Spice Peranakan (Biopolis)

I reserved comments on this place after my first visit but ventured there again today after two months. So it’s now confirmed. The food IS mediocre and the service even worse. Even water was scarce. We asked 3 times and got none. Those who are not familiar with REAL McCoy will be fooled quite easily. Just a few spices and chilli does not a true Peranakan meal make! Only untrained tongues go a-wagging that’s it’s “shiok”. This lunch was far from that. The flavours were flatter than a runway.

The beef rendang (which I also ordered at my first visit) still had no kick. There was no familiar flavour of daun kunyit or the fragrant daun limau perut, the chap- chye was more like sar-chye with only cabbage, carrots and 1 pc of black fungus. The bakwan soup was bland. On my first visit, I had the sotong sambal; one sotong for $10.80 mind you! It just tasted sour, that's all. Alamak, even the chilli blachan was blaah! And since when was har-cheong kai a Peranakan dish???! Terok lah.

Price-wise, the size of the servings did not warrant those prices.

The chef truly needs to be bold and give us the robust flavours that this cuisine is known for, making it truly sedap, unless he's just catering for the many foreigners who work in the vicinity. In that case he can main-main with the authenticity of flavours just to suit them. Again - IF that is his intent, then we locals had better stay away.

This visit, we ordered the set lunch consisting of a drink, a meat dish, a veg or soup and dessert for $15. The food arrived – a bowl of chap chye and a dish of ayam buah keluak. After tucking in halfway, we were told that these were “ala Carte” items meant for the next table and we had to pay the ala carte prices. We said it was not our fault that ala carte items were delivered to our table. It was their mistake. We had ordered the set lunch and were sticking to it. The waitress then said she would deliver the set lunch items to us – which she did - and removed the half eaten dishes from our table. Wonder where those were heading??!

The only thing that saved the meal was the pulot hitam served for dessert but that definitely won't be enough to lure me back.

I went there with a hungry stomach and went home full and satisfied. My 3 friends and I ordered 8 dishes in total and we finished almost every single dish. Have to add that the serving is rather small and just nice for a table of 4.

The dishes that I liked were the Assam Fish Head, Ayam Goreng and Jemput Jemput with Ice Cream. The Kuih Pie Tee and Ngoh Hiang were pretty good too!

Moving on to the other dishes, the Sambal Kang Kong was quite a disappointment. The sambal wasn't good so you can probably skip this dish and order something else. The Bakwan Kepeting (soup) was very bland! Actually they forgot our order for it so it was the last dish to be served (before dessert) after we reminded them. If only we forgot about it too! We also had a prawn dish but there's nothing to rave about. I only remember that the prawns were not fresh.

All in all, it was an enjoyable dining experience and I will definitely return to this place for the Ayam Goreng and dessert and to also try out the other dishes.

friday nights are strictly "girls out loud" nights for me. armed with empty stomachs, we all decided we should be adventurous for a Peranakan cuisine, away from our usual Chomp Chomp big feast which we usually go wild for it.

it was raining cats and dogs that very night. thankgoodness i managed to get hold of my mom's car. Spice Peranakan is located at Biopolis, just a short distance walk from Bouna Vista MRT, and a mere 10 mins drive from my place. i picked the girls up from the MRT and entered biopolis. yes ENTERED. honestly it can get quite a maze but thankgoodness, the map on the website gave clear instructions to parking. I managed to find it with a breeze. Nothing beats having ample of parking spaces, no nasty singaporeans to fight parking lots with me this time. Note: Parking Structure A, park at Basement 3, Yellow Zone - and that will take you right up to the building itself and sheltered walk to the restaurant. you can hardly miss the restaurant cause.. it was the only restaurant with a full house. lucky for us, we made a reservation earlier on. despite the rain, the outside tables were still full and the guests didnt seem to be bother by the heavy rain. so i suppose, be it rain or shine, Spice Peranakan is still a good location.

the setting was very cosy. despite being modern, it gave a homely feel. probably because you could immediately notice that it was a family run business. the moment we sat down at our table, we were like starving hungry ghost, just naming all the dishes that sounds good, even though we dont even know a word of malay. we just wanted to try every dishes but finally we settled with a very large spread of 8 dishes. 4 girls and 8 dishes. i regretted wearing a high-waisted skirt the moment we were done ordering. i could see the discomfort that was coming. the food didnt take long to arrive despite the full house.


1. Assam Fish Head
this dish came in a very big saucepan that was presented really nice. a abundant pile of parsley garnish on the top. the sauce was rich and very VERY tasty. together with the generous serving of brinjals, lady fingers and tomatoes, i almost couldnt stop pouring the sauce over my rice and gobble them up. most importantly, the fish head was Fresh. and thats something i'm really weary about when ordering fishes in restaurant. so fear not in Spice Peranakan. however, if you cant take spicy food, you might want to be a little careful of this dish as i find it a little spicy despite being a spice freak. so water on side just in case.

