Halal Eateries

Made a reservation on Chope and I’m glad I did because the restaurant was apparently full house for the night. When we ordered, we were told that food might take a while to be served, so at least they warned us. Thankfully, we had a lot to chat about so time passed pretty quickly while we were waiting.

The Cheeky Git is a cheeky name for a braised beef cheek dish served atop mashed potatoes. The beef was fork tender and my dining party was amazed at how soft it was. With Burpple Beyond 1 for 1 Main Dishes, this was very affordable and high quality. Would make a return visit for this dish!

A halal Mexican eatery serving tacos, burritos and burrito bowls which is also on Burpple Beyond. However, the Butter Chicken Bowl is on the exclusions list so we ordered that separately.

After ordering, we were informed that the food would take approximately 15 minutes to be served. Quite a long wait for a restaurant that’s not very crowded, but overall not too bad. The food was served warm but not hot, so I guess it wasn’t freshly cooked.

Afterwit puts a spin on Mexican food by incorporating local flavours as evident in the butter chicken flavour. In addition, long grain biryani rice is used which adds to the flavour of the bowl. I thought that the taste of the thick butter chicken gravy was good, but the chicken itself was on the dry side. For $16, the amount of chicken was also quite sparse, but the tomato salsa and cucumber salad were not bad, and the whole dish was quite good overall. While I wouldn’t pay $16 for a bowl or burrito again, I’d consider coming back with a friend to use the 1-for-1.

*Note: Afterwit accepts Chope reservations!

Papa Ayam at 313@Somerset serves up many variations of Indonesian sambal on crispy smashed chicken.

The original is made with original garlic sambal where you can request for spiciness levels from 1-15. There’s even a WTF level 27 for a spicy eating challenge - if you’re able to finish it in 5 minutes, you get the meal for free and your photo on their wall of fame. The sambal is made fresh depending on the level of spiciness that you choose, where they’ll toss in the same number of chilli padis as the level chosen and grind them right in front of you. Not wanting to suffer a stomachache, we opted for level 5 and were told it was a mild to moderate spice level.

Apart from the original, there’s also the cabe ijo which is sambal made from green chillies which are less spicy. The last option is the sambal matah which is raw sambal made from onion, lemongrass, and chilli padi mixed with lime juice.

For those who can’t make up their minds, there’s the half-half option with half sambal matah and half sambal original so you can try two types of sambal at one go. In true Indonesian style, you can pick either rice or Indomie to go along with the chicken. It was a no brainer for me - Indomie all the way! Since the sambal is made to order, the food takes approximately 5-10 minutes to prepare.

The Indomie noodles are well-cooked, they’re springy and not soggy at all. The fried chicken is crispy and the batter isn’t too thick. Level 5 spiciness is indeed quite spicy, and although my tongue was enjoying the spicy shiokness of it all, I was worrried my stomach would start churning its complaints. I wasn’t such a fan of the sambal matah thanks to the copious amounts of raw onions, so I ended up nudging the onions to the corner and eating the chicken only. Overall for $7.80 the portion isn’t that large, but it’s good for sharing so you can try various stalls and have the best of all worlds.

Special mention goes to the awesome service at Papa Ayam! I was given rice although I’d asked for Indomie, and although I said I was ok with it, the kind people at Papa Ayam cheerfully offered to swap out the rice for Indomie. This is the kind of service that makes me happy to patronise a stall and want to continue supporting them. It helps that their food is fantastic too - I’ll be back to have more of that original sambal and Indomie!

*Note that Papa Ayam is halal as it’s Muslim-owned!

There’s two types of chocolate tarts available at Swissbake - the dark chocolate ganache and the chocolate brownie crumble. Just by the looks of it, this looked more like a regular chocolate tart than the brownie one which had a brownie-esque texture. The tarts are all stored in the fridge, so they only take them out when ordered - this meant a rock solid tart, and not in a good way. The chocolate crumble on top was seriously hard. It was a challenge to cut with a knife. Exerting any pressure on the top layer caused the dark chocolate ganache filling to ooze out onto the plate, leaving a sticky mess. While this dessert is indeed chocolatey, it leaves very much to be desired. The texture of the crust makes it impossible to enjoy this dessert as it is, and you have to reconstruct the layers on your own or dab the crust into the ganache yourself to get all the layers in. While we did enjoy the ganache at first, it started to get cloyingly sweet and we had troubles finishing the tart even between two of us. Wouldn’t buy this tart again.

