It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best collaboration the world has yet to see again was when Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men got together in 1995 to create their multi-platinum ode to love and loss, ‘One Sweet Day’. But now, there’s another collaboration that could possibly be just as transcendent.

By now, everyone’s heard of companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meats with their plant-based “meats” that allow inveterate meat-eaters to assuage our collective guilt, and eat our way towards a more ecologically hopeful future that holds the promise of foods that still have the taste and texture of meat and blood. Impossible Food’s “game changing” plant-based meat is made from soy and potato protein, coconut and sunflower oil, and heme, an essential molecule found in plants and animals alike that the company describes as “what makes meat taste like meat.” Their meat is also gluten-free, and halal and kosher certified.

Impossible Foods launched in Singapore last March and in that time has become an ubiquitous presence on menus island-wide thanks to their collaborations with restaurants and local brands including Fatboy’s the Burger Bar, Omakase Burger, Oriole Coffee + Bar, PS Cafe, Three Buns, Wolf Burger, Potato Head, Bread Street Kitchen by Gordon Ramsey and Cut by Wolfgang Puck. We like that they’ve also gone beyond the obvious burger route and have remixed dishes like satay (Violet Oon Satay Bar & Grill) and fried rice (PappaRich). And now they’ve teamed up with local purveyor of curry puffs, Tip Top, the (arguably more delicious) underdog to Old Chang Kee. Tip Top opened its first store in Ang Mo Kio in 1979 and has now expanded to nine outlets across Singapore. Fans of Tip Top love their filled-to-bursting curry puffs that are made with a “special blend of 18 spices”.

The Impossible Rendang Puff is a take on Tip Top’s Nonya Beef Rendang Puff. Like the original, it’s cooked in Tip Top’s “special blend of Nonya spices” including lemongrass, blue ginger and sambal chilli. It’s priced at $2.20 vs $2.00 for the original Nonya Beef Rendang puff. This follows the pricing of Impossible Foods “remixed” dishes which are usually priced higher than their original counterparts. The pastry skin contains eggs and the sambal chilli contains ikan bilis and so the puff isn't vegetarian.

For this review, we conducted a scientifically vigorous blind taste test to see if we could tell the difference between the original Nonya Beef Rendang Puff and the Impossible Rendang Puff remix. We cut each puff in two, chucked the halves into a bowl then shut our eyes tightly, groped for a piece, and shoved it into our mouth.

Mystery half 1 was a little too sweet but it tastes like someone’s actually whipped up a batch of beef rendang and stuffed it into a golden parcel of fried pastry. The filling is chunky and aromatic with spices and the flavours of lemongrass and lime leaf. There is the unmistakeable complexity and fullness of flavour and mouthfeel that you only get when meat, fat, collagen and sinew break down during cooking. This half was clearly the original Nonya Beef Rendang Puff. There are chunks of beef (not mince) dotted throughout, offering a pleasing contrast against the potato. A good puff. Would eat again.

Compared to Mystery half 1, this half tasted flatter, thinner, and lacking in complexity. It’s also harder to distinguish the texture of the “beef” from the potato and the filling ends up an almost uniform kind of mash. And here’s a curious thing: while the beef feels like mince on the tongue — it’s got the craggy texture of real beef mince — it lacks a comforting solidity when bitten into. We must have been subconsciously expecting some sort of resistance and density, but biting into a clump of this beef is like biting into something that is hard on the outside but soft and almost hollow on the inside. That said, if we hadn’t tried the original Nonya Beef Rendang Puff first, this would’ve been a perfectly adequate ‘beef’ rendang puff and we probably wouldn’t have thought to question if it was made from real meat or not. It’s tasty, and dare we say, even quite beefy.

We’re not expecting an exact replica of beef (we can but hope) and as far as meat substitutes go, these newish ‘meats’ are miles ahead of anything that has come before. The Impossible Rendang Puff is yet another tasty offering from the brand that gives people who’re concerned about the health and environmental impact of meat production and consumption the option to eat better without sacrificing taste. While this collaboration might not have reached the heights of ‘One Sweet Day’ (to be fair, nothing has) we hope there’ll be many more to come. If you’d like to try both puffs — Tip Top is offering a package deal of the Impossible and beef version for $3.80.

The Impossible Rendang Puff is available at all nine Tip Top outlets across Singapore including #B1-55 Raffles City Shopping Centre, S179103. Tel: 6734-4487. Open daily 8.30am-10pm. Also available while stocks last via Deliveroo, Food Panda & GrabFood. http://www.tiptopcurrypuff.com/