2. Sambal Kangkong
sambal kangkong is a very dear dish to me. its kinda like my "must-have" vegetable whenever its on the menu. sadly, a little disappointing. wasnt as fantastic as i expected it to be. it was bland despite it being "sambal". you might want to try other vegetable dishes.

3. Babi Pongteh
to be honest, it was the first time trying this dish. this dish caught my attention when i was in the States, hogging onto my monthly paid-subscription MobTV, catching the so-called Blockbuster "Little Nyonya" when this famous dish was constantly mentioned in almost all episodes. "BABI PONGTEH" - the sauce was really sweet and savory. the pork was tender and you could taste that all the flavors of the spices had already been induced in the meat. indeed, this dish did meet my high expectations of the ever-so highly spoken about BABI PONGTEH in "Little Nyonya". TRY TRY TRY !

4. JEMPUT JEMPUT with Ice Cream
must-have ! maybe a little word of caution. either you dont wear a High-waisted skirt like me, or you have this dish right at the start of your meal. because we were so full from the previous 8 dishes, when it comes to dessert, we were couldnt barely fit anything in our stomach. it comes with 4 pieces of fried bananas and a big scoop of vanilla ice. the combination is heavenly. speaking of it now just makes me wanna rush back to Spice and dig my teeth into those sweet and pipping hot fried bananas. then a generous scoop of ice cream. YUMMO. MUST MUST MUST.

honestly, in Spice Peranakan, every dishes is so rich and savory. RICE SHOULD BE FREE !!! $1.80 for a serving of rice is kinda costly. at the rate we were generously pouring all the sauces over it, and putting spoonful and spoonful of it into our mouth uncontrollably, RICE SHOULD BE FREE ! like what my girlfriends had said "we've reached our Quota for Rice for the week".

so the meal cost us a total of $136.40 for such a wide spread of food. reasonable price.
nothing beats good company, good food and a good price ! a great way to spend my Friday night. another great restaurant in close proximity of my house, and another great reason to boast: "my area has better food than yours !"


(pssst. i heard they do catering too...)

Here's a restaurant that still needs time to settle into their groove. Food wise, quality is a little inconsistent - but generally edible - don't expect the penache of True Blue or the homey quality of Dulu Kala, Baba King or Peramakan. Price-wise, I think we spent about $130 thereabouts for 3 of us, which is steep and the overall experience didn't warrant it. Like the food, the quality of their service staff are quite varied - depending on who serves you, you might swing to either extremes, but that's not overly difficult to overcome.
My sis suggested hosting my Dad's 82nd b'day here in Nov, but we'll probably give them a miss this time around because of this unexpected experience.

I love Nonya food, and when I feel the craving, I've got to have it! Was this place going to satisfy me?

The food was definitely pretty authentic. I really liked the Babi Ponteh, the meat was delightfully tender and the brown sauce was too tasty. I like to eat it with chili, and unfortunately the chili was not too spicy. I do have a high spicy demand, eating chili padis at home, and found out from the manager that if I want it really spicy, I'll need to specially request that. I also liked the otah and chap chye. The ikan assam had an authentic sour taste, but that's not really to my palette.

The restaurant made me feel totally at home. The staff were friendly and relaxed; the manager even came by and chatted with us, recommending a few other places she had been to (not her competition, of course.)

One thing that irritated me is how inconvenient parking is. There is no parking next to the restaurant, you have to park a bit away because of the way the Biopolis is structured. On the bright side, during the five minute walk from the carpark, your date may be enamoured by all the strange biological names.

At the end of the night, I was amazed that my bill was under $40! I thought I had ordered a lot. This restaurant would not be the top of my list, but I would love to come here again.

I had the opportunity to try SP back at its previous location at BTSC and was impressed with the quality of the Peranakan food. When it recently moved to its new premises in the spanking surroundings of the Biopolis, I had to visit!

A small group of 3 of us included my parents decided to spend our weekday lunch at the new SP. It had a nice al freco dinning area and a simply yet elegant indoor dinning too.

We ordered a couple of true blue Peranakan favourites and it included babi pontei, ayam buakulak, ngoh hiang, bakwang kepiting and the sambal sotong. The sambal sotong was well done with the texture of the sotong just tender to the bite. The sambal added to the flavour.

The bakwang kepiting soap was ok with fine slices of bamboo shoots and several pork/prawn balls inside. I felt that the use of prawn shells when boiling the soap might have added more flavour to the dish. The balls were few and when shared out between the 3 of us, it left us wanting more instead.

However, from this point onwards, the dishes started to disappoint. The babi pontei was supposedly one of the signature dishes but the dish tasted bland with only the cut green chilli giving it a slight spicy taste to it.

