Hey Hive!
Recently, the Singapore government announced that there will basically be another lockdown, so unfortunately, we're unable to eat in restaurants and food courts/hawker centers now and can only do takeaways. We've also been limiting our time spent just being out in general, to be safe. So we've been ordering in and doing more takeouts nowadays.
And the other day, we were at our residential shopping center out buying groceries as usual, and since it was getting late we decided to buy dinner from the food court/hawker center upstairs.
The ground floor actually had seasonal decorations up like this Halloween-themed archway that looks really cute!
After admiring it we headed upstairs to see what to get for dinner! And I was in the mood to try something different so we decided to try out a different stall since we tend to always go to the same few shops.
We headed to the other side of the food court which had most of the Muslim stalls and checked them out. A few of them were closed, but one of them caught my eye; a stall called Uncle Penyet!
They specialise in Indonesian cuisine, or more specifically, ayam penyet, which is a fried chicken dish from East Java consisting of fried chicken that is smashed with the pestle against mortar to make it softer, served with sambal, slices of cucumbers, fried tofu and tempeh.
Ayam penyet is known for its spicy sambal, which is made with a mixture of chilli, anchovies, tomatoes, shallots, garlic, shrimp paste, tamarind and lime juice. Like its namesake, the mixture is then smashed into a paste to be eaten with the dish. (Cr: Wikipedia)
It actually looked really familiar, and it was only when I saw the boxes and the staff uniforms that I realised this stall was actually Indonesian Express, which was a stall in one of our canteens back in college! Man it's been so long, but I remember it being pretty good!
Anyway, their menu consists of different sets of fried and roasted meat and seafood alongside rice and some vegetables. But since it had been so long since we had this, we had to go with the classics - ayam panggang (grilled chicken) and ayam penyet (fried chicken).
We could even see all the fried dishes being prepared fresh and hot right in front of us! The smell of the grilled and fried chicken was overwhelming and my stomach was growling just standing there. The staff were all really friendly too!
After about 10 minutes or so, we got our order to-go, and the boxes were actually pretty heavy! So we quickly headed back home after that so we could dig in!
Man it's probably been at least 3 years since we last had this back in college? And it's been a while since we've had Indonesian food period, so I was pretty excited to try it again!
This was my ayam panggang set:
And this was Sean's ayam penyet set:
Each set came with a small container of curry sauce and of course the sambal, so we opened the curry up and poured it on the rice, like so:
The sambal was pretty spicy so I just scooped it out as I ate but it was so good! The chicken was nicely marinated and grilled, and it had just the right amount of salt but the sauce made it sweeter as intended. The meat was nice and juicy too, and the curry made the rice flavourful but it wasn't spicy curry since the sambal provided the spice that was more than enough.
I think both our sets were actually really similar aside from the actual chicken since the rice, vegetables and sauces were the same. So we just traded a few pieces of chicken. The fried chicken wasn't super battered like that of KFC, but it still had the crunch along the edges of the skin. And the meat was juicy just that it maybe was just a little bland since it didn't have much batter. I think I liked the panggang one better since there was the sauce.
But it was definitely very filling! I could barely finish the rice, but I thankfully managed to! And I was so stuffed after that! For about 6 bucks each I'd say that was definitely worth it! It was delicious! If you ever have a hankering for Indonesian food and are craving some chicken, definitely give Uncle Penyet/Indonesian Express a try!
Thanks so much for reading!
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