Pass the tartar sauce!
The dark-horse breakout hit of Midtown’s Singaporean-themed Urban Hawker food hall, filled with such East Asian specialties as stingray fried rice and murtabak, turns out to be a plate of fish and chips.
The buzzy new hall is home to seventeen vendors, eleven of them hailing directly from Singapore, which is famous for its diverse street food culture, with stalls typically neatly organized into what are known as hawker centers. The block-long Big Apple interpretation of the original, rather unexpectedly located at the base of an office building on West 50th and 51st Streets, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, delights visitors with a kaleidoscopic wave of aromas evoking Malaysia, the Philippines and India — a far cry from most American food halls’ standard offerings of lobster rolls, tacos and “artisanal” meatballs.
The fish and chips at Urban Hawker’s Smokin’ Joe stall are nothing like the common NYC article, typically served up tasting mainly of oil. Check out Gordon Ramsay’s new Times Square fish and chips joint for such an object lesson, where the dish costs $1 more than Smokin’ Joe’s $16 masterpiece.
Chef/owner Joseph Yeo’s Singaporean surprise doesn’t promise much at first glance — two generic-looking breaded filets on a pile of fries, with a side of coleslaw.
But Yeo’s rendition blew me away, to the point where I had to come back for it three days in a row, just to be sure. The main element’s a miraculously moist cut of swai, a neutral-flavored fish from Vietnam that’s ideally suited to absorb and project the rotating multitude of Asian and Western spices and seasonings used in the marination.
Changing from day to day, they might include oyster sauce, soy sauce, paprika, oregano and thyme. The sweet and spicy result starburst radiates from within — a crispy but not crunchy coating of bread crumbs, egg and flour that’s deep-fried at a high temperature.
The constant heat “forces the oil out,” the friendly Yeo explained from behind the counter. He said that when fish tastes oily at other places, it’s usually because the oil isn’t hot enough.
“It’s all in the timing,” he said.
I’ve loved British-style fish and chips ever since my first taste in the medieval East Sussex town of Rye, on England’s southeastern coast, several lifetimes ago. Although New York now has excellent versions, typically utilizing the more traditional cod or haddock — try Jones Wood Foundry on the Upper East Side, or GG Fish & Chips on Court Street in Brooklyn — most are just blowing smoke.
Smokin Joe, finally, does the job right. And the chips — salty, seasoned fries that don’t need ketchup or anything else — stand up to the fish. Yeo’s signature dish is Hainanese curry rice topped with chicken or fish, a Singapore favorite, but I’ll put my dough on the chips every time.