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Blue Ginger
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Restaurant
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Singapore
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Credit Cards:
All major cards except Diners
Open:
Lunch and dinner daily
Price:
Moderate
Score (/20):
13
Reviewed By
Sue Dyson and Roger McShane
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Phone Number:
+65 6222 3928
Address:
97 Tanjong Pagar Road
Singapore, 238855
Country:
Singapore
Food Style:
Peranaken
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Blue Ginger no longer has an outlet at the Heeren Building which is the outlet we visited, but our reviewers have recently visited the Tanjong Pagar Road outlet and have reported that the Ayam Buah Keluak is still as good as ever.The service is also very attentive. There is also a very short, but reasonable selection of wines available.We were drawn to this place because it advertises traditional Peranakan dishes and one of our aims in re-visiting Singapore was to gain a better understanding of this complex cuisine.We started our meal with Otak Otak, the traditional fish cakes wrapped in banana leaves. At the Blue Ginger they combine them with turmeric, lime leaves, galangal, chilli, candlenuts and shrimp paste. The texture of the ones we tried were perfect - light yet with some slight resistance to the bite. They also had sufficient chilli in them to make the flavour interesting. We followed these with Sambal Bendy (lady fingers or okra with a hot shrimp sauce) and Kangkong Lemak which was the fabulous green vegetable cooked in coconut milk with sweet potato and served with dried shrimp and chilli paste. Both dishes were very good and had a deep flavour redolent of blachan.But the highlight of the meal was the traditional Ayam Buah Keluak - braised chicken served with the fabulous keluak nuts from Indonesia. The black, clam-shaped nuts are truly a taste sensation. The interior of the nut is removed from the shell and ground into a paste, then fried with blachan and other spices. It is then put back into the nut and cooked with the chicken dish. The taste is amazing. As you scrape out the paste you savour the bitter, strong, chocolate flavour of the nut and are immediately reminded of similar dishes from other cuisines such as Spain and Mexico where chocolate is paired with chicken.This restaurant sits nicely between the total informality of the hawkers' stalls and the seriousness of dining in the major hotels in Singapore.===========================You can help support foodtourist.com by clicking on one of the books below to order from Amazon.com.
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