A brisk 10-minute walk from Nex, Lau Wang dominates the entire kopitiam. It serves food in… wait for it… claypots! The food was comforting, especially on cold days. Rice drenched in sauce was so shiok I could have eaten 3 bowls of it.

The sesame oil chicken ($4.50/$6.50) and herbal frog leg soup ($8/$15) are the specialities but we tried a variety and they all could be specialities. While the sesame oil chicken wasn’t fragrant enough, the thigh meat was Q. The frog soup was light but flavorful.

The sauce for the ginger & spring onion kidney and liver ($4.50/$6.50) was my favorite, fatty on rice. Liver was cooked gently, not over-cooked, but the kidney was smelly. The gong bao sliced fish ($4.50/$6.50) used sheng yu (snakefish) and, like the chicken, had a nice bite. Only the eggplant ($4.50/$6.50) was a let down, oily and mushy.

Gong Bao Fish

Two areas for improvement were that (1) there was excessive sauce in all the dishes, drowning the main ingredients. The sauces tasted similar to one another. For example, there was little spiciness in gong bao fish, little ginger in ginger onion liver, and no fragrance in sesame chicken, the sauces didn’t express the quality for what it was named after; (2) except for the chicken, there were too little ingredients in the claypots. 

Eggplant

Still, I left satisfied and thought it was worth the walk from Nex. If you find Nex too crowded for meals, this is a good alternative.

Lau Wang Claypot Delights

263 Serangoon Central Dr #01-43 Singapore 550263
T: 9001 0814
10.30am-9.30pm

Rating: 3.000/5 stars

Thanks, Mark, for the invite.

Written by A. Nathanael Ho.