[CLOSED] Belimbing Superstar

Shocked to hear about the sudden closure of Belimbing right before CNY.

Belimbing was a sister restaurant to The Coconut Club (or the atas nasi lemak place). It’s goal was to make Peranakan cuisine accessible to the masses (think cai fan). There was a wide array of dishes to choose from although the price point was rather high for how they wanted to position themselves. A meal here could easily rake up to $20-25 per head.

Overall, the food was good and I liked the Assam pork, beef rendang and ayam buah keluak. The sambal belachan was worth a mention too. There were less common Peranakan dishes on the menu and unfortunately, I didn’t get to try them all.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out well like its sister restaurant. It’s sad to see how another restaurant bit the dust five months after opening. But this reveals how cut throat our F&B industry is.

Been wanting to try this for awhile and it was shiok!

Atas version of nonya caipng, I love, but not well-versed in this cuisine - but every dish was pretty well executed to me.

Quite a good variety of dishes to pick from and there’s an interesting kerabu (salad) section.

The prices turned out ok, ranging from $5-10. Everything would’ve been about $15/pax, with the exception of the fish (swipe to see!) which we happily ordered without checking the price 😂 The fish was firm flaky and nicely crisp and flavour - which was good, but was very, very pricey.

My favourite was the yam cake, which was nicely fried, soft and you could still taste the chunks of yam; hae cho with bits of fresh prawns in deep fried bean curd skin; chapchye was also very flavourful and texture was soft with a bit of bite from the black fungus. Go for the tender beef rendang! Ayam Buahkeluak was earthy but rather light while the chicken was undoubtedly tender and succulent. We also ordered a soup - the meatball was juicy and well seasoned, tho we weren’t a fan of the soup itself which had a hint of alkaline taste.

Good for groups if you like sharing and trying a bit of everything. Wouldn’t mind coming back once in awhile!

Four ladies and fourteen small plates of Peranakan food. That was the final count at lunch with my three food-loving friends.

I love how Milly‘s initial concern about us having ordered too much food was put to rest by Gail’s quick-thinking comment to divide the twelve different dishes by four - “We would each order three dishes anyway”. Mathematics FTW.

My favourites from the spread would be the Belimbing Pork (its thick gravy which is high-in-acidity and thus very sour, was the perfect foil for the soft chunks of fatty pork belly), Cinchalok Bomb (recommended by Angeline, the crunchy-on-the-outside ball of beancurd was deliciously savoury and umami) as well as all four of the assorted Kerabu (Asian salad) we had chosen.

There were a few items that we found lacking, namely the Sotong Hitam, Belachan Chicken and Sambal Brinjal. When a staff came by to enquire about our meal, we shared our honest feedback. This was done in the spirit of hoping the team will want to work on improving the dishes, and not because we wanted to complain for the sake of complaining. To our surprise, when it came to payment, those items were omitted from our bill. Even though we protested and insisted on paying for them, she stood firm, explaining that since the eatery is still new and in the process of tweaking recipes, the management takes every customer’s feedback very seriously. Moreover, she pointed out, we hadn’t eaten much of those said dishes either. Wow, we were really impressed by this. One thing’s for sure, Belimbing Superstar gets a star from us for their service.

They tasted like the pork dumplings my Poh Poh use to make except these are on steroids. So yummy.

I say this because every Peranakan will have their own fav version. Here it’s a lot milder than what we expected. Good way to introduce those who are not familiar with this black nut to it. The curry chicken was also quite mild.

The sambal could have had more punch to it but still no complaints as they serve a mean sambal belacan here. The lodeh was a tad too salty. The Chap Chye here is legit. Forgot to take a shot of it though.