SINGAPURA
Even though I often review long-standing restaurants, I really love getting in at the beginning, before other people can influence me. So I was happy to arrive in New York just a few weeks after Asian eatery Singapura opened. And for what my mother would call “a plain little Thursday night,” the joint was jumping! And all the customers looked happy. That may have had as much to do with the service and ambience as it did the food.
I hadn’t realized that this area of the Big Apple is often referred to as “Curry Hill,” due to the panoply of Indian restaurants. Singapura, brought to us by Shiva Natarajan, (who owns four places on that one block, each featuring food of a different Asian ethnicity,) is a combination of many of them, leaning more towards Chinese, but with lots of curries.
This is their description of it, which I can’t improve upon: “The state of Singapura, or the modern city Singapore, is a melting pot of Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian cultures. The cuisine that results is a flavorful mélange of all. At Singapura we present a menu of multi-cultural flavors which draw from the legacy and cooking methods of housewives, private homes, and hawker food stalls.”
All photos by Karen Salkin.
Before I get to the food, please allow me to laud the mood. It’s a small, linear space, but the lovely lighting and colorful lanterns make it so inviting.
Our server, who doubles as the hostess, was wonderful. Her name, Nishinta, means “no worries,” and that’s just what she provided for us.
I’m going to go in order of what we ate, rather than of favorites. We began with a generous helping of sweet corn soup, which Lauren said was light, nice, and tasty. And the bowls themselves, and spoons, were different-looking and lovely.
We had “Malaysian favorite” roti canai, which is bread with a topping of either chicken or potato. We suggest getting it with chicken rather than potato for a heartier tasting experience. The sauce was good and the bread had a fun, flexible quality.
The Malay fried chicken. Yum!
The Malay fried chicken was heavenly!!! I loved it the most, and I don’t even like drummettes, which they were. What a great flavor! It’s listed as a starter, but I could have eaten just two helpings of it and called it a day.
On the chicken larb, which was described as minced chicken in lettuce leaf, we were totally surprised; we expected that same basic dish that we get at many Asian eateries. But it was a different take on it, more fluid and very flavorful.
Chicken larb.
Then we finally made it to Lauren’s favorite; kari ayam, which is chicken on the bone in a coconut curry. She said the sauce was absolutely “yummy,” but did warn to look out for the bones, especially because it’s so dark in there.
We couldn’t decide between noodles and rice, so…we went with them both! We tried the hakka noodles, which are akin to fettucine, and were really good. But the winner in that category was the pineapple fried rice with really big shrimp. Mmmmm! It was each of our second favorite dish.
Mango with sticky rice.
As with most restaurants in the Asian category, there were only two desserts, so we had them both. We found the fried banana different than the norm and very tasty. But the mango with sticky rice is always my fave, and this one did not disappoint.
One last note: all the dishes were served good and hot, temperature-wise, just the way we like it. And that’s not an easy task when you have people eating as much as we did!
106 Lexington Ave. New York 212-684-6842 www.singapuranyc.com
