Dinner at British Hainan (23 Purvis Street, #01-01, tel : +65 6977 9711). What's with the name you might wonder? The food's local Hainanese, which is not the same as food from the province of Hainan in China. Dishes here stem from the era of British colonial rule where Hainanese here often work as cooks. It's Asian with a bit of English influences to varying degrees and uniquely local.
Brother's Toffee Apple cider is available here. Didn't think this was as good as the Honeycomb flavour.
We ordered a couple of items that are signatures of local Hainanese. Like Hainanese curry. This one had potatoes, beef brisket, tendon and tripe. Nothing was particularly tender which is the way we generally prefer it these days. Tripe was chewy and the tendon was much harder than I was hoping for. Brisket was a little tough even. I don't know if that was how it was done in the past but the meat's not impressive. Curry's not bad though.
A pricey small portion of mutton soup ($32 if anyone wants to know). Good for about 4 small bowls. Other than lamb, there's wood ear fungus and tau kee in it. There's very noticeable sweetness from the herbs and also flavour from the nam yu (red fermented bean curd) in both the broth and the meat. Not bad tasting.
Menu says grilled chicken but the common local term is chicken chop. This was nicely done with a smokiness from the grill on the chicken that's slathered with a savoury sweet apricot sauce. The salad on the side was dressed with something that tasted like canned fruit syrup with dried mint leaves.
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