, with a menu and décor firmly anchored in Singapore's layered immigrant history.

During a recent visit, the menu included seh bak, a hearty stew of pig's ears, intestines, stomach and heart braised for hours in soy sauce and spices — a dish that has become a challenge to find in recent years. There was also Eurasian-style bagadale, a cutlet made with minced pork, potatoes, spices and crackers that doesn't often appear on restaurant menus, and ayam kalasan, a Malay-style dish of chicken marinated in coconut and various spices and then deep-fried.

"This is heritage food that you don't really see anymore — a lot of people have forgotten what our forefathers used to eat," said Damian D'Silva, the chef and an owner, who learned to cook some of these dishes as a child, watching his grandfather, whiskey in hand, at the stove. Served in tapas-size portions on the sort of cheap enamel dishware that hawkers and housewives once commonly used, Mr. D'Silva's intensely flavored dishes are designed to be consumed with alcohol — generally beer or whiskey. (The restaurant has a hefty list of Scottish and Japanese whiskeys.)

Singgang, a delicious Eurasian mash of soft wolf herring cooked with seven spices and coconut milk, for example, is served with chilled cucumber sticks for swiping it up like a dip. Fresh cockles — a common accompaniment for Tiger beer in local hawker centers — are served blanched and chilled, with a complex and fiery chile sauce that will have you reaching for that cold chaser right away. Mr. D'Silva's sambal buah keluak, his take on a Straits Chinese dish featuring pork, paired with a pungent filling of a black Southeast Asian nut, makes a return, having drawn crowds to the little hawker stall he ran before opening Immigrants.

Each dish arrives with its own style of chile sauce, some sweet, some garlicky, some citrusy, but all designed to specifically match the flavors on the plate.

Mr. D'Silva, who published a memoir, "Singapore Memories: Rebel With a Course," earlier this year, and his two business partners have been similarly specific with the restaurant's décor and ambience: rock music blares as servers mix drinks behind a bar built with construction-site-style corrugated zinc sheeting. It's a setting that Singaporeans might best describe as "lepak" — the Malay word for relaxed. A fitting pairing, Mr. D'Silva noted, for "food we used to eat at home."

Immigrants, the Singapore Gastrobar, 467 Joo Chiat Road, 65-8511-7322; immigrants-gastrobar.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about 60 Singapore dollars (about $50 at 1.20 Singapore dollars to the U.S. dollar). 


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