Pig Out Café – Home-style porky goodness

A-G-3, Park Lane Commercial Hub, Jalan SS7/26 Kelana Jaya, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Quick question to my readers: Which of you are Game of Thrones fans?

Wow. All five of you, huh?

So maybe you share my frustration that the truly good guys of Westeros seem to have the lifespan of a mayfly. You have good intentions, you try to be fair to all and do right by the world… and suddenly you find yourself a head shorter. Or you leave a party with more holes in you than when you arrived. Perhaps worst of all, someone kills your dog.

While the sort-of bad guys seem to live on and on… suffering nothing worse than bruised egos, minor scarring (which, some may argue, adds a macho touch) and missing appendages.

… admittedly some appendages are more important than others.

Yes, I love the complexity of GRR Martin’s epic world and the highly-believable characters he populates it with. And I love how he tells his stories of war and loss and betrayal with unexpected twists and brutal realism.

But I just can’t help but feel a pang when the protagonists I root for are taken out forever.

By the way, it’ll be a while till we get to the food. So here’s Pig Out’s delicious passion fruit fizz to tide you over.

Well, we can’t do much about GRR Martin’s penchant for murdering his characters with seemingly-careless abandon. But closer to reality, we – yes, the five of you and I – may be able to help write a happy success story for some good guys in the food business who are cooking up some great stuff. All we gotta do is eat there often – and there are plenty of reasons to.

Pig Out Café is a brand-new casual-dining place offering up porky delights – they just opened in July 2013.

It’s located at the just-as-new Park Lane commercial center. This place is so new, in fact, that it seems they haven’t quite finished taking off the bubble wrap yet. Only a handful of lots are occupied. Parking is still free, and so plentiful you can park like a complete asswipe without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Visual guide: How to park like an asswipe. Not that you should – remember we’re on the side of the good guys.

The menu is small – I suspect it will grow. The service is friendly. The prices are extremely reasonable. And the food (ah, finally) is the reason why I am rooting so hard for these guys to succeed.

It’s simple, unpretentious, home-style pork dishes… made with much care and attention to the smallest details.

Take their signature roast pork for example. Tender meat, melty fat, beautiful pork flavour without that bad, overly-porky smell. The crackling is just a tiny bit harder than the one on Lady Fartsalot’s MeatMen sio bak but it still has a very nice crunch. It’s an excellent dish, but what put it over the top for me were the delicious and deep flavours of the grilled carrots and potatoes on the side. I really didn’t expect them to put so much effort into their sides. Many bigger and more established restaurants don’t.

So good we had to order a second portion.

Next, the cottage pie. It’s like a porky shepherd’s pie; creamy mashed potatoes and flavourful minced pork combined to make a great light meal. The coleslaw on the side is so good, I’d order it on its own. It was crunchy, tangy and fresh; with a tiny hint of raw onion that made the whole thing come alive on the tastebuds.

I still can’t decide which one I like more – the pie or the coleslaw.

The pork chop was the only item I didn’t love. I thought the chops needed some extra flavour: perhaps more of the garlic sauce it came with, or more a little more time marinating. Also, I would have preferred the meat to be more tender – but this could be just a personal thing since pretty much all of the pork chops I’ve had from Leonardo’s in Bangsar to Ad Hog in Kota Damansara have a similar texture.

Not too hot on the pork chops, but the coleslaw and creamy, buttery mashed potatoes on the side were absolutely killer.

Finally, the pork burger. A thick, tasty, juicy pork patty with enoki, cheese, lettuce, tomato and a little raw onion. The patty had good texture and flavour; I could really taste the cheese; and the onions gave it a very nice kick. The fries were hard and almost completely crunchy. Guess they didn’t use the twice-frying method TV chefs recommend to give each fry a crunchy exterior and soft, fluffy interior… but I still kinda liked them.

A serious contender for best pork burger in town.

I was wondering why they didn’t put the top bun off to the side to better show off the patty, until I saw this beautiful mess. Doesn’t look very pretty, but tastes really good.

Portions are decent for people with normal appetites. But since all 3 of us that day were big eaters, we managed to put away 4 main courses and one pie between us. Pigging out at Pig Out was very satisfying indeed.

What worries me is that the place was empty when we arrived (admittedly close to closing time). I really think there ought to be a queue to get in and the reason there isn’t is simply because not enough people know how good their food is.

It would be tragic to see a great place like this go under simply because of a lack of awareness, while juggernauts of mediocrity like Old Town and KFC continue to grow and grow.

So please go eat there. Tell your friends. Help the good guys win.

Snack-sized review

Great casual restaurant serving up amazing home-style porky dishes at very reasonable prices. Much care was taken with everything, even their side dishes. Go eat there and bring your friends – they very much deserve to do well.

Stats

Hours: 12pm to 3pm for lunch. 6pm to 10pm for dinner.

Price: Very reasonable. Most expensive item (their signature roast pork) is only RM18 for a plateful of deliciousness. Until 31 August 2013, they have an opening discount of 20% off your total bill.

Pictures + Video: The MeatMen’s sio bak + stuff they forgot to mention

First off, nobody panic.

