Step Aside Prata, This Bakery Serves Chicken Curry With A Giant Croissant
Super-sized croissants paired with coffee are nothing new. Halal bakeshop, Ah B Bakery, however, has made the bold move of serving the massive French pastry alongside chicken or mutton curry. Sounds kinda weird, but also kinda shiok. After all, German-based cooking blog Nyonya Cooking once controversially named curry’s best friend, roti prata, the “Asian flat croissant”.
Ah B Bakery was opened in December 2021 by Lim Tze Wei, 42. The baker worked with popular brands like Swiss Bake for 20 years before launching his own shop in 2021. He tells 8days.sg that he chose to set up a halal bakery as “the halal market is bigger”. Of his eight branches islandwide, most operate as takeaway stores specialising in affordable breads and cakes. Only the Bukit Gombak (within Kedai Kopi coffeeshop) and Lucky Plaza (in Kimly coffeeshop) outlets also offer curries and a chance to dine in. Tze Wei no longer bakes at Ah B Bakery, he has hired chefs who do all the baking in a central kitchen.
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Only sold at Bukit Gombak outlet on weekends
The XXL croissant is only sold at the Bukit Gombak shop on weekends, and just 15 to 20 pieces are made daily. Tze Wei explains that “[the croissant] is very big, and when we first launched it, a lot of people only took photos but they didn't buy it, but more people have started to buy it now”. Interestingly, Ah B Bakery doesn’t sell regular-sized croissants.
XXL Croissant with Chicken Curry, $20.80
8days.sg sampled the set. The minute we unboxed our croissant, we were wowed by its size and impressively puffy middle. It looks thrillingly huge in the flesh. Okay, it's roughly the size of four of Tiong Bahru Bakery’s regular croissants.
The modest bowl of accompanying curry, however, didn’t match up to its XXL pastry partner size-wise. We think this whole set can feed two ladies or one hungry dude since there’s only one chicken leg.
Taste test
Tze Wei tells us that the croissants are baked with Candia French butter. It’s not the neatest-looking croissant, and some parts looked a little overbaked. However, it tasted fine. The pastry is nicely crisp and quite flaky on the surface, with a soft, fluffy center. Pretty pleasant, though it could do with more butter.
Meanwhile, the nonya-style curry features a whole chicken leg chopped into four for easy eating, plus potatoes and sweet carrots. Considering that Ah B Bakery is, well, a bakery, we expected to be more impressed by their croissants. Interestingly, it was this curry that stole the show. The lemak gravy is thick and robust while the chook is fall-off-the-bone tender. It's mildly spiced, with a fragrant coconutty hint. Besides chicken curry, mutton curry with the croissant is also sold for $24.80.
Tearing hunks of croissant to dip into this was enjoyable - the savoury gravy complemented the feathery, reasonably flaky croissant well. As the viennoiserie isn’t super buttery, it didn’t feel too jelak pairing this with the curry.
Verdict
While few things beat the classic combo of prata with curry, this is a yummy cross-cultural culinary marriage we can get behind. Plus, it’s great for the ’gram. Our only grouse: the curry portion needs to be as large as that XXL pastry.
Go early to avoid disappointment
If you wanna get your hands on some, it’s best to head down before 3pm or 4pm on weekends as it’s often sold out by then.
Though this dish is only sold at the Bukit Gombak outlet currently due to lack of manpower, Tze Wei says he plans to introduce it to his other outlets soon. Meanwhile, if Bukit Gombak is too far for you, Ah B’s Lucky Plaza branch also serves the same curries, but paired with a cute wreath of regular-sized buns in flavours like garlic or sesame ($14.80 for full wreath; $5.80 with two buns).
The XXL croissant & curry are sold on weekends at Ah B Bakery’s Bukit Gombak outlet at 376 Bukit Batok St 31, S650376. Open daily 7.30am - 9.30pm. More info via Facebook and Instagram.
Photos: Gwyn Lim, Ah B Bakery
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