Hey Hive!
We're back with more restaurantours! This was from January 2025, and to celebrate Lunar New Year, Sean's family invited us to go for a Chinese New Year buffet! Specifically, a nonya-style buffet which is a fusion of Chinese and Malay cuisine that developed when Chinese immigrants intermarried with Malaysian/Singaporean/Indonesian Malay women back in the 1950s or so.
Source: sgfoodonfoot
It was at this restaurant called Chilli Padi Nonya Cafe and it was actually located within our old university campus but strangely enough, we never knew of its existence until today.
The exterior is quite unassuming but it looks a lot better inside. The entrance even has a very lovely mural of a Peranakan family sitting down and enjoying dinner.
Despite the unassuming front, the actual entrance to the restaurant was very inviting. They also had traditional furniture like those you'd see in a Peranakan home.
We were pretty early for the buffet and there were only a few other people in the restaurant at the time. This enabled us to take our time to peruse the food options available.
The buffet area was also very nicely decked out with colourful traditional plates on display. It was giving Peranakan grandma's house vibes; very homely and welcoming.
Even the tabletops of the buffet table reminded me of my own grandmother's house, with that very classic repetitive flower pattern.
I was a little caught up in admiring the decor of the place that I was distracted from the food, but the aromatic scents of curry and spices brought me back to reality.
Everything looked and smelled so good! One of the first things we went for was this Nasi Lemak station with Butterfly Pea Flower rice, which turns the rice blue. There's actually not that much difference in taste between the blue rice and regular coconut white rice that they use for nasi lemak imo. I think it's just a gimmick to make the rice a different colour.
The nasi lemak station also came with the regular assortment of side dishes you'd see with nasi lemak, including Nonya Fried Chicken, cucumber, sambal, fried peanuts and ikan bilis (aka anchovies). But they also had vegetarian spring rolls and achar, which is pickled vegetables.
There was also a laksa station, with rice noodles that you could blanche yourself, complete with toppings like hard-boiled eggs, fish cakes, bean sprouts and sliced cucumbers, which is not typical but I think it's a welcome addition.
I think this laksa is definitely not the Singaporean-style laksa that is my favourite though, but as long as it wasn't Asam Laksa (which is quite sour) I was okay with it.
At the end of the main buffet table was a very colourful assortment of kueh, or bite-sized snack or desserts made of glutinous rice and other fillings, most commonly pandan, coconut or red bean paste.
There were some kueh that I wasn't very familiar with or hardly ever ate, so I was curious to try them.
There was also a kitchen island full of different dishes like braised meats, stir-fried vegetables with spices and porridge/congee.
There were quite a lot of people in our party so we were seated in one of the private dining rooms which was pretty much just a room with 2 round tables. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the room itself but there's not much to see in there anyway.
Even though it was dinner, it was technically my first real meal of the day so I made sure to pace myself. I loaded up on the nasi lemak first with plenty of vegetables too. They even had my favourite nonya style chap chye, which is a Braised Mixed Vegetable Stew.
The nasi lemak was really good, especially the fried chicken which was juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. The sambal was a little sweet and spicy and all the vegetables were yummy as well. I think the only thing I didn't really fancy were the so-called spring rolls which were actually fried fish sticks. I think they might've mislabeled it which honestly would be bad if there were any actual vegetarians.
We also shared a bowl of laksa just to see how it would taste and it was actually pretty decent! It was savoury and a little spicy but the coconut milk helped to mask it while adding to the flavour.
I wanted to try a little bit of everything so we went back for seconds!
This time I got more vegetables and I also wanted to try the Beef Rendang, which is a rich, spicy Indonesian and Malay dry curry that is slow-cooked for several hours, allows the spices to fully infuse the meat.
The beef was so tender and the curry was full of flavour. It was a little on the spicier side but still really good, and the rice complemented it well.
After a few more plates of fried chicken and vegetables, we also shared a plate of the kueh just to see which one we liked.
They were all pretty alright and not too sweet, which was good. But I think the surprising favourite was the blue and green one which was actually butterfly pea flower glutinous rice with a layer of pandan paste on top. The pandan was sweet, the rice was a little more plain so it was a good match. It was pretty sticky though but I liked it.
To cleanse our palate we had some fruits and a small shot glass of tofu pudding to round out the meal. The tofu pudding was very light and not sweet so it helped to flush our taste buds of all the oil and spices.
Overall, it was a very delicious meal indeed! I was so stuffed after that; my tummy was bursting! But it was well worth it, and I think it might be one of the best buffets we've had in recent times - truly a great way to celebrate Chinese New Year!
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