*Kraftwich by Swissbake is FavePay friendly so start racking up and using that cashback!

Love that most of the menu items at Kraftwich come with a calorie count, though it’d be even more helpful if macros were included too as I really would like to know how much carbs, proteins or fats I’m consuming in addition to the calories to determine how nutritious the meal actually is.

Went for the Smoked Chicken Kraftwich this time, and the staff kindly offered to heat it up before serving it directly to our table. That was a nice touch, as the bread came super crispy and warm. I did love the pumpkin seeds studded on top of the bread which added some nuttiness. Yum. Ingredient-wise, there’s quite a generous amount of smoked chicken in the sandwich, but it is much drier than the smoked duck and not as satisfying in my opinion. I liked the juicy tomatoes which were a much needed addition of moisture into this otherwise dry sandwich. I did feel that this combination was lighter on taste than the smoked duck - not sure if this might be discrepancies in the outlets, or whether it’s really the combination itself. Whatever it is, the smoked chicken Kraftwich is still a nice healthy option weighing in at less than 300 calories which won’t leave you hungry.

*Kraftwich is FavePay friendly so be sure to rack up some cashback!

Settled on this for some beef and chicken protein. The staff didn’t bother asking for preferred doneness of the meat - not sure if it’s standard practice or if they were just overwhelmed. Fortunately, both the meats were pretty tender and the brown sauce accompaniment was quite good. However, this took way too long to serve (more than an hour), and it’s definitely not worth the wait.

Quite a good selection of ingredients from this stall at Kovan Meetup @ 203 Coffeeshop, but the gravy is more like a chilli sauce than a cooked thick gravy. It wasn’t that satisfying, but good for a quick pre-meal dish while waiting for food from other stalls like the beef noodles or Tian Wai Tian.

While I really want to judge the food at Kava objectively, I can’t really do so because of the insanely terrible service and wait times. I don’t want to be too harsh because the 3 service crew were stressed out as well, but I literally was seated at my table at 7.15pm, ordered bottled water and hot tea while waiting for my dining partners which was only served at 7.45pm. Ordered this platter and clam chowder when the drinks were served and it only arrived at 8.30pm. That’s ridiculous. We were famished by the time the platter and soup arrived, and had to wait till 9.15pm for our Mains (we wanted to cancel but were told that they were already being cooked).

Sorry to say that the staff are incapable of prioritising and managing orders. It seems that they can only process and deal with orders table by table, which was why it took half an hour for me to get a BOTTLED WATER?

The food wasn’t too bad. The Golden Platter came with some freshly cut fries, buffalo wings, battered mushrooms and fish fillets. None of the fried items were too oily, however, they weren’t extremely delicious either and certainly not worth a 45 minute wait. Don’t visit at mealtimes because the wait is insane - there are other restaurants along that stretch that may have long queues but you probably have better luck getting a meal with a more reasonable wait time than at Kava.

A layered dessert with a vanilla cake base, chocolate sauce, Oreo crunch, a scoop of ice cream and crushed Oreo topping.

Love the mix of warm chocolate sauce and dense vanilla cake at the bottom and the contrasting ice cold scoop of ice cream all in one cup. You technically have a choice of ice cream flavours, but I didn’t specify and ended up with the default vanilla which was a pretty good combination with Oreo and chocolate. It requires a little manoeuvring to get all the layers in one spoonful but it’s worth it. Creamy, crunchy, cakey, chocolatey, warm and cold, it’s an all in one dessert served in just one cup for maximum convenience.

*A Spoonful Of Sugar is a halal eatery and also FavePay/GrabPay friendly!