Ting Heng Seafood Restaurant

The Tiong Bahru precinct is best known for the wet market’s highly sought-after chwee kwee, and for its conserved Straits Settlements architecture. But Singapore’s oldest neighbourhood estate also has a sizeable crop of zhi char eateries – if you know where to look.

One of them is Ting Heng Seafood Restaurant, along Tiong Poh Road, an airy, fluorescent-lit alfresco dining area. By virtue of its opening hours, Ting Heng tends to be a magnet for the night crowd.

The menu of sharply priced seafood and Chinese delicacies – including Alaskan crabs, live lobsters, shark’s fin and abalone – also makes it a favoured venue for local towkays (Chinese bosses).

But a homey meal can still be had without breaking the bank if you order smartly: intensely flavoured wok-fried beef searing in a hotplate with thick slices of spring onions and ginger, stir-fried chye sim aromatically infused with garlic oil, and hor fun in a thick and robust gravy perfumed with seafood.

The pomfret fishhead steamboat would make for a nice addition if it weren’t for the ridiculously meagre fish slices, served in a large pot and costing $48. Eve C