Will You Pay $20 For Atas “Economy Rice”?
We review the healthy-ish Peranakan food from hip cai png joint Belimbing Superstar.
If you were shocked when The Coconut Club started selling $12.80 artisanal nasi lemak, brace yourself: the cai png from its sister restaurant costs about $20 per head. The concept came about because Coconut Club’s chef and co-owner, Lee Eng Su, wanted to make Peranakan food more accessible. So, the 40-year-old isn’t doing a Candlenut or a Violet Oon type of eatery. Instead, he has opened a concept similar to that of economy rice stalls, where the dishes are pre-cooked and displayed for ordering in single servings. But in a stylo-mylo air-conditioned setting, of course. What this means is that you no longer need to round up your entire clan just to eat at a Peranakan restaurant, where the dishes are generally made for sharing.