Ex-Santi Restaurant Chef Opens Scissors-Cut Curry Rice Hawker Stall In Yishun Kopitiam

One’s a mixed rice hawker, while the other worked at Santi in MBS

They needed a crowd-pleaser

“We were thinking and looking for a long time, as you need to see what you can sell at that particular kopitiam,” Chon Joon says. “Apart from the location, you must see whether the cuisine will sell well there.”

Things eventually clicked when Chin Tek stumbled across the coffee shop in Yishun, where the duo decided to hawk Hainanese curry rice. It wasn’t as common as mixed rice stalls, and is “hard to find in the north,” while still being popular, says Chin Tek. 

Popular Hainanese curry rice stalls like Beach Road Scissor-Cut Curry Rice in Jalan Besar or Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice in Tiong Bahru are concentrated around Singapore’s southern and central regions.

Thus, Legend Scissors Cut Curry Rice was born. Look for the stall with a kooky signboard bearing the Mandarin characters translating to legend, and a, er, grey cat sitting serenely on its haunches. “The ‘legend’ was my idea – you have to ask him about the cat,” says Chin Tek. His fellow hawker replies, “I thought it would be lucky to have it – since cats have nine lives.”

The plan seems to be working

It seems like the hawkers were on the right track. The stall saw a relatively constant stream of customers for dine-in and takeaway throughout the past year’s restricted dining phases. They’re not too perturbed by news of the Covid-19 Omicron variant either, at least where it comes to business. Chin Tek says cheerily, “Everyone still needs to eat and tapow food. There’s no running away from that.”

Getting Daniel, who works full-time as a financial advisor, on-board has given them more tools to weather the pandemic. First a fan of their grub, he became fast friends with the hawkers after realising that they were also from Kuching. Soon, the Singaporean PR hopped on as a partner to help them with getting on delivery platforms, managing social media and planning further expansions.

“The two of us are busy here every day, so we really need someone else to help with all this backend work,” Chon Joon explains. He hopes to expand Legend Scissors Cut Curry Rice with another outlet, or return to Western cuisine.

The menu

Chin Tek handles most of the day-to-day cooking, while Chon Joon doles out – and snips – the stall’s bevy of accompaniments like deep-fried pork chop, chicken chop and braised pork belly, before dousing it in curry and gravy. That said, he hasn’t forgotten his fine-dining chops. “Before introducing any new item, we go through several rounds of taste-testing and experimentation. One thing I learnt in my restaurant days is that if [the dish] is meant to be sweet or salty, we will make it sweet or salty – even if it’s not as healthy,” he says with a laugh.

There isn’t a visible price list, though they have a menu compiling some of the more popular combinations into sets – the cheapest, with just curry chicken and rice, goes for $3.

Curry Chicken Wing, $1.50 per pc (8 DAYS Pick!)

First off, the all-important curry gravy. According to Chin Tek, his recipe contains around ten different spices. He starts by frying the curry paste to tease out the fragrance from its ingredients, which include galangal, curry powder and garlic, before adding coconut milk and chicken wings, which are simmered for around 20 minutes until tender.

The result is a curry that’s pleasantly aromatic, with a nice glossiness that isn’t covered up by too much starch. It’s also decidedly mild – a conscious decision by the hawkers to cater to elderly in the area, and schoolchildren from nearby schools. Nonetheless, pretty enjoyable when drenched liberally over your plate.

Pork Belly Set, $3.70

Another vital component – a soya-based braising liquid, gussied up with extra starch. Chin Tek’s recipe calls for soya sauce, garlic, five-spice powder and sugar – it skews sweeter than we’d usually like, with a mild savouriness that doesn’t match up to the aromatic curry sauce it’s paired with. Nevertheless, the pork belly is lean rather than fatty (at least for the portion we got) and reasonably tender.

Pork Chop Set, $3.70

The pork chop, marinated with sesame oil, Chinese wine and garlic, has a robust, punchy flavour that’s discernible through the medley of sauces. However, its deep-fried coat (a mix of flour and panko crumbs) – even when not drenched in curry - doesn’t quite have that resounding crunch, possibly ‘cos it’s been sitting around since it was first cooked. While not tough, it’s also a little dry within.

The set also comes with fried egg and braised cabbage, another mainstay of Hainanese curry rice – it’s simply fried with garlic and stewed in pork broth until soft, though we found the texture of the veg to be a tad inconsistent, with some bits of cabbage a little less tender than others.

Chicken Chop Set, $3.70

Skin-on chicken thigh in a roughly similar marinade – without garlic, so as not to overpower the mellower flavour of the chook – that we find juicier and yummier. We also appreciate its agreeably-springy bite.

Fried Chicken Wing, $1.50 per pc

The same marinade and flour mix is applied once more on the stall’s fried chicken wings. The flavours are there, but the greater surface area of the wing just means more forlorn, middling crunchiness (the tiny craggy bits are still crisp though). Unremarkable compared to what’s coming up next.

Nam Yu Fried Pork Belly, $3 per plate (8 DAYS Pick!)

A reflection of the hawkers’ Hakka roots – pork belly is covered in a five-spice powder and nam yu (fermented red bean curd paste), and left overnight for the flavours to penetrate within, then deep-fried and sliced. This yields scrumptious, juicy pork belly with an enjoyable QQ bite and crispy, umami-rich exterior. We’d ‘spend’ the calories for this any day.

Assorted vegetables, $0.80 a la carte; $2 per plate

Chin Tek also hands us three of their most popular vegetable options. The kailan stir-fried with garlic doesn’t leave much of an impression against a tastier brinjal dish sauteed with oyster sauce and garlic. There’s also potato, steamed till soft and cut into chunks and fried with black pepper – a carby number that’s surprisingly delish.

Bottom line

Legend Scissors Cut Curry Rice does a more than decent job at delivering a proper plate of Hainanese curry rice – gloriously messy, with more than sufficient attention paid to the details. It doesn’t really match up to the greats just yet, but perhaps timing is paramount for the fussier deep-fried items. If you’ve got the time, maybe waiting on the sidelines for a fresh batch of pork chops – or that heavenly nam yu-tinged pork belly – to be brought out might be prudent.

The details

Legend Scissors Cut Curry Rice is at #01-380 Blk 732 Yishun Ave 5, S760732. Open daily, 10am – 7.30pm. More info via Facebook and Instagram. Delivery via Grabfood and Foodpanda. 

Photos: Alvin Teo

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