Heartfelt Thai cooking at Im Jai by Pun Im
Chef Vincent Pang’s casual eatery offers authentic cuisine with a personal touch
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Im Jai by Pun Im #01-78-81 Icon Village 12 Gopeng Street Singapore 078877 Tel: 6518-3151 Open Mon to Fri: 11 am to 3 pm; 4 pm to 9.30 pm
THAI food isn’t Thai food without the funk – that distinctive eau de canal promising botulism on one hand, and authenticity on the other. Unless you plan on eating in Bangkok food courts forever, that’s the risk you take for a taste of the real thing.
Which is why it’s easy to dismiss much of the Thai food in Singapore – it has the flavour, but not the Suvarnabhumi connection. Then again, we never quite mustered the courage to eat at Golden Mile when it was still around – mostly because we feared more things than just the smell.
We’re not suggesting that Im Jai by Pun Im keeps a bottle of the Chao Phraya by its nam pla. But compared to the days when Vincent Pang dabbled in Thai private dining at home, he’s come a long way – from hobby cook to bona fide chef.
Barring a few kinks, his restaurant in the Central Business District lunch mecca of Tanjong Pagar is a heartfelt tribute to the cuisine that Pang has adopted as his own. It started out as a quick-meal option for the lanyard-wearing office crowd looking to eat and run, but has since progressed to a full-fledged menu delivering gutsy, familiar cooking whenever the craving hits.
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It’s not the poshest of settings – somewhere between a cafe and a food court, with some earnest attempts at interior decor with curved ceilings and embossed flowers on the walls. Service is basic because you order and pay via a QR code – efficient, but hardly personal. If you’re anti-social, it’s the best thing ever.
Otherwise, any human contact is limited to the server who brings your food in random order, and is nice enough to drag the next table to join with ours when the food starts spilling over.
Pang’s cooking is well-pitched and his attention to detail – right down to the dips and condiments – is admirable. Deep-fried pork belly (S$10.80) is an addictive snack of crispy-battered bites that you can dip into a tangy tamarind sauce with a hit of pepper. It can be heavy going on its own, but combine it with a bit of rice and the balance is perfect.
Miang kham (S$16.80) features ubiquitous betel leaves that you fill with condiments – toasted coconut, raw onions, lime bits, peanuts, chilli and dried shrimp – and bind with a chewy-sweet-pulpy tamarind jam that we can almost swear Pang lugged home from a Bangkok market to Icon Village. Apart from an odd addition of finely minced cooked shiitake, this is the real McCoy.
Grilled whole river prawn directly flown in from Southern Thailand is worth the splurge at S$39.80 each. It’s flash-frozen but tastes perky and fresh, slightly undercooked for the best springy texture, and an underlying whiff of you-know-what that’s enough to transport you to you-know-where. What elevates it are the two sauces – one perky green chilli dip and its caramelly tamarind sidekick.
Pang can get carried away sometimes. Crispy cloud egg (S$16.80) is an overly fussy combination of neatly deep-fried egg white omelette topped with six very rich soy-cured egg yolks that overpower everything else. You’re supposed to spread it over the flat omelette and eat it with raw onions, green chillies and a squeeze of lime – it works, but it gets cloying very quickly.
The signature duck confit red curry (S$25.80) is spot on for its thick, rich and spicy gravy studded with very sweet grapes, but is let down by a stringy and dry duck leg.
Desserts are a little polarising – you’re either team bua loy or you’re not. The bua loy (S$7.80) are little glutinous rice balls that are more soft than chewy, swimming with coconut strips in a scented broth of sweet coconut milk that’s laced with a salted egg yolk cream that keeps interrupting like a pop-up advertisement you can’t skip. It’s an interesting twist of sweet and savoury, but it’s not convincing enough.
Red ruby (S$7.80) is of course an old favourite, but with a new twist. Familiar chewy-skinned water chestnut, jelly strips and jackfruit are paired with intriguingly smoked coconut sorbet and sweetened with a sugar syrup heavily infused with jasmine.
The easiest to like is the mango and sticky rice (S$9.80) – the fruit gets a crisp and torched brulee crust, and is served with mango sorbet and glutinous rice, finished with coconut cream.
With just enough familiar cues to trigger your palate’s memories and twists to cement his personal touch, Pang has created his own Thai escape and invited you to join him. We’re happy to accept.
Rating: 7
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