PRICE:
Frommer's Highly Recommended

The standard belief is that Peranakan cooking is reserved for home-cooked meals, and therefore restaurants are not as plentiful -- and where they do exist, are very informal. Not so at Blue Ginger, where traditional and modern mix beautifully in a style so fitting for Singapore. Snuggled in a shophouse, the decor combines clean and neat lines of contemporary styling with paintings by local artists and touches of Peranakan flair like carved wooden screens. The cuisine is Peranakan from traditional recipes, making for some very authentic food -- definitely something you can't get back home. A good appetizer is the kueh pie tee: bite-size "top hats" filled with turnip, egg, and prawn with sweet chili sauce. A wonderful entree is the ayam panggang "Blue Ginger," really tender grilled, boneless, chicken thigh and drumstick with a mild coconut-milk sauce. One of the most popular dishes is the ayam buah keluak (my favorite), a traditional chicken dish made with a hard black Indonesian nut with sweetmeat inside. The favorite dessert here is durian chendol, red beans and pandan jelly in coconut milk with durian purée. Served with shaved ice on top, it smells strong.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Singapore & Malaysia, 6th Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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