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Willin Low is putting the Po in popiah in new venture

SINGAPORE — After running Wild Rocket for 12 years, Mod-Sin pioneer Willin Low — known for putting creative spins on local flavours at the restaurant — had been getting a little “bored” and was looking to do something different.

Po's Classic Popiah Platter. Photo: Po

Po's Classic Popiah Platter. Photo: Po

SINGAPORE — After running Wild Rocket for 12 years, Mod-Sin pioneer Willin Low — known for putting creative spins on local flavours at the restaurant — had been getting a little “bored” and was looking to do something different.

And so, at his newest restaurant, Po, he is not going to mess with your mind any more. Instead, he’s serving up good, clean, down-home local food the way it was meant to be cooked: With lots of time, effort and quality ingredients.

And the retro-chic Warehouse Hotel, which has just set up shop in a 1895 warehouse along the Singapore River, is perhaps the perfect home for the chef’s second formal restaurant concept, bringing together heritage and modernity.

Low, who also has the casual eatery Relish and the bar Wild Oats to his name, says inspiration came with the idea of popiah, a dish that for him symbolises family and community.

A discussion with Wee Teng Wen of The Lo & Behold Group, which is behind The Warehouse Hotel, yielded the thought of building a restaurant menu around popiah. “The Lo & Behold Group and Wild Rocket started about the same time, 12 years ago,” Low said. “We always thought it would be nice if we could collaborate on something. And then one day, Teng said, ‘What do you think about popiah?’ I said, ‘I love popiah.’ We started talking and got really excited ... Then we thought, ‘Okay, if I eat popiah, what else would I want to eat?’ So we started thinking about small plates, big plates and sharing things.”

Popiah is a dish that holds special meaning for Low. “Popiah has such great memories for me because I used to go to my grandmother’s place (to have it) and it would be a whole event in itself: It’s a huge gathering, there are lots of ingredients to prepare; there’s a big round dining table; everyone makes their own popiah, and at the end of the meal, whoever’s sitting on your right and left could be very different people from the ones you started with,” he chuckled. “The restaurant is built around that concept: Taking things a little slowly, eating and socialising. Food is about sharing happiness.”

The popiah at Po is available as a Classic Platter (S$28), but you can also go luxe and opt for the handpicked Fresh Flower Crab Platter (S$58). Similarly, the rest of the menu features familiar dishes using quality ingredients, such as a barramundi raw fish salad (S$19) with a Thai citrus and assam twist that is designed to celebrate yusheng; a Hokkien mee-inspired dish made with carabinero prawns (S$32); and charcoal-grilled Iberico satay (S$20).

“The hotel is in a heritage building. We wanted to celebrate that and at the same time, elevate it,” Low explained. To that end, the restaurant serves “local flavours done well (like) how they should have been done at home. For example, the way we cut the vegetables (for the popiah) is very important. We also cook them in a stock for four hours. Look at the popiah in the hawker centres — (the shredded turnip) is always white because it’s boiled in water. But we take time to caramelise it.”

The movement to elevate local street food has come under a bit of scrutiny lately, with some Singaporeans complaining about the price tag that comes with restaurants using quality ingredients and methods to create ubiquitous hawker dishes. Low responds by saying: “I think we have to learn to love ourselves”.

Citing hawker stall Roxy Laksa as an example, he added: “The amount of work that goes into laksa is tremendous. And locals say, ‘Oh, we pay S$5, that’s so much money.’ But you’d pay S$18 to S$40 for a pasta. Why? It’s noodles as well. And I can tell you, I cook both — I know which is easier.”

He continued: “Peranakan food has suffered this for a long time. People always think Peranakan restaurants are expensive because they always say, ‘I can get all these ingredients.’ But seriously, are you going to cook it? Are you going to spend the hours getting it right? It’s not just about the ingredients — it’s the skills that you’re paying for. So, to eat something that is really good and well made — we have to respect that and start to love ourselves.”

Low pointed out that making ondeh ondeh for example, requires a lot of work. “But no one will pay S$1 for one ondeh. Yet, they will pay S$5 for a cupcake. It’s frustrating, but I hope it’s changing. If we all don’t want to pay for local food, at some point, no one’s going to make it. If it’s not worth my effort making ondeh ondeh, I’ll just go and make cupcakes, right? And then we’ll lose our identity.”

Po, then, is Low’s loving tribute to what might be known as “grandma’s cooking” — “Po” is a play on both “popiah” and “popo”, the Chinese word for “grandmother”, and, as he explained, he loves names with double meanings, as evidenced by Wild Rocket, Relish and Wild Oats. And the restaurant’s sleek space, he said, “goes beautifully with the food”. “It’s modern, it’s beautiful, it’s sexy, and, at the same time, it has touches of local heritage. I particularly love the rattan accents.”

It’s all part of Low’s mission to “promote local flavours at different platforms”. On top of his restaurants, his ready-to-eat nasi lemak, under the &Will brand, is now available at Cheers stores at six Esso petrol stations; and he is working with local ice cream parlour Creamier to launch a special flavour.

In addition, he will be shutting Wild Rocket for the whole of February in order to work on perfecting handmade pasta dishes. And “we are looking to do something overseas as well, so a few projects are in the air,” he said.

“I don’t think I’ll venture very far from celebrating local foods, but I like using different platforms to do the same thing,” he said. “Po presented such an exciting idea to elevate local food — something that I had not done.”

Po is at The Warehouse Hotel, 320 Havelock Road. Breakfast from 7am to 10.30am, lunch from 11.30am to 2.30pm and dinner from 6pm to 10pm. Reservations: 6828-0007 and www.po.com.sg

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