Foodie Islington: One Night At The Peranakan Palace - Plussixfive Supper Club Goes Stellar

Islington-based Singaporean supper club plussixfive is the kind of thing I am somewhat reluctant to spread the word about. While it has a significant and growing following, with events selling out within days of their announcement, the fact remains that if this operation was as popular as it deserves to be, yours truly would not be getting one of the 25 or so seats. The brainchild of confident and talented young Singaporean Goz, this supper club is a proper foodie joint - by foodies, for foodies. Food wimps need not apply. This of course has a positive effect on the quality of the guests, of which more later. Previous themes have included the 'Fish Head Curry' feast, including menu descriptions such as 'Fish Skin & Bones', a St John-esque description in terms of both the implied foodie challenge, and it's deceptive simplicity. The dish in question was utterly delicious and surprising - crispy, highly seasoned, like Asian piscine pork scratchings. Then there were sambal eggs from guest chef Shu Han (she of the jam-packed recipe blog mummyicancook), prawns cooked with cereal, the fish-head curry, and any number of delectable and unusual dishes. But I digress.

The latest plussixfive event was dubbed 'One Night At The Peranakan Palace', a celebration of Nyonya cuisine. This time Goz was teaming up with Jason, the flamboyant, ubiquitous foodie obsessive behind the excellent Feast to the World blog. This meal somehow managed to top the previous one, and has to go down as one of the best meals I have ever eaten, anywhere. (Cranking it up and up, rather than resting on laurels, is always a sign of a high quality food enterprise.)

The meal started with poh piah, a kind of fresh rolled wrapped in what seemed to be a homemade ‘skin’ rice pancake. The filling was a combination of delicious cooked ingredients and fresh ingredients with chilli, coriander, and bean sprouts. As with all the other dishes, I could happily have eaten this all evening.

Then came Mee Siam, a tasty noodle dish with a laksa-like spiced sauce, in a mercifully small portion. I was already starting to feel full at this point.

For mains we got Chap Chye, which was ostensibly a vegetable dish but full of pork products and made with an incredibly tasty stock. There was a chicken dish good enough to blow most restaurant dishes out of the water, which was overshadowed both in richness of flavour, and in the stomach capacity of most of the guests, by the beef rendang. This rendition of rendang (see what I did there?) was a glorious dish, cooked overnight, moist beef, dark, rich, homogenous in colour, garnished with chilli, somehow slow-cooked and caramelised at the same time, with an almost dry sauce, and enormous depth of flavour. Like an Asian version of a perfectly rich bourguignon (cooked by someone like Bruno Loubet), but with the added elements of coconut, spices, and the unique cooking technique. I ate as much of it as I could manage. There were short-rib bones for chewing too. I had followed a tip from beer expert Melissa Cole and taken along a Trippel belgian-style blonde ale to go with the rendang, and it worked a treat.

Dessert involved coconut, shaved ice (which the guests got to have a go at producing), and some sweet and undeniably testicular seeds, all of which was new to me and delicious despite the slightly disturbing mouthfeel. Then came Ondeh Ondeh, chewy, green, slimy, glutinous balls covered in coconut, to continue the nose-to-testicle theme.

There was, as ever, way too much food. This is in keeping with the atmosphere of generosity. We are not looking for perfectly balanced Michelin portions at a supper club. I want it to feel like Christmas with my long-lost Asian grandmother, who will be mortally offended if I don't force down some more rendang. And it is like that, only more hip and London-ish.

An unannounced dish arrived between courses, which involved minced pork and I'm not sure what else, wrapped in tofu and deep fried. Goz described this as a 'snack'. Just in case anyone was, y'know, hungry or something. It was, unsurprisingly, delicious.

The crowd is a lively mixture of Singaporean and Malaysian expats gagging for an authentic taste of home, and intrepid London foodies who have caught the buzz on this place from each other via twitter or elsewhere. I have met several like-minded foodie friends at these events and picked up some great tips as well. It has to be said that the atmosphere is helped by Goz, who has all the right personality traits for a supper club host - generous, open, relaxed and unflappable. His serene swan-like glide as the dishes come streaming from the tiny kitchen may well hide some furious paddling below the surface, but the overall effect is that everything is OK, it's cool, just relax and enjoy. And enjoy we did. Goz has been making noises about taking plussixfive in a different direction. I have no idea what that means, but whatever it is, I hope it stays around these parts, and I hope they keep letting me in.