The Coconut Club Opens Cool New Peranakan Cai Png Joint Called Belimbing Superstar

Many things have happened since artisanal nasi lemak restaurant The Coconut Club opened in 2016. PM Lee Hsien Loong hosted Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for a meal there, it snagged a Michelin Bib Gourmand nod, and it recently relocated to larger premises. But perhaps most excitingly for fans (like us) of its food is this — it opened a sibling eatery called Belimbing Superstar yesterday. All milestones to be celebrated, considering the numerous snarky comments on social media that chef and co-owner Lee Eng Su said the restaurant used to get in the early days. Such as: ‘$12.80 for a plate of nasi lemak? My mother can cook better than this!’ So the team hunkered down and got to work. “We knew we had to survive, up service levels, keep our cooking consistent,” muses Eng Su. It paid off, evidently, with its recent expansion.

The Coconut Club’s new Perakanan sibling eatery takes over its current premises as well as the shop space beside it. The head chef here is Ben Teo, 62, previously behind the restaurant Peranakan Flavours at Tan Quee Lan Street. Interestingly, chef Ben worked for 16 years in the kitchen of Cantonese fine-diner Li Bai before rediscovering his Peranakan roots. “I’ve been eating at Peranakan Flavours for years, so when it had landlord issues and I heard Ben was looking for another place to work at, I asked him why don't you cook with us?” shares Eng Su. “Most of the dishes are his, with a few from my own family recipes”.

“When you think of nonya food, you think of mostly traditional dark restaurant interiors and tasty but heavy dishes that are too rich to have often. Food that you have to share among a group of people. But we want someone to be able to come into our restaurant alone and have a solo meal,” says Eng Su. Hence the economical rice concept. “Also, it doesn't necessarily have to be a heavy meal. Besides the usual curries and cooked dishes, 30 per cent of our menu is made up of kerabus (refreshing Malay/Peranakan-style salads often incorporating fruit)”. Why is the restaurant named so quirkily after the mouth-puckeringly tart tropical fruit belimbing (think of it as somewhat like the tamarind)? “Chef Ben’s cooking has many tangy flavours. He uses lots of assam and lime. And one of his signature dishes is the Pork Belimbing, which is very shiok,” shares Eng Su. But it’s not just about using fancy ingredients in a more atas setting. “It’s about cultural expression and culinary exploration. We’re not claiming to be Candlenut,” reasons Eng Su.

The chic 120 seater boasts two dining rooms — one on the ground floor, another one upstairs. Like at a regular cai png stall, you go to the counter where various dishes are displayed and point at what you want. The staff then dishes it out for you. You can take your own plate and grab a seat. Or find a seat and the food will be served to you. You pay at meal’s end. But that’s where any similarities end: this is elevated Peranakan-style cai png, painstakingly cooked by a restaurant chef with fine-dining experience. Served in a comfortably air-conditioned stylo-mylo setting, with good lighting, sleek wooden fixings and silestone (a kinda quartz) topped tables.

The average price per head here is approximately $16 to $18 for two meats and a veg, sans drinks. “Peranakan food is expensive to produce since you use lots of pricey ingredients like using hae bee (dried shrimp). And it’s very labour intensive, even cutting the veggies evenly for the kerabu takes a long time,” explains Eng Su. While there will be 30 dishes at any one time eventually, the restaurant will currently start with 15 in its opening phase. And it only serves lunch for now. Dishes to expect: Ayam Buah Keluak ($7.50), Pork Belimbing ($8), Hae Chor (prawn roll; $8 for 4 pieces), Yam Cake ($5 for two; a specialist of chef Ben from his Li Bai days), Tofu Bomb ($3.80 for two), Chap Chye ($5), Babi Pongteh ($6.50), Wing Bean Kerabu ($5), plus desserts like house-made nyonya kueh, cheng tng and coconut jelly using Coconut Club’s lovely in-house extracted coconut milk.

Speaking of coconuts, just last week, The Coconut Club relocated a stone’s throw away from where Belimbing Superstar stands to larger, fancier digs. The new spot boasts about twice as many seats (120 vs 70) as the original and now also serves several nasi padang-style dishes on top of the usual nasi lemak items.

“Our cooks are all Malays, some with parents from different regions like Java, or Sarawak. Many people have this misconception that Malay food means stuff like just mee siam or nasi lemak. It’s a lot more than that. So we serve regional Malay dishes now, not just the generic stuff. It's not quite nasi padang-style either as Padang is a specific cuisine. We have dishes like Hinava from Sabah, raw swordfish served with a squeeze of lime juice, chillies, ginger. Like a ceviche,” explains Eng Su. The menu now is split into wok items, charcoal grilled stuff, steamed dishes and curries. Food is cooked in batches of about 15 portions, nasi padang style. And like before, it's full-service here.

Labu masak lemak, which is spinach and pumpkin with a spicy coconut gravy, plus rendang, of course. “We slam three different rendang styles together to make an amalgamation of our ideal rendang. Some rendangs are too dry, others saucy. Of course, cheap, dry meat will get you dry rendang, but if you use [too high quality] good fatty meat, the gravy becomes diluted and less tasty because all the beefy juices water down the spice blend,” says Eng Su. He adds: “We took a long time to get it right. Damian D'Silva of Folklore restaurant is an old family friend and I love his beef cheek rendang. He taught me how to cook it but his is still the best. We use brisket meat.”

If you feel like splurging, there are more elaborate specials too, including this hulking bone-in Grilled Short Rib (Iga Bakar, $58).

Culinary purist Eng Su (the man's a grad of French Culinary Institute in New York where Bobby Flay and David Chang are alums, okay) now also employs a more time-consuming traditional three-step method of steaming his coconut rice instead of boiling it in a rice cooker like before. “Nasi lemak is best made with rice that’s at least one-and-a-half years old so it’s dryer and you can add more coconut milk to it without it getting mushy and breaking apart. But the jasmine rice from Thailand is getting newer and newer and the batches are all mixed up. So to maintain consistency of its texture, we do our rice kukus (steamed) now. We first cook it in a pot with chopped onions and garlic, cool it, then steam it with coconut milk. We cool it again then steam it a second time with thicker coconut cream. Also, we now use organic Anxin chickens from Malaysia for our fried chicken. It’s leaner but very tasty. It’s also very expensive, but we decided to absorb the cost and not pass it on to our customers as not everyone can stomach paying more for organic food. We made the switch ’cos the usual kampong chickens that we’ve used to buy have become strangely bigger in size, bruised and overall lacking in flavour.”

Belimbing Superstar is at 8 Ann Siang Hill, S069788. Tel: 6974-0998. Open daily except Mon at 11am to 3pm. Get 15% off your total bill on 23 Aug and 10% off on 24 – 25 Aug. Also enjoy a complimentary fried dish, kerabu salad and cheng tng from now till 25 Aug. Email info [at] belimbingsuperstar.com for limited reservations.

The Coconut Club is at 28 Ann Siang Rd, S069708. Tel: 6635-2999. Dinnertime reservations taken via info [at] thecoconutclub.com.sg

Photos: The Coconut Club, Belimbing Superstar