Laksa: what it is, what to order, what to avoid

Overview

Laksa is not this city’s own dish, and it is worth saying so plainly: it belongs to the whole region, a Peranakan creation eaten across the peninsula and the islands, with as many local forms as there are places that cook it. What this city has is a distinct and well-loved version of it, and knowing that the dish is bigger than the city is the key to ordering the right one.

The great split in the laksa world is between two families that share almost nothing but a name. One is the sour, fish-based, tamarind-sharp kind, clear and tart and associated above all with Penang across the border. The other is the rich coconut kind — laksa lemak, “creamy laksa” — and it is this second family that reigns here. When someone in this city says laksa, they mean a bowl of thick rice noodles in a hot, orange, coconut-and-dried-shrimp gravy, not the sour one.

The local signature is Katong laksa, named for the eastern neighbourhood where it took its form, and it has one feature that gives it away instantly: the noodles are cut short, into spoon-length pieces, so the whole bowl is eaten with a spoon alone and no chopsticks. That is not a gimmick but the definition — a proper bowl in the Katong style needs no chopsticks, because there is nothing long enough to need lifting. The gravy is built from a rempah spice paste, coconut milk, dried shrimp and dried chillies, finished with the fragrant daun kesum, the laksa leaf that gives the dish its herbal top note.

What to order

Say laksa and, here, you will get the coconut Katong style by default — the bowl described above. The decisions are in the toppings and the heat.

A standard bowl arrives on the thick rice noodles with some combination of prawns, slices of fish cake, bean sprouts, sometimes shredded chicken, a scattering of the torn laksa leaf, and — the one that divides people — cockles, the small blood-red clams known locally as hum. They are traditional and, to many, the best part; if you would rather not have them, the phrase is simply “no cockles”, and nobody will blink. Asking for extra cockles marks you the other way, as someone who knows the bowl.

The other lever is the sambal, the chilli paste stirred in at the end. A bowl is usually built mild-to-medium and comes with more sambal on the side or on request, so you set the heat yourself rather than sending it back. Stir it in a little at a time; the coconut carries the chilli and it climbs.

Two words are worth keeping straight so you order deliberately:

• laksa lemak — the coconut/creamy family, which is what Katong laksa belongs to. This is the local one.
• asam laksa — the sour, tamarind, fish-based family. A real and excellent dish, but a different one; order it knowing it is not the coconut bowl the city is known for, and you will not be disappointed by getting something tart when you expected something creamy.

Eat it hot and eat it soon: the gravy is an emulsion, and it thickens and dulls as it cools.

What to avoid

The commonest disappointment is a thin, pale gravy — a laksa that has been stretched with too much water or too little coconut and dried shrimp, so it tastes vaguely of curry and mostly of nothing. A good bowl’s gravy is opaque, almost thick enough to coat the spoon, and deeply savoury from the dried shrimp; if it looks like watery soup, it will taste like it.

The second thing to watch is a bowl sold as Katong laksa with long, uncut noodles and a pair of chopsticks. There is nothing wrong with a full-length coconut laksa — plenty of excellent stalls serve one — but if it is trading on the Katong name, the short-cut spoon-only noodle is the thing that name specifically means, and its absence is a small tell about how seriously the stall takes the label.

That label is worth a warning of its own. Katong is home to a cluster of stalls with nearly identical names, several claiming to be the one true original, a rivalry the neighbourhood has enjoyed for decades. Treat the “original” and “famous” signage as folklore rather than information: there is no settled first, the claim is unresolvable, and it tells you nothing about which bowl in front of you is good. Judge the gravy, not the sign.

Practicalities

Laksa is hawker food and priced like it — reckon on roughly 5 to 8 Singapore dollars for a bowl, which puts it firmly in the everyday-lunch bracket rather than the treat bracket. A price much above that usually signals the setting rather than a better bowl.

It is eaten at any time of day but lives at breakfast and lunch, the way a rich noodle soup does across the region; by mid-afternoon the busiest stalls may have sold through their gravy, which is made in a batch and not topped up endlessly. Going to the neighbourhood it is named for is a real option and half the pleasure — the eastern district is an easy detour and the concentration of stalls there means you can compare two bowls in one sitting, which is the best way to learn what a good gravy tastes like.

It is a one-bowl meal, complete on its own, and it is messy in the specific way that coconut-and- chilli gravy is messy — it splashes, and it stains. The short noodles are cut precisely so a spoon does all the work, so resist the instinct to reach for chopsticks with the Katong version; the spoon is not a limitation but the design. Cards and mobile payment work almost everywhere in the city, but the oldest single-dish stalls are the likeliest to prefer cash or a phone transfer, so keep a little on you.