Preserving Peranakan Cuisine at Home

Text by Pepe Bingham-Hall

Photos by Ning Goh

Entering Kim Choo Kueh Chang, you’ll notice dark green triangular packages hanging from steel hooks. These are nyonya chang, or glutinous rice dumplings, wrapped in pandan leaves. If you’ve ever smelt pandan before, you’ll know to expect the heady, grassy perfume that permeates the shop.

I grew up in Katong, now one of Singapore’s trendiest suburbs and a well-known spot if you’re in search for some quintessential Singaporean grub. Along with neighboring Joo Chiat, it is also an area with deep Peranakan origins. As the country hurtles towards unparalleled modernization and globalization, the traditional Peranakan food shops are now faced with the very real threat of closure, with up-and-coming businesses staking their claims and pushing traditional owners out. It has only been amplified by Covid-19. East Coast Road, where shops occupy the ground floor of the shophouses, has always been the epicenter of Peranakan cuisine.

Though the value of Peranakan architecture has been increasingly recognized—some shophouses in areas facing rapid urban development are classed as UNESCO World Heritage sites—the intangible heritage which is housed in these buildings deserves the same veneration. Along with languages, for example, food is culture that cannot be preserved or gawked at behind sterile glass cabinets in museums halfway across the world. The question of how to keep Peranakan food as a vibrant cultural entity has a pretty straightforward answer: Keep the restaurants open and busy.

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Peranakans (from the Malay term meaning locally born) trace their roots back to 15th century Melaka. Before the shophouses, Katong was filled with coconut plantations of wealthy landowners in the 19th century: Justin Trudeau’s fifth great-grandfather William Farquhar owned one, and it was he, along with Stamford Raffles, who colonized Singapore, making it the base of the East India Company in the Malayan archipelago. A coastal area, Katong soon became a popular weekend spot for wealthier residents, and East Coast Road was laid out in 1902, with lavishly designed shophouses lining the street.

In Singapore, Peranakans were usually English-educated of a high socioeconomic status, as being multilingual—fluent in English, Malay and Chinese dialects—in a bustling port city meant their enterprises flourished.

Peranakan food continues to tell the story of Singapore’s cultural landscape, mediated by trade, migration and politics. As cultures mixed, so too did dishes and cooking methods. Cuisines that once seemed culturally distinct, soon amalgamated to form an incredibly rich and complex Peranakan food culture.

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In its earliest form, laksa was a combination of local ingredients, coconut milk and the trading spices, which were worked into more traditional Chinese noodle soup recipes.

I’m taking a walk down East Coast Road to call in at 328 Katong Laksa, where I can talk to Kim Choo Kueh Chang and Chin Mee Chin to reflect on the importance of food and community in a country that’s food-obsessed, though not pretentiously so.

The restaurant sits at 51 East Coast Road. In its earliest form, laksa was a combination of local ingredients, coconut milk and the trading spices, which were worked into more traditional Chinese noodle soup recipes. “Authentic” laksa is open to interpretation and a bowl eaten at 328 Katong Laksa is not the same as asam laksa eaten in Penang. Here, it is thicker and more coconut-y, compared to Penang’s looser and sourer tamarind soup base. 

Katong’s variation of laksa has also been contested. There were once many laksa shops operating along this small stretch around No. 51, and they were all embroiled in the infamous Laksa Wars of the late aughts. The pursuit of authenticity saw recipes tweaked and riffed on: Less coconut milk here, a spicier broth there.

Emerging victorious, 328 Laksa has achieved something akin to foodie fame. Ten years ago, 328 Katong Laksa used to be an open-air establishment. Red plastic chairs crowded the street, a stainless-steel cart fitted with a cauldron of boiling laksa broth at its center. On my most recent return, it appeared that a lot had changed. The red chairs are now black, and a huge glass wall separates the air-conditioned interior from the humid exterior. Air-conditioning throughout Singapore is a huge infrastructural undertaking in a bid to defy tropical realities and keep the ambient temperature at a cool and constant 23° Celsius. One can move from air-conditioned trains through air-conditioned pedestrian malls to air-conditioned restaurants and air-conditioned homes, hastily rubbing away the goosebumps, occasionally longing for a cardigan. Or to quote Lee Kuan Yew, “Air conditioning … changed the nature of civilisation.”

A rival shop that once sat directly opposite 328 Laksa was eventually bought out and turned into a Western pub. “Western” denotes an entire cuisine in Singapore, including everything from spaghetti and gravy to chicken cutlets on rice with a side of garlic bread. It is Singapore’s answer to America’s General Tso’s chicken or the UK’s chicken tikka masala, comprising the gist of cuisines spanning a large geographical area, i.e. the whole of the West.

This pub serves up Sunday roasts complete with Yorkshire Puddings, so whilst it may be authentic British grub, but it is most definitely not suited to a tropical climate. Usually, I would say something along the lines of “different strokes for different folks, etc.,” but when Peranakan businesses are being shunted in favor of these, I’m not so prone to espousing pithy analogies.

The laksa, however, has not changed one bit and smells as good as I remember. So I “chop’d” my table with a packet of tissues, walked up to the counter which had supplanted the cauldron and placed my order, as follows: one small laksa, no cockles, with prawns, a little bit spicy. The base of the dish is rice noodles, which have been cut into smaller pieces so they can be spooned up and eaten in one go, limiting the mess to just the splatter of the soup rather than the maneuvering of long noodles. The broth is then spooned over and strained through the noodles about three times to warm them up before the final ladleful is poured in and the bowl is topped with butterflied prawns, beansprouts, sambal and chopped laksa leaf. I also order a side of otah, a rectangular patty of spicy smoked mackerel grilled over hot coals, a triumph of unfussy cooking, and an oddity in a cuisine which most people would call slow food.

