Previous SlideNext Slide

If you were to draw up a list of Chatswood food court power rankings, you’d have your work cut out. Westfield packs a Haidilao and a hawker hall. Chatswood Chase has had a recent refresh. Chatswood Interchange, above the railway station, boasts Amah by Ho Jiak, along with proper ramen and Sichuan joints. Chatswood Place has a Chat Thai, while ParkBongSook and Ommi Don give Lemon Grove an edge.

Then there’s the retro Mandarin Centre, whose main attractions are now a mini-golf course and a bowling alley. Regardless, its relatively unglamorous food court, the Orient Express, punches above its weight.

One of the reasons is East West Gourmet, which relocated from The Interchange when the station was redeveloped. Come by just before 11am and, as the other stalls are clunking into gear, East West is all movement. A plastic tray flush with house-made sambal, pickled green chilli and chilli sauce is replenished; a chef turns salt and white pepper through a bowl of oil-slicked ginger-shallot sauce.

By 11.30am, diners – office workers, grandmas in bright-pink raincoats, local retirees – are spilling over from the eight tables opposite the counter. Their trays are loaded with soups, noodles and wings, but the one constant is the “number eight”: Hainanese chicken rice.

The threat of the supple-fleshed, gelatinous-skinned thigh meat selling out each day ensures the line starts early.

It’s a deceptively complex dish, and East West absolutely has the process down. There’s the bird, poached slowly to retain its tenderness, then plunged into an ice bath to shock it and set the skin. Boned out, sliced, reassembled and plated at room temperature, it’s splashed with soy, hit with the ginger-shallot sauce, and finished – at your bidding – with a spoonful of chilli. There’s the soup, delicate and aromatic from the long simmering of bones. And there’s the rice, slick with chicken fat, fragrant and plump from steaming in stock.

In Singapore or Hong Kong, nailing chicken rice can be enough to win a Michelin star. Here, East West’s Singapore-style rendition is enough to make it the most popular stall in the Mandarin Centre. The choice is between breast or, for a dollar more, thigh. However, the threat of the supple-fleshed, gelatinous-skinned thigh meat selling out each day ensures the line starts early. Those times I’ve had to settle, the breast has been great at best, a little mushy at worst, but the thigh is always right on.

East West moves 160 plates of chicken rice a day, but it’s no one-trick pony. Founded in 2000 by Helen Hung and her late husband William Ho, who emigrated from Hong Kong in 1991, the restaurant reflects an interest in Malaysian and Singaporean cooking developed through eating broadly and Ho’s professional kitchen work, including at Circular Quay’s Malaysian-Chinese institution Neptune Palace. That means char kwai teow, six kinds of laksa, and plenty more specialties across a 43-dish menu.

After Ho’s passing, Hung – originally a tailor – stepped into the kitchen, also training her son Stanley, who now runs the business with his mother and sister, Eva. Under the family’s watch, the counter service is charming and quick, while new chef Jason Ooi brings fresh talent.

Laksas are rich and creamy, the combination option packed with chicken, prawns, fish cakes and beef, plus sambal for heat and funk. Equally appealing is the fish in chilli soup, in which a broth topped with velvet slips of basa fillet and blitzed dried chillies is drowned in hot oil. Eaten over rice, it’s reminiscent of Sichuan’s fiery shui zhu yu, just without the numbing sensation of Sichuan pepper. Swapping the fish for something local could only improve it.

Another signature is the salmon-head noodle soup, apparently East West’s own thing, even if it has parallels in Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. Fresh with tomato and gently tangy, it lands alongside a flash-fried cleaved head, the edges crunchy, the flesh melting. Get stuck in, and there are glorious, cartilaginous bits around the jaw and cheekbones that reveal more of themselves the deeper you go.

Salmon, this time smoked, also appears in the “number 10”, tossed through impressive fried rice, the grains fluffy, the egg evenly distributed. I wish the egg gravy on the wat tan hor, another noodle signature, had more savoury punch, but there’s more than enough hits to keep you coming back.

Stack your tray, grab a pistachio-tofu pudding from Hong Kong Wonton House, get on with your day. And as you do, perhaps think about what restaurants like this can provide, even if there’s no table service or wine list. Namely, pure expression direct from the kitchen. Comfort. A taste of home. Yes, the piped pop music and tired setting can make riding the Orient Express feel like a fast-track to the ’90s, but East West’s family values and direct flavour make it an essential stop. All aboard.