A P165 chic chow down Orchard Road

When I’m not slaving over a stove, chopping onions or scrambling around town from meeting to meeting, I’m actually in the office. A typical office day is spent mostly writing menu proposals or going through recipes and researching new dishes. You can imagine how hungry one can get once lunchtime comes around when you’ve spent the whole morning obsessing about food.

I’m one of those people that are unfortunately ruled by their stomach. At university, for example, when a final exam fell between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., I would have to arm myself with various snacks to tide me over, otherwise my thinking brain would be violently drowned out by my grumbling tummy. So there I’d be, on a tiny desk, my apple, chocolate, crackers and granola bars taking up more than half the space alongside my extra pens and scribbled notes.

At the office, I try to control my snacking, so I really do wait for lunch hour to come along. When the clock strikes 12, I’ll go into panic mode if I have no clue what I’m going to eat. I’m a creature of habit with lunch food because I’m so afraid of being disappointed; it’ll dampen the rest of the day if it was a bad meal.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the Hainanese chicken rice from a place called Orchard Road. Discovered by one of my partners, it’s P165 worth of steaming, fragrant broth, juicy chicken and ginger rice goodness. We send our Mang Boyet to go and get what is probably one of the most sulit meals in town. Only the heavens know how many times I’ve tried to have a chic lunch somewhere and gotten cheated into paying P1,000 for lousy food (Cheryl Tiu, you know what I mean!).

There is something so profound about a humble meal of rice, chicken and broth. It is simple, cheap and down to earth. Only technique and flavor can separate the bland and chalky from the succulent and subtle richness of good, old chicken. After eating and tweeting about Orchard Road’s Hainanese chicken rice for perhaps a good two months now, I decided to venture out into SM Megamall, braving the back alleys of sartorial temptation, clawing through racks of apparel and shelves of gadgetry to arrive at a busy Mecca of spices and herbs being tossed around in giant woks on open flames.

Orchard Road is a lot chicer and classier than I expected. Semi-self service (you choose, you order, you pay … then they bring it to you), the place was bustling with people. At the center of everything is a glass-enclosed à-la-minute kitchen where julienned vegetables, bits of chicken, beef and shrimp with the occasional noodles fly around in the air. I asked around and they were kind enough to introduce me to the man himself: Chef Tony, a true-blue Singaporean chef who barely speaks English and communicates mostly through big smiles, one-word replies and more importantly, through his wok. He’s made his way around Asia, leaving Singapore to work in Rangoon, Myanmar, to study in Thailand and end up here in Manila. His main reason? “Somewhere new!”

Chef Tony was kind enough to make me a dish not on the menu: Thai spicy chicken with rice — the perfect Southeast Asian blend of sweet, spicy, salty and sour. The chicken was battered and gloriously deep-fried, served with freshly chopped cucumbers, labuyo chilies, fresh onions … fantastic. He also laid out an overwhelming spread of all his favorite dishes on the Orchard Road menu: prawn mee soup, laksa, char siew asado noodles, black pepper beef, black pepper chicken, and of course, my favorite, Hainanese chicken rice. All of which are priced under P185!

I discovered a new favorite: laksa, a soup made of chilies, coconut milk, shrimp broth and lemongrass. It’s served with rice noodles, prawns, fish cake and one of my favorite garnishes of all time: fried shallots. It is like having Southeast Asia in a bowl, emblematic flavors of this very diverse region. The stinging hotness of the fresh chilies complemented by the delicate yet rich coconut milk, the pungent and delightfully strong flavors of prawns that remind me of all the goodness that comes from sucking on prawn heads, the tangy fragrance of lemongrass that smells of bright countryside mornings by rice fields, and all the sharp freshness and sweetness of various garnishes. Oh! The noodles … thick rice noodles that are truly representative of the magnificent rice civilizations epitomized in Angkor or Yogyakarta. Let me travel for only P175.

Being trained mostly in French and Continental cooking, the speed and dexterity of the wok is truly exciting and unknown to me. The woks are cooked on, cleaned, and cooked on again all under five minutes without even moving from your station. This hissing sound of steaming water, popping oil from deep-frying items, the singing of dancing vegetables and blasting flames … it is like one big acrobatic circus where pieces of meat, rice and sauce are tumbled about really quickly and high in the air like some high-flying trapeze act. It is fast, fresh and extremely efficient.

Take my word for it. The best Singaporean street food is at Orchard Road. It’s perfect for a quick lunch if you know exactly what you want; if not you might just take a while ogling the menu choices. Go with some friends and order loads of fun, exotic stuff; lay them out on the table and just dig in. I did it, and I was alone.

I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of service, food and ambience. After chowing down on all sorts of things, from three kinds of noodles, beef, chicken, shrimp, fish cake and fried egg, I felt myself starting to transform into a bloated little dumpling. It was high time to roll myself back to the office, like poor old Smokey’s lost meatball. And I most certainly did not want to be covered in cheese!

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Orchard Road is located at the 2nd-floor bridgeway of SM Megamall, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong. For more info call 470-4546.

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You can contact me at http://twitter.com/ stephaniezubiri