Candlenut Kitchen

Here’s a quick note about a fantastic restaurant in Singapore serving modern Peranakan cuisine. Candlenut Kitchen is housed in an old Chinatown shop-house that’s been totally renovated and brought back to life with a very minimal and casual in design. The food is incredible.

To start, there’s the egg tempra, which is a sunny-side-up fried egg topped with caramelized onions, red chilies and sweet lime sauce (basically just sweetened lime juice). I’ve never tasted anything quite like this anywhere else. This is especially good when slathered with a dab of lip-blistering red chili sambal. The sambal is so spicy that I started hiccupping—I love it.

Egg tempra; pork belly in sweet soy; sago pudding

Pork belly stewed in dark soy is earthy and intensely rich. Decadent. Fantastic.

But perhaps the best dish of all is the dessert of sago jelly pudding. It’s like rice pudding, but 100 times better. It’s made with little bits of sago jelly, palm sugar and coconut milk. 

25 Neil Rd., Singapore, +65 6226 2506