Pandan’s distinct green hue characterizes colorful snacks like kaya (coconut jam), kueh dadar (bright green crepes filled with caramelized desiccated coconut and rolled into cigars) and ondeh ondeh (coin-sized bright green glutinous balls filled with palm sugar syrup).

Speaking of, I’m heading to Kim Choo Kueh Chang, just 100 meters down the road. Nyonyas (the name for Peranakan women; men are called babas) once devoted whole mornings to the grinding of spice pastes (rempahs) to be cooked into the dishes made in the afternoon. Culinary prowess placed a nyonya in good stead in the times when arranged marriages were common. 

Owing to the immense time and effort devoted to creating dishes that were judged by the families of potential suitors, food was a significant player in determining the fortunes of Peranakan families. Recipes are keenly guarded and passed from generation to generation.

Kim Choo Kueh Chang, as with many Peranakan food shops, is a family business, founded on this ideal. Opening in 1945, just after the end of WWII and Japanese occupation, the shop specializes in kuehs, which are sweet or savory Peranakan snacks. In recent times it has doubled as a museum and a bastion of Peranakan culture in Singapore.

Entering the shop, the first thing you’ll notice are the dark green triangular packages hanging from steel hooks. These are nyonya chang, or glutinous rice dumplings, stuffed with spiced chicken and wrapped in pandan leaves. If you’ve ever smelt pandan before, you’ll know to expect the heady, grassy perfume that permeates the shop.

Pandan is a common ingredient in kuehs and features heavily in Peranakan cooking: Its distinct green hue characterizes the colorful snacks lining Kim Choo’s shelves, as it is used in their kaya (coconut jam), kueh dadar (bright green crepes filled with caramelized desiccated coconut and rolled into cigars) and my personal favorite, ondeh ondeh. Eating ondeh ondeh is a risky business. They are coin-sized bright green glutinous balls filled with palm sugar syrup that, when bitten into, threatens to spurt out and run all down your front. To increase the risk factor, the syrup could potentially be piping hot, depending on how recently they were cooked. But who cares? Ondeh ondeh is most definitely worth the hassle.

Wiping the palm sugar syrup off my shirt, I head down to Chin Mee Chin, another family-owned business about 200 meters on from Kim Choo Kueh Chang. It is my personal favorite and, technically speaking, is Hainanese rather than Peranakan. Though originally opened in 1925, the kopitiam (Hainanese for coffee shop) has a distinct 1950s feel to it, dating from the time when the premises were bought by the baking family from the original Peranakan owners. Green and white tiling along the floors and walls keeps the shop cool, with the worn-in seats of bentwood-style wooden chairs and long glass cabinets keeping the confectionary safe from flies and prying hands completing the look.

Arrive as early as you can, to avoid the Sunday morning post-Mass rush from the neighboring churches, and have the following list in mind to make sure your order is as hassle-free as possible, given the mounting queue: kaya toast, eggs, one pastry of your choosing (I recommend the cream horn) and a cup of kopi. (I usually go for the hot, milky and very sweet tea, known as teh si. It’s not traditional but sue me!) The kaya toast materializes as two thick rounds of white bread toasted over coals, slathered with kaya and topped with hefty finger-width slices of butter. The eggs come in their shells, and once cracked into your bowl, almost run out; in this case, the ‘soft’ in sof- boiled eggs refers to the whites as well as the yolks. Treacle over some dark soy sauce, a sprinkling of white pepper and wash down with kopi. Sit for a couple of minutes to let your food settle and perhaps bask in the pleasure that you’ve eaten this all whilst people are queuing up eagerly awaiting your departure. Your cream horn is for the leisurely walk home.

If this all sounds romanticized, that’s because it is. Chin Mee Chin (colloquially known as CMC) has fallen foul of the same fate as its Peranakan counterparts in the area. As of January 2019, its doors closed permanently, and you’ll have to take my word for how magnificent it once was. Traditional kopitiams have been in stiff competition with chain stores like Toast Box and Killiney Kopitiam, which both have outlets along East Coast Road.

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The value of Peranakan architecture has been increasingly recognized, with some shophouses in areas facing rapid urban development are classed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The closure of CMC is indicative of a wider trend affecting many small businesses in Singapore: struggling against big money, clientele flocking to Westernized cafes and younger family members moving beyond the family business. For younger generations, running a bakery is no longer aspirational in a country that has quickly become a world banking capital and boasts hugely successful STEM industries. The uniqueness of Singapore’s cultural landscape and history had initially helped to propel the nation into the spotlight, and with its current immense prosperity, Singapore can afford the resources and impetus to preserve it.

Drilled into all kids at local school is the idea that Singapore is a melting pot of people, culture and religions, celebrated with local holidays like Racial Harmony Day and International Friendship Day. East Coast Road encapsulates this, but for how much longer? 

“Melting pot” is a term now caricatured by the younger generations, as it’s whipped out by government officials and leaders to cover up serious grievances of local businesses and minoritized communities. Much of Peranakan culture has been absorbed into more dominant Chinese cultures, and though harmony must be championed, so too must the practices that afford people identity, standing and purpose.

Peranakan food is constantly being touted as the next best thing in global cities all over the world; Kopitiam in New York City has been accoladed by the prestigious James Beard Awards, and the owners of Sambal Shiok in London have just opened a new location. The chef/owner of Sambal Shiok, Mandy Yin, has also been outspoken in recent months about the impact of Covid-19 on small businesses: The economic realities simply thwarting any real chance of remaining open. What then for Peranakan shops that were already doing it tough before the pandemic? It’s a bleak situation but one that Singapore is well-placed to alleviating, so why not now?