A real melting pot, a la Singapore

By Nicholas Boer

CONTRACOSTA TIMES http://www.contracostatimes.com/restaurants/ci_7821788
Thu, Mar. 22, 2007

Cindi Christie/Contra Costa Times

Satay Chicken is served with colorful vegetables and a sauce at the Old Town Cafe, which features Singapore cuisine in the new Ulfert's center in Dublin.

You've never had satay like this. Moist, fat chunks of dark meat pebbled with coarse-ground spice. Sweet, vanilla-banana aromas mingled with sharp scents of pepper. Oily peanut sauce, made from caramelized coconut milk, richly coats your mouth, while a touch of sour tamarind commands your salivary glands to action.

Consulting chef Michael Ho credits the city of Kajang of Malaysia for his inspiration. But Singapore, an island city-state, borrows from all over Asia; it's an international hub for exotic cuisines.

"You have Thai, you have Chinese, Indonesian, you have Vietnamese -- all the best," says Ho.

Owner Pasit Raviruchiphun, who got his master's in computer science at San Francisco State but grew up in Singapore, compares the menu to a food court in Singapore, where choices are endless.

The restaurant, Singapore Old Town Cafe, opened two months ago. Raviruchiphun's wife, Megan Chia, designed the dining room and is the passion behind the project. While the couple hope this is a prototype for a future franchise, it's nothing like Pleasant Hill's Yan Can. The cooking here is dark and mysterious, using loads of toasted spice, ground dried shrimp, sambal paste and onions ("there's onions in everything," Ho says). The Black Pepper Shrimp ($12.95), for instance, brings a stir-fry of sweet, head-on prawns in a dark, dark reduction of onions, wine, soy and black pepper that has been fried and ground fine. Only squares of sweet pepper offer relief from the intense sauce.

Beef Rendang ($8.95), a delicious dish I've had only once before (at the Malaysian restaurant Banyan Tree in Pleasant Hill), is deeply satisfying. Chunks of choice beef, braised for hours, are coated in a rich, brown coconut gravy fragrant with the warming touch of cumin, cinnamon and cloves. Toasted shredded coconut lends an appealing, rough texture to the sauce.

You must start your meal with an order of Roti Canai ($3.95), a cross between puff pastry and naan. Flaky layers are developed through the rapid folding of margarine and flour. The dough is pan-fried and the crispy bread served with a cup of dal -- lentil soup with potato. It's almost a pastry -- often, in fact, served to kids with sweet, condensed milk for dipping.

Adventurous diners shouldn't miss the Chinese Donut ($6.95), a dish developed by Raviruchiphun (Ho calls him his R&D man.). A mixture of ground squid and pork is stuffed into a flaky doughnut-shaped pastry and deep-fried. The center comes out tasting like dense-textured monkfish, the doughnut crisp and slightly sweet.

The dipping sauce -- a combination of peanut and ground dark shrimp -- is as dark as a black hole, and as intense-tasting as molasses mixed with anchovy paste. It takes a bite or two to get accustomed to the foreign flavors, but the dish works.

If you're with an entire group that is adventurous, start with an order of Fried Baby Squid ($10.95) -- tiny calamari that are deep-fried and lacquered in a sweet, pungent glaze. You can eat them like peanuts with a bottle of Singapore Tiger beer ($4.25) while perusing the immense dinner menu (there are 80 choices including dessert).

Prices here are as cheap as a back-alley noodle shop, but the atmosphere is cheery and spotless. A mural of old Singapore graces the far wall, while simple faux street-facing windows and handsome paintings hang high on the other two walls that contain the small (45 seats) room's space.

At lunch, we ordered three entrees, all less than $8, and each terrific in its own way.

Nasi Lemak ($7.25) brings a giant platter beautifully presented with a bowl of chicken curry and an array of condiments: peanuts, cucumber, hard-boiled egg, and tiny anchovies served two ways -- crispy deep-fried, and bathed in onion sauce.

Mom used to make condiment-curry for us, and I always enjoyed making my own mix. Granted, Mom never served anchovies, nor was her curry flavored with pandan leaves -- a fresh stalk Ho gets from Florida that imparts a subtle grassy flavor. Nor was Mom's rice as delicious as the mound of coconut rice served here. It's a real exploration of tastes.

Singapore Fried Mee Hoon ($6.95) is a hearty plate of bright-yellow curried rice noodles -- as skinny as vermicelli -- quick-fried with pieces of char sui (Chinese pork), chicken and tender shrimp. The noodles are covered with lettuce and bean sprouts, providing a cheerful crunch as you slurp up the spicy pasta. It's like the ramen you'd wished you had.

Seafood Teochew Porridge Soup ($7.95) could be called bland compared to most of the other dishes here. It's a giant bowl of restorative chicken broth flavored with seaweed and thick with rice and assorted seafood -- quite a deal for the price. Raviruchiphun says that Thai youngsters often finish a long night of partying with a bowl of this porridge.

Three other do-not-miss menu items that will complete your virtual visit to Southeast Asia are the impressive Whole Coconut ($2.50), where you sip naturally sweet chilled juice from a straw inserted into the top of a young coconut; the Pineapple Rice ($9.95), fried with cashews and served in half a pineapple; and the Mango Sticky Rice ($3.95), chewy, gelatinous rice oozing coconut milk and supporting slices of ripe, pleasantly sour mango. A perfect dessert.

The restaurant still has some bugs to work out. Service at dinner was disjointed and frantic. The dining room was hardly full, so I imagine the stress must have been manufactured in the kitchen. On both visits, an entree was brought before we received our appetizers, and on another, a beverage order was left off the bill. Still, with no restaurant experience and only a passion to share the Singaporean experience, this young couple, who live in San Ramon, have opened an extraordinary restaurant in Dublin.

As one of the first of many Asian restaurants to open in the new Ulferts Center, Singapore Old Town Cafe is bound to draw in the curious. I'm not sure if the typical East Bayer feels he or she is ready for such an authentic experience -- but I bet if they try it, they'll find that they are.

Reach Times Food editor Nicholas Boer at 925-943-8254 or nboer@cctimes.com.

FOOD

WHO, WHAT, WHEN