Bangkok Spa Owner Opens Claypot Rice Stall, Cooks With ‘AI Technology’
We were intrigued when we first heard about Pot Master, a six-week-old claypot rice stall in Chinatown Complex touted to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its cooking. We imagined an IT bro coding a programme to collect our data, learn our behaviour and customise our claypot rice.
Expectation: A robot that intuitively gives us a crispier guoba (rice crust) and more sauce, just the way we like it. Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, but sign us up!
But the reality? The AI part is a 10-burner gas stove with each individual burner rotating a claypot on the spot so that your dish cooks evenly. “Every dish is cooked for exactly 12 minutes,” explains chef-owner Darry Tan, 54, who experimented with gas pressure and timing to settle on this optimal cooking time.
So nope, it can’t predict or customise our order. Not to be pedantic about this, but what Pot Master uses is really automated technology, not AI.
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From kitchen assistant to spa owner and now, hawker
Darry has been cooking for almost 40 years, starting as a kitchen assistant at the now-defunct Fortune Gate restaurant. He was even tasked to run a food court stall started by the restaurant, serving wonton mee and roasted meat.
The jack of all trades worked his way up and branched into different businesses, including a seafood restaurant in Bangkok (which he has since sold to his partner). He also owns a massage spa called FootMaster in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit 31. “We are ranked No. 4 in Tripadvisor and serve Bangkok’s elite, including some of the top 10 richest men in Thailand,” says Darry proudly.The spa is currently run by his staff, but he closes Pot Master for four days every month, from the 25th to 28th, to fly to Bangkok to oversee his other biz. The serial entrepreneur and foodie has also been travelling to China frequently over the past 25 years. In the Shunde district of Guangzhou, he became a loyal customer at his shifu’s claypot rice stall.
He also met his shixiong (apprentice senior) in Guangzhou, who has built up a claypot empire called Bao Zhang Gui with over 500 stalls across China. Using automated stoves, every stall churns out 36 claypot dishes per round, which is considered fast for this notoriously time-consuming and laborious cooking method.
Inspired, Darry paid his shifu $5,000 to learn his 30-year-old recipes, which are prepared the old-school way by using a gas stove to cook the rice and finished over charcoal to create the crust. His month-long training in 2019 included a week working the rotating stoves at one of his shixiong’s stalls.
In total, Darry spent over $10,000 including air tickets and accommodation to learn how to cook his high-tech claypot rice in China. He had intended to open Pot Master in 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic hit and he was stuck in Bangkok until travel resumed. In late 2022, he joined NEA’s Incubation Stall Programme (ISP), which supports aspiring hawkers.
When he was successfully allocated a stall at Chinatown Complex, he spent $4,000 to import from China the same (but smaller-scale) stove system that his shixiong uses and started Pot Master.
The menu
There are six claypot rice options, priced between $6 for the basic chicken and mushroom, to $10 for the preserved meat combo and the unusual braised beef brisket.
Darry has the cooking time and method down to a science. Every claypot is filled with pre-soaked rice and water to cook at high heat for five minutes. Then, one minute at medium heat to “harden the rice”. Finally, five and a half minutes at low heat to create a crispy crust without burning it.
Preserved Meat Combo ($10)
Darry tried different brands of preserved meat before finally choosing the Golden Bridge brand for their 60% lean, 40% fat ratio that is “just nice” for this dish. It comes with slices of waxed bacon, waxed lup cheong and waxed duck liver sausage, a traditional combination for lovers of the smoky preserved meats.
It is finished with the same light brown sauce that his shifu and shixiong use and taught him, made with soy sauce, oyster, ginger, dark sauce, garlic and spring onion. It is quite tasty and flavours the rice sufficiently, despite the rather anaemic appearance.
We wish the preserved meat spent a longer time in the claypot instead of just 30 seconds in the residual heat with the flame off. They had a tinge of ‘raw’ smell and flavour when we ate it.
You could mix the waxed meats and keep the claypot covered for a few minutes before tucking in, but who has that kind of patience when we are starving at lunchtime?
Master’s Four Treasure, $7 (8 Days Pick!)
This bestseller comes with waxed bacon, waxed sausage, chicken chunks and pork ribs. Darry uses boneless chicken thigh instead of the traditional whole chicken parts.
“I find chicken pieces too boney and you don’t get to eat much meat. I decided to use boneless chicken so that it’s easier to eat for kids and the elderly who frequent this hawker centre,” he explains.
The chicken and pork ribs are well-marinated with sesame oil, soy sauce, chinese wine and velveted with potato starch for a silky finish. The waxed bacon and waxed sausages add a salty fragrance. A good all-in-one claypot for those who want to sample a bit of everything.
If you prefer the OG, the Chicken & Mushroom ($6) is a safe bet, though we’ll recommend that you add a thumb-length chunk of Mui Heong salted fish for $1 to ramp up the umami flavour.
Minced Pork Eggplant, $7
The only veggie-centric option on the menu, it features flash-fried eggplant strips and minced pork marinated with garlic and oyster sauce. A simple dish if you’re in the mood for something light, but we prefer our eggplant cooked in a more robust sauce, like the one we tried at Grandma’s Taste Ipoh Claypot (coincidentally, also an Incubation Stall Programme alum) in the same hawker centre.
Braised Beef Brisket, $10
An uncommon option, Darry’s braised beef brisket packs a nice flavour. It is not too tough but still offers some bite, though leaving it too long in the claypot might dry up some of the smaller cubes. Worth a try for beef lovers.
Bottomline
We appreciate that Darry’s claypot rice comes with xiao bai cai or broccoli for a little fibre. The meats are well-marinated, and the rice in every dish is thoroughly cooked (we have encountered uncooked or burnt rice in claypots too often.) However, the crust is inconsistent and not crispy enough for us.
Crust is a must
We could hardly find any crunchy guoba in the Chicken & Mushroom claypot, but another pot yielded a browner crust, which puzzles us because the automated cooking is supposed to ensure consistency.
Darry explains that he adjusted the cooking time as most of his customers preferred a softer crust. Too bad for those of us who would have preferred to customise our order for that coveted guoba.The good news is that Darry says since our visit, he has intensified the fire to form a “crustier but not burnt” guoba.
It’s fun to see 10 claypots spinning on their stoves though, and the many tourists snapping pics attest to that. That, and the value-for-money Master’s Four Treasure claypot rice, makes Pot Master worth a visit.
The details
Pot Master is at #02-182 Chinatown Complex Food Centre, Blk 335 Smith St, S050335. Open daily except Sat,11.30am–7pm. Closed from 25th–28th of every month. More info via Facebook and TikTok.
Photos: Aik Chen
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