| rev:text
| - Hawker Bar is aptly named, invoking images of street vendors advertising street foods by way of shouting in their food stands. While they feature Singaporean street foods, you can eat your meal in relatively quiet and peace though I challenge anyone to come here on a "quiet" night as the newly famed restaurant always packs in a crowd.
With a gung-ho social media person manning the helms, with replies to tweets within seconds, I couldn't help but not put them on my radar of "to-try" restaurants - they only show up on my feed a dozen times a day! ;)
Singaporean cuisine is a melting pot which has influences that reflect its diverse population. These influences include: the native Malay, Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, Eurasian, and even western influences (predominantly British and Portuguese). Food is definitely a focal point to the Singaporean culture with some even hailing the act of eating as a national pastime and food, as a national obsession. [1]
To start we ordered the Cucumber Salad ($6) - mandolined slices of refreshing cucumber dressed with a Mirin vinaigrette and crispy, fried sticky rice. It was a light way to start the meal with very subtle flavours.
Next came the famed Son-In-Law Eggs ($6), a fried soft-boiled egg that sits atop a bed of Prik Nam Pla (a Thai lime and chili condiment). They should bottle this stuff and sell it! After having this flavour-packed sauce, going back to the salad made it seem bland.
For our main we opted to share the Rendang Curry ($12). They had me at braised ox cheek and coconut rice. The actual curry itself has sour undertones and if you don't think it's spicy, just give it a few seconds before the hotness creeps up on you. My favourite part of the dish was how the sweet coconut rice mellowed out some of the heat and tartness of the curry. The ox cheek was tender and the water chestnuts added a nice crunch.
The dessert list could use some development as there are only 2 options. In the end we went for the Banana Fritter ($4). This was the highlight of my meal as the banana is wrapped in a pandan leaf which adds some colour to an otherwise pale fritter, not to mention infusing it with flavour. It has been said that pandan is to Asians, as vanilla is to westerners. My dining companion dubbed it the Pan-DAMN leaf because it was so good. And to top it off was a scoop of red bean ice cream and a healthy drizzling of syrup.
V E R D I C T
Hawker Bar has definitely done a good job at highlighting a rather low-key cuisine (at least as far as the Toronto food scene goes). While most would be quick to compare Singaporean cuisine to its neighbouring Thai cuisine, it really has unique characteristics of its own.
The tarter Rendang curry was not my cup of tea, as I prefer a richer, more full-bodied curry - though I could've devoured bowlfuls of the sweet coconut rice. As previously stated, the highlight of my meal was without a doubt the banana fritter.
The service was stellar, and all the staff were really knowledgeable about the menu and enthusiastic about where they work. I hope to see an expanded menu as the restaurant gets its footing and some creative cocktails to be had.
---------------
[1] Wikipedia
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)