House of Peranakan Petit

You cannot visit a Peranakan restaurant and not order their ayam buah keluak.

To prepare this dish, chicken and (interestingly) spare ribs are braised in turmeric and lemongrass based gravy with buah keluak. It is one of the most time-consuming dishes to make as the buah keluak has to be properly cleaned to make it safe for consumption. The spices have to be first stir-fried until fragrant before part of it is stuffed back into the buah keluak shell whilst the rest is cooked with tamarind juice and stock to create the gravy.

The buah keluak is the key ingredient in this as it gives the dish a nutty and earthy flavour. It's great on its own but perfect over rice. House of Peranakan Petit has one of the better renditions that I have tried and this is definitely a must-order if you are there!

House of Peranakan's beef rendang was prepared by braising the beef in a spice mixture of chillies, onions, lemongrass, turmeric, kaffir lime leaves and coconut milk.

The beef is fork-tender and I really enjoyed the rich and savoury rendang sauce. In fact, I will strongly recommend having this with their assam fish as the sweet and tangy assam gravy works really well with the richness of the rendang sauce!

House of Peranakan Petit's otak otak is definitely one of those dishes that will polarise opinions around the dining table.

Made in-house from fresh mackeral and 20 over different types of spices, the otak otak packs a nice fiery kick. I was alright with it but Miss K and our overseas friends did not really fancy the taste profile of the spices used.

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!

Pork ribs sioh - not bad
Bakwang kepiting
Nonya chap chye
Ngoh hiang- delicious but a bit oil

We were quite cautious when we ordered this.
However, the sour Assam, lemongrass and tamarind lifted the deep fried crunchy baby squid to another level of enjoyment.
We loved it!
Highly recommended!