Good-Value Lobster Bisque, Bolognese Pasta By Olivia Restaurant Chef Turned Hawker At Chinatown Complex
Tasty, well-cooked pastas from $6.50 at this hawker stall.
When Clarence Chooi, 27, first opened Nudedles in Chinatown Complex Food Centre last December, he expected to capitalise on the return of the office crowd to the Central Business District (CBD). Yet, the affordable pasta he dishes out – which starts from $6.50 a bowl – has since caught the eye of many older folk living in the area as well. Indeed, a continuous stream of curious, silver-haired customers peek around the counter throughout our shoot, attempting to order plates of lobster bisque linguine from the solo hawker.
“It’s a happy surprise,” says the chef-turned-hawker, whose formal training includes six-month internships at two-Michelin-starred modern British fine-diner Jaan by Kirk Westaway and the now-defunct Joel Robuchon Restaurant at Resorts World Sentosa, along with a two-year stint as chef de partie at the wildly popular Spanish eatery, Olivia Restaurant & Lounge.
In fact, his former workplace on Keong Saik Road is just a stone’s throw away from his new digs – it’s part of the reason the young hawker decided to set up shop here. “I wanted to cater to the office crowd by serving affordable, restaurant-standard food here. And after working [in the area] for two years, I feel that I know the profile [of customers here] well.”
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Started off in restaurants, but wanted to run own biz
Clarence’s career in F&B began with a Nitec course in Western Culinary Arts at ITE College West, before spending time in French and Spanish kitchens. “So it might sound a bit funny, how I ended up cooking Italian food [as a hawker],” he says with a laugh. “But pasta was always in the back of my mind. It’s a popular dish with Singaporeans, so it’ll be easier to drive the concept [compared to French or Spanish food].”
He adds that being a hawker was also the plan since the beginning. “When I joined Olivia Restaurant & Lounge,” I told them that I was eventually going to quit and be a hawker,” he says. “Why work so hard [at a job], when at most you get paid for OT (overtime). As a hawker, your effort benefits yourself. When I open a business, the more effort I put in, the faster it will expand.”
And as a first-time business owner, opening a hawker stall (he invested around $30K into Nudedles) before moving to “bigger things” like a cafe is “a better and safer option”. “[Starting a] home biz is a bit tricky, because the customer won’t exactly eat the food as soon as it is prepared, so the quality might be affected,” he shares.
Reckons the CBD will return to life soon
He quit his full-time role at Olivia in February 2020 (though he continued to work there part-time to support himself), and began preparations to start his own hawker biz. That includes experimentation with recipes – some of which he’d gleaned from his earlier career – finding the right supplier, and securing a stall. He only succeeded in tendering a hawker stall after four tries, failing once to snag a spot at Hong Lim Market & Food Centre, and twice at Chinatown Complex Food Centre.
While it might seem foolhardy to shoot for a CBD location while the return to working-from-home is a real possibility, Clarence figures he still stands a good chance. “I opened at quite a good time. The office crowd is beginning to come back. It’s still a bit quieter, but not bad lah,” he says hopefully. “I’ve already been planning this for a long time. Whether Covid-19 comes or not, I have to push through.”
Why Nudedles?
The core concept of the stall comes through from its name, a play on the word nude and noodles. “Because noodles are nude and plain by itself – so I’m hoping to dress them up with the right sauces,” the millennial chef says with a laugh.
This is why Clarence, despite offering eight different pasta varieties, only allows a select few with each sauce. For example, spaghetti (which is round) and flat linguine work well with sauces like carbonara and lobster bisque, as “they cling to the noodles well”. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the space or capacity to produce the noodles handmade, especially since he’s temporarily running the outfit solo while trying to find a part-timer.
Still, his time in restaurant kitchens puts him in good stead – throughout our shoot, we watch as he handles multiple tasks simultaneously during mise en place, searing off housemade meatballs while parboiling pasta and portioning the noodles into plastic baggies. That energy continues once the crowd rolls in, where he’s continuously dishing out orders as quickly as they come – though a sizable queue has formed by the time we leave. For now, it seems the gamble to open in the CBD might be working out.
The menu
Four is the hawker’s favourite number, so it's emblazoned on the storefront. It’s also the number of signature pasta sauces he has on offer: beef bolognese, lobster bisque, squid ink and pesto, ranging from $6.50 to $8.
Pesto, $6.50
Italian sweet basil, pinenuts, garlic and extra virgin olive oil are blended into a pesto and tossed with warm, al dente fusilli (corkscrew pasta). It’s bright, herbaceous and nutty with a bit of zing from the garlic, contrasted against sauteed cherry tomatoes and shiitake mushrooms. A yummy entry-level dish that’s vegetarian-friendly too.
Beef Bolognese, $6.50; add $1 for Rigatoni (8 DAYS Pick!)
A lovely, savoury bolognese sauce envelopes too-firm rigatoni (large tubular pasta). The sauce, comprising tomato, onion, minced beef and thyme simmered over three hours, is meat-forward with a mellow acidic undercurrent from the tomato. Pretty delish on its own – especially with the scattering of funky parmesan cheese over top – but made even better with the addition of two handmade meatballs. The springy orbs are hewn from a gourmet mix of minced beef, pork, pancetta (salt-cured pork belly) and herbs, and seared to a pretty, dark-brown sheen. We only wish we had more of them.
Lobster Bisque, $8 (8 DAYS Pick!)
Another standout item, Clarence’s lobster bisque pasta – which he reveals is adapted from a recipe he learnt back at Joel Robuchon Restaurant. Lobster and prawn heads, stir-fried to bring out their natural, crustacean-y flavours before being boiled with carrots, onions and “other secret ingredients”, come together with a heady, umami richness. While the accompanying linguine is a little less firm than we’d like, it’s more than made up for by the generous heap of clean-tasting seafood — squid, mussels, clams and two fresh prawns (but no lobster at this price, of course) – and sauteed cherry tomatoes sitting above it. They’re well-cooked in general, though the squid we got is a tad rubbery.
Squid Ink, $8; add $1 for ‘Nero’ Pasta
Clarence uses cheaper squid ink paste to achieve the dish’s signature glossy dark hue. There’s also an option of adding $1 to get spaghetti al nero di seppia (where squid ink is already incorporated into the black noodles). The squid ink, together with a splash of lobster bisque, delivers subtly sweet, briny flavours that are enjoyable, without overpowering. The dish also comes with the same ingredients as the lobster bisque pasta, sans clams and mussels. It’s far above par for hawker grub, but not exactly restaurant-standard.
Bottom line
Nudedles shows plenty of promise, thanks to Clarence’s good grasp of flavours and restaurant cooking. It’s not as refined as the pasta you’d get at a restaurant at these prices, obviously, but it’s several steps up from a typical hawker pasta stall’s and offers great value-for-money with seafood-laden bowls going for just $8. We only hope that he finds extra help soon to better manage the queue. If you’re making the trip down, note that the food is sometimes sold out by the afternoon.
