Joy in a Singapore sting

Australia's favourite food blogger, Not Quite Nigella, aka Lorraine Elliott, journeys to Singapore and discovers that stingrays aren't quite as scary as they look.

"I need to warn you service here isn't very…. hmmm, are you sure that you want to go here?” Sandra from the Singapore Tourism Board asks us hesitatingly. Chinese restaurants, for the most part, aren't exactly known for their service. In fact, the general rule among some is that if the service is terrible but the restaurant is full, then the food must be good.

Late night Singaporean dining of the more local kind doesn't get much better than seafood restaurant Sin Huat. It's the place that Anthony Bourdain named as one of his '13 places to eat before you die' as he was in raptures over the seafood. The service is said to be notoriously brusque and full of heavy pressure up-selling.

The restaurant's gumboot-wearing chef, Danny, is the only person that takes food orders and is the only chef here. As a result of this, a meal can stretch over four hours and you never quite know what your bill is going to come to, but you are always full. And you may have to put your foot down even when he insists that you order certain items or you may choose to retreat when you ask for chilli sauce on your stingray only to be told that, "If you want to eat it like that, don't come here.”

After Sandra battles Danny in a Singaporean version of a stand-off we emerge with an order consisting of 10 dishes including flower crab, stingray, and the restaurant's famous crab with bee hoon noodles.

The pork comes out first. It was a dish that Danny insisted that we have as it's not normally on the menu. There are various versions of pork including char siu, lup cheong, roast pork and pork with bones. They're all sweet and lightly smoky and delicious. I'm a char siu freak so I'm happy, and some of the pieces really spring to life when dipped in the spicy chilli sauce.

Our next dish is the flower crab, which is served with a fiery chilli sauce. Here the crabs are cracked open, meat sucked out of and savoured by a now finger licking crowd of us.

The prawns are coated with garlic and spring onion and sit in a pungent sauce. I'm not sure why we don't have rice, but it's probably because rice would take up valuable stomach space. That being said, it is the kind of sauce you really want to soak into some rice. My mother makes a version of this dish, but with nowhere near as much garlic.

The stingray comes out bubbling and looking most unusual. In fact, it looks a bit alive it's bubbling so much. I've never eaten stingray before so I am deeply curious to see what it is like. Here, it is cooked with a sauce similar to a steamed fish with ginger, soy and spring onions. Once presented, they take to it with a pair of scissors to cut it up into pieces. What is interesting is how it looks – on the top of the stingray (it is served overturned) are black ringed, iridescent blue polka dots but on the bottom it resembles the underside of an oyster mushroom. The stingray has a similar consistency to a steamed fish except it is more luscious and you can chew and eat most of the bones. It is utterly wonderful.

The whelks come steamed with skewers to help prize out the flesh from inside the conch shaped shell. It is accompanied with a moreish chilli sauce that we use to dip the meat into. I ate four of these before realising that I had loads of courses to go. Oops!

The scallops here come with a blanket of spicy yellow bean sauce, and I mean a blanket of sauce. The scallops are slightly different from back home and they have a frill around the edge of the scallop itself. They are juicy and delicious but very rich, and I can't manage more than one, which is a crying shame.

The last dish is the famous crab with bee hoon noodles (a thin vermicelli type of rice noodle). The crab is filled with meat and tender but the noodles that soak up the heady rich sauce with green onion, garlic, ginger and Chinese rice wine are what I come constantly back to the plate for.

After all of the food is eaten, Sandra asks Danny to come out for some photos. He is self conscious about the marks on his t-shirt but chats and poses for photos. The bill for the seven of us comes to a surprisingly reasonable $S569.60 ($A441.50). Now that's another bucket list item ticked off.

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