Next was the chicken in the Ayam buakulek which tasted dry and slightly on the tough side. There was also an inadequate amount of assam in the dish. The very loose and flaky bits within the buakulek fruit shell meant that most of the filling fell into the dish itself. This dish is my fav and the way it was cooked left much to be desired.

Ngoh hiang was served as 2 small pieces sliced up with small portion of the sweet sauce. The bean curd skin was too flaky with imbalance portions of prawn and pork meat inside it.

Portions of the free flow rice was more than adequate though i felt that fragrant or jasmine rice should have been served to add "aroma" to the food.

Last but not least, we still decided to stay for dessert and opted to try the jemput jemput. Sigh it was not to be as the bananas were semi ripe with a very slight sappy taste to it. The fritter coating was also dry and had that flour taste to it. To add to all of this, we were served a portion of the sago gula melaka which the waitress said it came with the jemput to our surprise even though we didnt order it.

So thus the meal came to an end and we were left disappointed with the significant drop in the quality of the dishes. To add to this, the total bill was shocking to say the least for the amount of food served and the quality. eg ngoh hiang was around $13 for 2 small pieces!

As true blue bibiks/babas, the meal left us very much disappointed and to travel back to the biopolis for another meal might need alot of convincing.

I hadn't really planned on reviewing Spice after eating there last weekend - but browsing through the latest reviews, I felt I should balance out the rather skewed write ups. The food was moderately good - I actually had no issues with it one way or another. Had better and worse many times before. My problem was the lack of value to the whole proposition - I didn't pick up the tab for dinner, but I understood it was about $160 for the 4 of us. I'm not unaccustomed to expensive meals, but I hate leaving feeling like I've been duped. The prices are nearing True Blue's and Blue Ginger's without the overall experience - at least the ambience in those restaurants offer a unique experience.

A self confessed foodie, I have eaten at many peranakan places. Starting from Charlie's peranakan to Glory catering to Ivins to Peramakan to true blue to spice and the list goes on.....

Was there for dinner recently and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. Simple and nice restaurant setting with nice service staff. Plenty of parking space and surprisingly, free parking too at certain hours.

Now, let's talk food. Had some of the classic dishes like babi pongteh, babi assam, chap chye, ayam goreng, itek tim, sambal sotong, ngoh hiang, and beef rendang. Every single dish can stand on its own and you can literally taste the tender loving care that went into the cooking. The pongteh melts in the mouth, the babi assam's flavour is out of this world, the beef is so soft with a touch of tendon, the itek tim is nice and thick without the duck backside smell (excuse my English), the tempra on the ayam goreng is MMMMMMMMM!!!! good. okok. The one that I wish is nicer is the ngoh hiang which was a little skinny and dry. BTW, I had some nice sago gula melaka too. Hey, with their assurance of no MSG, I waited for signs of MSG attack after dinner but none came. YAY!!!

Overall, a place that I will definitely go back again with my business associates, friends and family. For peranakan food, Spice is reasonably priced and they do serve wonderful good. Keep it up guys.

And with such a handsome and young chef(still available I was told), I am happy as I will be able to get nice peranakan food for many years to come. Mom and Dad are wonderfully nice people too. :)

I love food. Yet, I must confess, I am not very adventurous when it comes to trying different styles of food. Whenever my foodie friends and I arrange to indulge ourselves in epicurean delights, we almost always end up at an expensive Italian or Japanese restaurant, before becoming at least a hundred dollars poorer by the end of the night.

Hence, when one of my foodie friends, ZZ, came raving to me about Spice Peranakan, her excitement was met with a strange dose of doubt and intrigue. Still, for the want of trying something new, I decided to check the place out anyway. The opportunity came when one of my Swiss friends, U, was due to go back to Switzerland after a three year stint in Singapore. I’d decided to take him to Spice Peranakan for his farewell meal, since Peranakan food is generally rare in Singapore, much more so in Switzerland.

And so the adventure begins.

We went to Spice Peranakan for dinner on 20th June.

Nestled in the middle of the Centros building in Biopolis, the place was not hard to find. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Spice Peranakan was running a full house on that Saturday evening, especially since the Biopolis is very much of an office area. In fact, I must admit that I found the environment to have a laidback charm about it. The restaurant has both indoor and al fresco seating. The al fresco area made me think of how sitting along the tree-lined avenues of Paris must feel like. There was plenty of greenery, a pretty water feature and an easy breeze.

The ambience inside the restaurant, where U and I were seated, was very casual and heartwarming. The place has been decorated to reflect a very familial atmosphere, where families, friends and loved ones can come together and share hearty laughs over a home-cooked meal.

