Best eats of 2024: Best mid-priced restaurant – Choon Hoy Parlor
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Comfort food at Choon Hoy Parlor.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
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Where: 01-02, 85 Beach Road choonhoyparlor.sg
Open: Noon to 3pm, 5.30 to 9.30pm (Mondays to Saturdays), noon to 3pm, 5.30 to 9pm (Sundays)
Tel: 6266-0061
Info:
ABC Soup, Teochew Braised Duck Leg, Masala Lamb, Abacus Seeds – these are dishes your parents might cook or have cooked for you. These are things people here grew up eating, familiar things, the soul food of Singapore.
Choon Hoy Parlor, a 35-seat restaurant that opened in May, serves this sort of food. It does so in a setting that screams kitsch, but which anyone who has attended a wedding banquet in the 1970s and 1980s will flash back to.
Chef-owner Dylan Ong, 37, named it after his 77-year-old mother, who used to run a kway chap stall at Whampoa Food Centre with his late father. Many of the recipes are heirloom ones from his parents.
But this chef – who was co-owner of the wildly successful Saveur brand, known for serving affordable French food, and who now owns Franco-Asian restaurant The Masses at Capitol Singapore – does not simply recreate heritage recipes. He gives them a modern spin that makes the food better without taking away its soul.
His Signature Rojak ($8.90) is served with prawn paste ice cream, so the salad stays refreshingly cold from first bite to last. The Teochew Braised Duck Leg Served In Tau Kwa Pau Style ($49.90) is made with the Silver Hill Irish duck legs he uses for duck confit at his other restaurant. And his Signature 6G Kampung Chicken ($19.90 for half), is topped with a rhizome bomb comprising young and old ginger, galangal, Bentong ginger, ginger floss and ginger flower oil.
Most importantly, in belt-tightening times, Choon Hoy Parlor offers good value. Set lunch prices start at $18.90 a person, and diners get the Soup Of The Day, Lard Rice or Plain Rice (choose lard), Chap Chye, one starter (choose Mini Fried Pomfret), a main dish (choose Signature 6G Kampung Chicken), a dessert and a drink. The restaurant also offers a 10-dish Communal Menu ($49.90 a person, minimum of three diners), featuring dishes such as Abacus Seeds, CHP Signature Assam Pink Leg Prawn and Mei Cai Porchetta.
Choon Hoy Parlor’s soulful food, served in a comfortable, air-conditioned restaurant at fair prices, makes it the Best Mid-priced Restaurant of 2024.
Choon Hoy Parlor's interior evokes a feeling of nostalgia.
PHOTO: CHOON HOY PARLOR
