Shiok Singaporean Cuisine: Beef Rendang and Roti Prata

Shiok is a newish Singaporean restaurant that opened up on Kingsway in mid-2019. I dropped by for some takeout in early October. The food’s pretty good so I might wind up coming back to try their dine-in service.

First off, let me just say that their takeout packaging is a bit more unique than other places. Most of my items came wrapped up in butcher block paper. That might not be unusual if you’re picking up a steak at the local butchery but I’ve never had a curry dish wrapped up in butcher block paper before. It does keep the packaging size down to a minimum (but your food winds up looking book-shaped).

A must at any Singaporean restaurant has to be the Roti Prata ($3) which is a flatbread served with chicken curry sauce. While flaky, I found it to be a bit denser than other versions I’ve had before but it’s still pretty good.

The Boneless Chicken Rice ($10) is their Singaporean version of Hainanese chicken rice. To be honest, I found the rice to be a bit on the dry side. I was able to offset this a bit by using the leftover curry sauce from the roti.

I was really pleased with the Beef Rendang ($10) due to the meaty and flavourful beef. They slowly cook this until it’s fork-tender and it has a nice spicy flavour to it.

The Chicken Wings ($5) were really unique and I’ve never had this kind of flavour in chicken wings before. The wings are deep-fried and coated with some type of prawn-spice which really imparts an umami flavour.

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Last up was the tasty Chicken Satay ($5) served with a thick peanut sauce.

So, the food’s pretty good but the take-out packaging leaves a bit to be desired – although I give them props for using compostable packaging (at least I think butcher block paper is compostable). Your best bet might be to dine-in but just note that it can be difficult to find street parking (especially if you visit when the no stopping on the street due to rush hour is being enforced).

1716 Kingsway
Vancouver, BC

shiok.ca