You may have read about the Regional Hawker Showcase at Raffles Courtyard, a celebration of Southeast Asian hawker specialties in partnership with Makansutra and its founder, KF Seetoh.
The first two installments in July and August saw an overwhelming response for Pak Buyung Haryanto from Bandung, Indonesia who served signature crispy martabak, and Ho Thi Tha from Vietnam who presented Banh Khoai, a savoury pancake filled with seafood and minced pork.
In September and October, expect even more delicious food featuring cherished local street specialties from Malaysia and Indonesia. As with the previous installments, each specialty is exclusively available for one week, from 3pm to 9pm daily.
The third installment from Sep 4 to 10 features handcrafted Putu Mayong from Penang, served on-site by Raaghavendra Arivalagan who is representing his father, Arivalagan Ponnusamy. The elder Ponnusamy is a Putu Mayong master who began learning the craft at the age of seven and has operated his street stall (at the same original spot beside the Times Square building along Dato Keramat Road) with his family for over 30 years.
Well-loved by locals, the traditional food is a soft, vermicelli-like rice flour noodle dish made by manually extruding the batter with a string hooper tool onto a rattan tray and steamed over pandan-infused water. The specialty dish will be presented in a trio of variations – original, pandan and brown rice, and served with grated coconut and brown sugar, alongside two savoury curries including a creamy vegetable curry and a delectable fish curry.
The fourth hawker is Jeffry Sie from Bandung, Indonesia. He will be serving Javanese delicacy Gudeg from Oct 2 to 8. Since 2005, Mr. Jeffry has managed his stall Gudeg Yu Nap, which has been recognised as a winner of Makansutra’s World Street Food Award – a recognition programme to salute the best street food masters and top advocates of comfort street food excellence around the world.
Gudeg is a hearty slow-cooked stew carefully prepared with young unripe jackfruit, simmered for hours with over 25 spices and ingredients such as blue ginger, lemongrass, shallots, garlic, candlenut, coriander seeds, Indonesian bay leaves, palm sugar and coconut milk. It is covered in teak leaves during the simmering process. The stew is served atop fragrant jasmine rice, accompanied with braised-then-fried chicken, hard-boiled egg, beef skin puff, a traditional Indonesian soup, and tofu.
Raffles Courtyard is at Raffles Hotel Singapore, 328 North Bridge Rd, Singapore 189673. For enquiries and reservations for dining experiences at Raffles Hotel Singapore, call 6412 1816 or email at singapore@raffles.com.
All photos courtesy of Makansutra unless indicated.
