Food review: Long Chim

Swanky street eats

SINGAPORE — David Thompson’s Long Chim, which recently opened at Marina Bay Sands, dishes out Thai street food in a lively, posh setting. With a bustling open kitchen, lots of low lights and funky Thai detailing such as hanging jasmine garlands and colourful carved wooden panels, the space feels like an upscale Thai cantina given a rock-and- roll makeover.

Based on its swanky looks alone, this isn’t exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find crisp-fluffy roti prata topped with sliced bananas and condensed milk (S$10), but there it is on the dessert menu, along with the requisite mango and sweet sticky rice (S$10) and an unimpeachably rich and pungent durian ice cream (S$15).

Thompson’s signature has long been his unapologetically punchy, in-your-face Thai flavours. In this respect, the plainer of palates might find the food a tad too salty, sour, sweet or spicy. We, however, were perfectly happy with those loud, proud flavours in uniquely elegant dishes such as a coconut and turmeric curry with mashed prawns (S$25) and a sour orange curry of snakehead fish (S$22).

The latter is not unlike Peranakan assam fish, with its tart, thin gravy sharpened by lime and ginger, rounded out with fish sauce and dried prawns and freshened by the addition of betel leaves. Meanwhile, the full-bodied mashed prawn curry just skirted the parameters of salty, only to be brought back by a jolt of acerbic calamansi juice.

Even if you’re trying to eschew carbs, it’s near impossible not to want to eat these dishes over a bed of steamed white rice. Those who insist on sticking to their no- or low-carb diets, however, have plenty of other tasty choices from the appetiser menu, such as the dried prawns with ginger and toasted coconut wrapped in juicy betel leaves (S$10), tender slices of skewered beef, deeply redolent of coriander and cumin (S$15), and crispy cured pork fritters (S$13) cut through with the zing of coriander, ginger and — you’ve been warned — tear-inducing slices of bird’s eye chilli.

At a whopping S$25 a portion, the pad thai with prawns had a lot to live up to — and it didn’t disappoint. Thompson uses thicker rice noodles that had plenty of chew and stood up well to the sweet-spicy sauce they were vigorously tossed in. It all made for a wonderfully luscious dish, tinged with the wok’s smoky breath, for which we would come back again and again despite its crazy price tag.

Even if you don’t have time for a meal, Long Chim’s bar is impressive enough to warrant a drink at. Like all other new establishments worth their artisanal bitters, Long Chim has a “bar programme” created by Proof & Company, featuring concoctions such as Sticky Rice Sour (S$18), made with aged rum, rice wine, fresh mango juice, pandan and coconut foam. Now only open for dinner, the restaurant expects to serve lunch in the coming months. ANNETTE TAN

Long Chim

Where:

Atrium 2, L2-02

The Shoppes At Marina Bay Sands

10 Bayfront Avenue

Telephone:

6688 7299

Opening hours:

Daily 6pm to midnight