Club Rangoon — How a Duxton restaurant artfully interprets Burmese food for the modern Singaporean palate
Cuisine — something beautifully individual, a salient ingredient of culture. Some could even argue that food bears the heavy burden of being the most accessible gateway to a culture’s rich heritage for outsiders. Such an uptake can be challenging but also revealing of a restaurant’s genius, like in the case of the new Club Rangoon.
Capturing the public imagination, to be seen as one of the most enthralling new openings of this quarter, Club Rangoon takes on a huge responsibility: To introduce Burmese food to Singaporeans.
Even with contemporaries such as Burma Social already in play, it’ll still be a proverbial stretch to suggest that Singaporeans fathom the hearty allure of mohingas and laphet thokes.
It all lies in the execution and what co-founder Nelson Htoo, a born-and-raised Burmese, and the team have prepared to welcome interlopers into the rich world of Burmese cuisine is a concept that’s simultaneously homely and convivial but also keenly a la mode.
When I first gazed upon the facade of the Duxton restaurant — marked by an ornate assembly of glass bricks, skirted by borders of cream and green — the location looked mighty familiar.
The realisation only came later, after settling down, that Club Rangoon had moved into the erstwhile location of Restaurant JAG, which had hosted me for one of my most memorable dinners in the past decade.
What was recollected as a swathe of punctilious French-dining-style white linen had been replaced by modish minimalist neutrals, accentuated with a zany vibrance inspired by the half-cream, half-viridescent tile details.
Sitting at 76 Duxton 3 years later, with an entirely different suite of flavours and ingredients, and a strikingly disparate direction, was I set for another stunning culinary affair — this time by Club Rangoon?
The glorious herb and twang
A tapestry of slender fermented tea leaves and shredded cabbage, weaved in with wedges of cherry tomatoes and green chilli, capped with an avalanche of beans, peanuts and garlic chips — this is Club Rangoon’s take on the Laphet Thoke ($17), one of the most emblematic Burmese dishes.
Umami and fragrance come lunging, as the exquisite twang and depth of the fermented tea leaves fill your mouth, while the nuts and alliums make for a delectable buttress to the base umami.
As with most Asian countries in the southwards, Burmese cuisine also finds space in its repository for curry, which is quite interestingly presented in the Dirty Egg Bites ($12).
Bifurcated eggs are slathered with a mild curry — piquant and tomato fragrant, with a mellower hint of spice — with the faint inflexion of coriander and caramelised onion adding to the layers. These ugly-cute morsels make for one simple, satisfying bite.
Libations on Club Rangoon’s menu also come with a dose of beguilement, as the contemporary Burmese elements are prominently stirred into many of the unorthodox tipples.
Fermented tea leaves are suavely impressed into the dirty martini for one bodacious Laphet Martini ($25), all while lemongrass and chilli are blended into mezcal as a quirkily refreshing summer-ready drink of Nway Ma ($25).
Perhaps most fascinating is Club Rangoon’s bold matchmaking of one of the most polarising ingredients into one of the most universally beloved cocktails.
The coriander-infused Rangoon Negroni ($25) could appear revolting to some, but it’s a setting where the herb’s leafy sharpness is well met by the peanut gin’s sweet aroma and the Campari’s herbaceous inflexion.
All-too-familiar, all-too-good
Amidst all the signatures on Club Rangoon’s menu, however, perhaps one dish is the most imperative for anyone looking to break through the notion of exoticism.
Slurping on the tawny-hued broth of the Mohinga ($34) feels all too familiar. A comforting melange of spice notes builds up on the palate, gentle but pronounced, while the aroma of lemongrass peeps in and a shy heat flirts with your tongue.
The velvety and bouncy rice noodles soak up the broth superbly, while the unagi-esque grilled catfish leaves you smitten with its smokiness and tenderness.
Club Rangoon’s take on Myanmar’s unofficial national dish can be best described as comforting and familiar, yet still intriguingly foreign — much like this following dish, the Wagyu beef cheek dan bauk ($42).
Labelled as Burmese-style biryani, it’s a dish that bears striking resemblance to the iconic rice staple of its neighbours to the West.
This rendition is built on a bed of fluffy and fragrant jasmine rice, buried in thick, luscious wagyu beef cheek curry for an immensely exuberant bovine richness, while littered with beads of pomegranate seeds for punctuating pops of sweetness.
For someone who’s quite uneducated on what authentic Burmese flavours are, Club Rangoon is undoubtedly a magnificent peek into this lush new world of dishes.
More interestingly, the meal is punctuated with various bouts of pleasant bewilderment, when the flavours were just all-too-familiar.
I concede: I haven’t eaten enough mohinga to know if this is the best mohinga in Singapore, or enough Burmese food to authoritatively proclaim it as the best Burmese food in Singapore.
But what I can do is extol on this experience at Club Rangoon, which not only showcased some tremendous flavours but also did it in style — something that can’t be said about every restaurant serving up rarer cuisine styles.
Make a reservation online before visiting Club Rangoon at Duxton for hearty Burmese food.
Club Rangoon
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- Address: 76 Duxton Rd, Singapore 089535
- Hours: (Tues–Thurs) 5:30pm to 11pm, (Fri–Sat) 11.30am to 3pm, 5:30pm to 11pm
*This was an invited tasting.