The waitresses in the restaurant were very polite and prompt and we soon found ourselves poring over the restaurant’s extensive menu. As neither U nor myself were experts in the Peranakan cuisine, we were a little bit lost as to what we should order. We must have looked quite helpless as soon enough, we found the very warm lady boss right beside our table, guiding us slowly and patiently through the menu. I personally found her to be very thoughtful because she did not rattle off a standard list of recommendations. Instead, she took the time to ask us what we generally liked or disliked. U loves meat and is a big fan of spice and coconut milk (who knew?) while I love seafood, so she suggested that for the main dishes, we might consider trying the Ayam Masak Merah (chicken cooked in spicy curry with coconut milk), the Udang Nanas (prawns in curry with pineapples and coconut milk) and the Beef Keema (minced beef). And so we ordered those along with a side of archar (I love archar!) and a plate of Sambal Kang Kong (I can’t have a meal without my greens).

While waiting for our dishes to arrive, U tried the home-made Chin Chow, while I had the Lemongrass drink. It was the first time he has tried Chin Chow and he absolutely loved it. Spice Peranakan does their Chin Chow drink in a very unique way – they actually blend the Chin Chow jelly together with the drink to give it a bit of texture. I really enjoyed my Lemongrass drink too. The lemongrass taste was very robust and you can easily tell that many hours of brewing went into it.

We also started off with some archar and we both liked it. The archar was just tangy enough and the vegetables were very fresh and crunchy. It whetted our appetites.

Soon enough, our dishes arrived and here are my thoughts:

1. The Ayam Masak Merah

The chicken servings were succulent and generous. It was exactly as what we had imagined it to be – the curry was thick, flavourful and spicy with the fragrant taste of coconut milk. When mixed with the steaming white rice, it was really delicious. This was U’s favourite dish.

2. Beef Keema

This was my favourite! The beef was minced up very well and had green peas mixed into it. In my opinion, beef dishes are not easy to make, because the juiciness of the beef tends to get dried up in the cooking process, especially so for a dish where the beef is served minced. However, this beef keema surpassed my expectations. I tried a spoonful without mixing it wih rice just to assess its taste and was very pleased that the minced beef retained its juiciness. I was in beef heaven!

3. The Udang Nanas

The prawns were very big and fresh! I loved how they added pineapples into the curry to give it a sweet and tangy after taste. The curry was nice and spicy, which made it all the more yummy. Even though U and I were quite full when this dish arrived, we still ate prawn after prawn and kept drizzling the curry over our white rice to savour.

4. Sambal Kang Kong

Okay, it is a bit difficult to review sambal kang kong, so I will skip this one. But all I can say is that the sambal is undeniably fragrant and spicy with a great big oomph! Make sure you have your drink with you though. U and I found that very much needed. If you are a friend of spicy sambal kang kong, you just have got to try this!

After all these dishes, you would think that U and I were done with the meal. Not so fast! No meal is ever complete without some good old dessert, no matter how full one is. Hence, U and I decided to share the house special – the Jemput Jemput with a scoop of ice cream.

5. Jemput Jemput with a scoop of ice cream

The delectable dessert arrived in a personal sized pan (and the pan was still hot!). There were four pieces of banana fritters inside and a big scoop of ice cream on top. The fritters were still warm and once you have sunk your teeth in them, the aroma and taste of fresh bananas diffuses through your mouth (I love bananas!). Complement it with a spoonful of cold, creamy ice-cream and you have just experienced dessert heaven. For someone (like myself) who self-professes to only love tiramisu, panna cotta and crème brulee, the delight I had experienced with this Peranakan dessert honestly took me by surprise.

At the end of the meal, U was one happy man, I was one happy girl and we had two happy stomachs. While I would have gladly paid good money for this quality meal, I actually did not have to. Unlike the hundred dollar bills I was accustomed to seeing during my quests for good food, this bill was really easy on the pocket. It came up to be $80 for the two of us.

If you ask me, it’s $80 very well-spent.

And yes, I would be happy to spend this at Spice Peranakan, over and over again.

We had tried their food previously and I am glad to know they have shifted to a bigger restauarant. Embience is good and staffs are very friendly. I went there with my family for lunch and we had a variety of foods. We ordered Ngo Hiang, Ikan Sambal, Udang Nanas, Otak,Chap Chye, Sambal Sotong and of course not forgetting our fav lemongrass drinks. The Otak was good as you can tell there are the fish meat is fresh and coconut milk just right. Next best is the Udang Nanas, the gravy is nice as it has a strong taste of the pineapple and the assam sauce, thus it combines well with the prawns. Not forgetting the sambal sotong, it's gravy is just right, not too thick and a little spicy.

Overall, their standard still maintain and they have more varieties now.

Food/Beverage:Definitely worth the trip and must try their lemongrass drinks. It will be fantastic if they can improve on their chilli.

Ambience: Clean, nice and casual.

Value: reasonable.


Service: Good.