I know it’s a gigantic leap from shaking up garlic bulbs in metal bowls to doing a full-on sio bak recipe. I know many would ‘suggest’ vehemently that if I wanted to play with heat in the kitchen I should begin with a more tentative step… like boiling water in an electric kettle. (And make bloody sure it’s electric and switches off automatically) 

Check, and check. Meet the most frequently-used appliance in my kitchen. Yep, me and ol’ National here go wayyy back.

Most importantly, I know that I should never risk allowing my bumbling enthusiasm to ruin a perfectly good piece of beautiful, beautiful pork belly.

Mmmmmm…. pork belly…

That’s why I’m not attempting this recipe. Lady Fartsalot is.

She is an accomplished home cook who’s capable of making a large and impressive list of dishes. And she’s constantly adding to the list by trying out new and interesting recipes. Many of the inches on my waistline are the direct result of her often-successful experiments in the kitchen.

So now we have someone who knows her way around the kitchen, a beautiful piece of pork belly, plus all the other ingredients. Let's rock and roll!

But first, let's take a moment to admire this nice jar that the fermented red beancurd came in. Pretty good for something that cost less than RM8, don't you think?

Essentially, we (and for the rest of this article, keep in mind that by 'we' I usually mean 'she') replicated The MeatMen sio bak recipe. If you haven’t watched their video, you totally should. Just be warned that side-effects may include uncontrollable drooling, ravenous hunger and the deaths of perfectly innocent but oh-so-delicious pigs.

There are, however, a few points The MeatMen didn’t mention in their video that we felt should be highlighted.

POINT 1: Brine

We cut the pork belly into two pieces and brined one of them. The brined belly seemed a little crunchier and tastier. And it’s easy to do: just cover the meat completely in salted water and leave in the fridge overnight.

POINT 2: Punctures

The recipe called for holes to be punched in the meat but since there are no plans to open up a sio bak rice stall any time soon, we didn’t think it was worth getting a specialised tool for the job. We decided to just stab the heck out of the pork belly instead. We ended up making tiny slits in the skin instead of puncture-marks, but that didn’t seem to affect the result much. And it was quite a lot of fun, to boot!

This is incredibly cathartic. Had a tough day at work? Forget punching bags; stabbing pork belly is the way to go.

Then we rubbed salt into the skin, slathered the mixture below on the meat side and left the whole thing on a rack to air-dry, skin-side up, for 4 hours.

Fermented red beancurd, five-spice powder, salt and white pepper.

We inserted skewers to keep the meat in shape, then it was straight into a 200-Celsius oven for 2 hours.

In 2 hours, the pork skin changed expression more times than Kristen Stewart did across all 4 Twilight movies.

POINT 3: Smoke

There was smoke. Holy crap was there a lot of smoke. We didn’t notice this until it looked like someone had unpacked a special shipment of thick, industrial-grade, pork-scented Indonesian haze in our living room. Eyes stinging, we did some panicked Googling and found out that smoke is to be expected; the fat in the drip pan tends to burn. A little water in the drip pan prevents burning and reduces the smoke dramatically.

Once 2 hours are up, brush the skin side with white vinegar.

Just brushed with vinegar and looking ready to be eaten. But nope, more cooking required.

Now, crank the heat to maximum and put the meat back in as near to the heating elements as possible. Keep an eye on it and pull it out once the skin turns black.

We didn't let this turn all the way black because we were worried about overcooking. So it's more of a Chigger kind of black, no'm say'n?  

The blackened bits were scraped off very, very carefully in order to waste as little of the delicious crunchy skin as possible.

POINT 4: Sauce

The drippings make a good sauce. Lady Fartsalot added a bunch of random ingredients to the drippings: a star anise, some cloves, oyster sauce, dried rosemary (because rosemary traditionally goes well with pork), light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, vinegar, brown sugar and flour to thicken. Then she reduced the whole thing into a nice, Western-tasting sauce. Do note that she had to add quite a lot of stuff to fortify the flavour of the sauce as most of our drippings had to be discarded because it got burnt before we found out about adding water to the drip pan.

The sauce that made me forget about wanting chicken rice chilli to go with the sio bak.

POINT 5: Resting

If you watch a lot of food shows, you probably remember every single TV chef warning you NEVER to cut into a piece of meat straight off the grill. Because if you cut it right away, all the juices rushing and bubbling around inside the hot piece of meat will come rushing out, leaving the meat all dry and icky. Letting the meat rest for 15 to 20 minutes will allow the juices to settle down and stay in the meat when you cut.

Same advice applies here. Don’t worry; the sio bak skin will remain crispy for a long time so you can afford to wait. Also, it seems letting the meat rest for 30-45 minutes will allow the flesh to firm up a little bit so you can cut nice, clean chunks.

Results

So, how did it turn out? Well, let’s watch the sio bak being cut, shall we?

Did you hear the crunch? Isn’t it the most beautiful sound in the world? The meat was incredibly juicy and fall-apart tender. The fat melts upon contact with the tongue. The taste of five-spice powder was a little more pronounced than in other sio bak I’ve bad, but overall the porky flavour was just perfect, without being too overpowering. And the salty sauce complemented the sio bak amazingly well.

The sio bak was so tender we had trouble getting it to stay in shape. Here it is with our sauce plus a garnish of caramelised onions and guava slices, which seemed to work a lot better than cucumbers.

And I ate way, way, way too much of it. So much, in fact, that thinking back to how full I was on that day, I now feel an overwhelming urge to go have a little lie-down.

Think I’ll do just that.