We’re all familiar with the wok-heavy flavours of a superb nasi goreng and mee goreng, but besides the rare few, Singapore doesn’t have a ready sprawl of restaurants offering up Chinese-Indonesian cuisine. But with casual bistro Kota88 Restaurant along East Coast Road, they’re offering up a heavily Indonesian-influenced menu filled with street food you certainly can’t find from Singapore’s streets.
Their menu is rather extensive, spanning from noodle bowls to various a la carte dishes, that some might find similar to those of a zi char restaurant. But it’s the Babi Komplit Special ($9.88) that we’re most curious about, for its resemblance to our local char siew wanton mee. This comes with a generous scatter of minced pork, char siew, roast pork, and fried wanton – it’s the full works. It also comes served with a small bowl of wanton soup.
While Kota88 Restaurant does also offer rice bowls like the Nasi Campur Babi ($12.88), a spread of pork cuts, a soy egg, and fried prawn beancurd roll atop, the other main highlight is their satay platter. You can opt for the Sate Babi ($10.88) which offers a mix and match of ten pork satay sticks – a choice between the likes of sweet marinated pork and pork skin satay.
They do also specialise in roast poultry, with Ayam Panggang (charcoaled grilled chicken, $32.88 for a whole chicken) and Bebek Panggang (roast duck, $48.88 for a whole duck). Otherwise, their Cha Sio and Sio Bak are also worth a try, at $8.88 per 100 grams.
