Wandering Around Peranakan Joo Chiat Road

People live in these colourful Peranakan shop houses

Yesterday my friend took me to a colourful area in East Singapore called Joo Chiat Road. She described it as something akin to Happy Valley in Hong Kong, a little neighbourhood known for its Peranakan culture. 

These shop houses have various businesses

Peranakan means a person of mixed Chinese, Malay, Indonesian and Indian heritage, dating back to 15th century Malacca when Chinese traders married local women. These interracial unions led to the mixing of cooking too.

The Joo Chiat area is named after Chew Joo Chiat, a wealthy Chinese landowner in the early 20th century. A few years ago the area was very sleazy, but it's cleaned up or perhaps gentrified with quirky shops, boutiques and restaurants.

In addition there are many rows of shop houses, narrow small homes that have two or three stories. Peranakan shop houses are known for being very colourful and as a result make for ideal Instagram backdrops for those looking to pose for pictures.

A Singaporean designer with minimalist designs

Many shop houses are very old, with some still occupied by people, while shops can go for S$6-S$8 million, and will still need a lot of money for renovation. However, if you put in the investment and rent it out, you could still make your money back...

When we wandered the street we saw several vintage shops selling not only second-hand luxury fashion brands from clothes to handbags and Hermes scarves, but also jewellery like rings, earrings, and brooches. 

My friend pointed out when she lived in Nanaimo, British Columbia several years ago, she scoured the vintage stores in Ladysmith and bought brooches at a fraction of the price sold at these shops in Singapore. 

We also encountered some designers based in Singapore selling their clothes. One was originally from Tokyo who has lived in the Lion City for some 20 years and has a business creating fabric and clothes made of silk made by villages in Cambodia and Laos. The silk is light and airy with some batik-like touches, and they are idea for wearing in tropical places because they are loose and flowing.

Mini bottles containing shots of whisky

Another is run by a Singaporean designer who studied in Milan and so she is involved in the entire process from sketch to pattern to sewing. She said she likes being in the store on the weekends when there are more customers so that she can meet them and get feedback on her clothing that is made in China.

We also saw a natural wine shop that sold biodynamic wines with no sulfites, and had a selection of small bottles that had a shot of whisky in each of them. Another was a coffee shop that claims to use electro-magnetic waves to change the molecular structure of coffee or juice so that it tastes better. It's a curious concept but they claim it is used in food production to cut out the use of preservatives and wanted to use it on customer beverages. 

For dinner we headed to Blue Smoke, a restaurant where the chef-owner used to be in advertising. He used to cook Chiu Chow, but it didn't draw customers so now he smokes meats like beef brisket, and pork belly, and skate wing which is a slightly different cooking method, and adds a curry sauce for a spicy kick. 

Wood smoked beef brisket at Blue Smoke

But apparently his restaurant is better known for its off-menu items like fish porridge which intrigued us but we were already full! He likes to have people try the restaurant menu first, and get to know them before they know about the other food items, including chilli crab! Next time!