Putien, Raffles City

After suggesting a bunch of places, I was surprised that Sam chose to have her birthday lunch with the team at Putien. Perhaps the Mummy-to-be, who is ready to pop any day, was craving for some Chinese comfort food.

To be honest, I was wondering what the team would make out of it since most of them barely know what "heng hwa cuisine" is, but good food transcends cultural barriers and I'm glad to have a played a part in expanding their knowledge of Chinese cuisine to beyond dim sum and Peking duck.

I usually avoid century egg but this dish - PUTIEN Style Century Egg - was awesome awesome awesome. Battered, deep-fried and covered in some sweet-sourish sauce, this takes the horse piss out of every other century egg dish. I think I might have one entire plate to myself (we ordered two). Did I mention this dish is awesome?

Another offal-ly pleasing starter is the braised pig intestine. Yes, could not resist the offal-ly lame joke.

Also a dependable dish is the PUTIEN Sweet & Sour Pork with Lychees. It was batter-heavy but addictive nonetheless.

The PUTIEN Oyster Omelette reminded me of dough fritters - I guess I prefer the traditionally local of way with luscious eggy, flour-ry bits. 

Stir-fried Yam - starchy, carb-by cubes. 

Putien does the best rendition of Spinach with Salted Egg & Century Egg. I know this might sound weird, considering this is usually not a rave-worthy dish. I don't quite know what they do but it truly is quite amazing.

Another new dish that we tried were the Deep Fried Pig’s Trotters with Salt & Pepper. A real conversation starter, if I may add. 

It's basically deep-fried skin and collagen. Pretty much deep-fried chicken taken to the next stratosphere. Intense stuff.

See that dish of chili? A real star in its own right.

For carbs, it was a tough choice between the Putien Lor Mee and Fried Heng Hwa Bee Hoon but in the end, the fried bee hoon won out, and everyone was a winner.

The Bean Curd Stew might look average but it bore an irresistible smoky flavour that made one think of burnt ends and bottoms. All that from tofu? I approve - and so will you.