VILLAGE CAFE
19 August 2007 (Sunday), after having gone to the Church, we returned Village Cafe for lunch. This is our second visit. As I have already published photos of interior and exterior (see here), this time I concentrate on the food.
Actually I went there to eat this: Bah Kuh Teh (or Bakkutteh, £6.50). They serve this dish only Sunday to Tuesday.
Bah Kuh Teh is pork rib stew cooked in clay pot, popular among the Chinese living in Malaysia and Singapore. It is normally served with rice and chili as you see in this photo. The rice here is cooked with stock, thus looks yellowish. This rice itself tasted nice, but I would prefer white rice to go with, as Bah Kuh Teh is quite strong in flavour.
This is a close-up of the pot. The brown songy thing is deep-fried beancurds. They make good spongy to soak up the soup. Delicious.
The cut of the pork used for this dish is very fatty, but after long slow cooking the oil oozed out and removed, so the soup and meat were surprinsingly light. Although the meat was on bones, it was melting tender and went off easily.
In the clay pot, there are also some bits of intestine. They were not bad, but after having eaten meat and rice, there was no space left for them in my stomach.
Village Cafe classifies Bah Kuh Teh as Singaporian dish. According to a Singaporian I know, Singaporian Bah Kuh Teh has clearer and lighter soup while Malaysian version has darker and heavier soup. In fact, my Bah Kuh Teh had clear soup. What ever, it tasted better than the one I ate in Malaysia.
This is Dim's Malaysian Spicy Chicken with Rice (£5.80).
It is fried-chichen cooked again with black bean sauce, dried shrimps, chili and curry leaves. It tasted good, but was far too greasy to my liking. Another thing I did not like was that the chicken contained bones smashed into pieces, so was dangerous to eat. Dim said it was delicious, so maybe the people like deep-frying like this dish, too.
We ordered also two glasses of Chinese teas, and payed £13.30 in total, so we left £15.
In this cafe, there is no proper place to be for the staff, so they just sit down any table available, eating, sipping tea and chatting. It is not an ideal way to be, but it reminds of cheap eating places of Asia, and in a certain sense, it makes a part of ambience of this place. However the ambience, I will return, as there are other dishes I want to try.
