Peranakan food is kinda our default option whenever Miss K and I have overseas friends visiting. It's a cuisine which you don't usually find outside of Singapore other than Chinese enclaves in South East Asia (e.g. Penang or Malacca) and the restaurants themselves are usually eclectically furnished with peranakan tiles and vestiges of their heritage culture.

Our go-to Peranakan spot has since closed due to the pandemic so we had an opportunity to check out a new joint - House of Peranakan Petit in Tiong Bahru, a branch of House of Peranakan in Katong which has more than 30 years of history (albeit with different names). Our guests were immediately intrigued by the Tiffany blue facade of the restaurant and its location next to a temple.

For starters, we introduced our guests to kueh pie tee, a crisp thin pastry tart stuffed with shredded turnip and topped with a prawn, parsley and a sweet tangy chilli sauce. Its really hard to find this dish nowadays outside of speciality peranakan restaurants and the pastry tarts are usually mass produced in factories, making them thick, crumbly and greasy.

House of Peranakan Petit's rendition certainly hit the mark. We loved their delicate yet shattering crisp tart shell and sweet juicy turnip filling. At $8 or 10 for 4, it is certainly pricey but this is one of those dishes which is so painstakingly hard to make that bopian have to pay lah!