Chop Chop to Chomp Chomp

Asian food is having its moment.

In the U.S. for years, Asian food often meant little more than General Cho chicken, dumplings and pad thai. Now however there is a proliferation of a new breed of restauranteurs offering the actual food that is eaten in Asia.

That’s not surprising given that in New York City alone, there are more than one million Asian Americans in 2010 – the largest Asian community in the U.S., more than the numbers for San Francisco and Los Angeles combined.

Maharlika, in the East Village, and Pig and Khao, on the Lower East Side, both have a great Filipino following.

Laut is an excellent place for Southeast Asian food: Malaysian, Singaporean and Thai. It is my go-to place especially when I crave a Laksa, a rich, coconut noodle soup, or just simple roti with curry. Its chef Tommy Lai in 2013 broke out on his own and started Rasa with his sister, Camie.

A newcomer to the scene is Chomp Chomp, which boasts of Singaporean hawker food. A sister restaurant to Simpson Wong’s West Village staple, Café Asean, Chomp Chomp is located just a few blocks down from Café ASean on Cornelia Street. It offers a more laid back menu compared to the hawker centers.

I say laid back because in Singapore’s hawker centers, where most of the culinary experiences of the city take place, tourists and visitors are battling to get the attention of stall owners so they can place their orders.

I would say that ordering food at hawker centers takes much strategizing, almost to the degree of my game plan for Trader Joe’s on a Monday night: how I first tackle areas that I won’t visit while in line, and shop while the slow line moves.

At Chomp Chomp, in contrast, the air conditioning is at full blast, and the Tiger Beer is ice cold. There can be an eccentric choice of music, with Communist propaganda songs and Indonesian sopranos (?!) singing to the music of Swan Lake, but you forget about it when you’re deep in the food and conversation.

This night, we ordered popiah, a summer roll with cooked jicama; oh luak, oyster omelet; hokkien mee, fried noodles with seafood in shrimp stock; and stingray cooked in banana leave.

Our food came in colorful plastic plates that aren’t dissimilar to the bright orange utensils they are served in Singapore, but the content was the star. My Singaporean friend and I couldn’t stop nodding in approval while feeding ourselves bite after bite of food.

“It’s really good,” my friend said, lost for more sophisticated rhetoric.

The Popiah is a slimmer version than what I was used to. The jicama in it soaks up the sweet sauce it’s cooked in, yet not wet to the point of soaking through the thin wrapper. Trust me, in Singapore, eating popiah is a messy affair, whether you eat it with your bare hands or with chopsticks. The jicama tends to fall everywhere.

The oyster omelet is different from what I’m used to. Instead of the grey transparent goo that is potato starch, oysters are held together by egg. Because of the change in ingredient, it’s less filling and allows me to move onto the hokkien mee.

Fried rice vermicelli with stray strands of thick egg noodles, the dish look like a haphazard product resulting when a chef scrambles for ingredients. But isn’t that the spirit of Asian cooking? The dishes may not be the best looking, but they certainly hit your taste buds several different ways. The shrimp stock gave the rice vermicelli an undertone of aroma that pointed to the freshness of the seafood, and the egg noodles provided the texture. The prawns were cooked just right so they were firm yet succulent.

One thing I appreciate very much is that portions are Asian sized, so we had room for an additional order of Nasi lemak — coconut rice with curry chicken, lamb rendang, and anchoives. The chicken meat fell off the bone and the lamb was flavorful. My only pet peeve is the coconut rice doesn’t have enough coconut flavor to complement the curry.

One can argue against paying restaurant prices for street food, which often costs only a few Singaporean dollars back home. But for the community of young Asians who are starved of authentic regional cooking, and so used to the convenience of eating out that they lack the necessary chops to recreate dishes at home, Chomp Chomp fulfills the very purpose of evoking home away from home.

We would have liked to try Bo Bo Cha Cha, a dessert I’ve had only in Singapore where sweet potatoes, taro root and tapioca pearls are cooked in coconut milk. A rather heavy duty affair at the end of the meal.

I remember someone said that Chinese dessert is an oxymoron, full of soups that are essentially a meal unto themselves, and also lacking the delicacy of Western pastries.

I’d very much like to prove this person wrong with the BoBo Cha Cha, but our bulging bellies wouldn’t permit. Next time.

P.S. I’m reading about why Chinese food sucks, any suggestions?