Singapore Here

On a recent stopover in Singapore, I felt like a bowl of laksa, a Straits Chinese concoction of rice noodles in spicy coconut broth. You usually find this dish at hawker stalls, but I searched in vain.

No matter, I said to myself. I can always get some back in Monterey Park at Litz.

Litz is a quietly upscale Chinese restaurant with a small but select menu of Singaporean dishes. (Owner John Yee is from Singapore.) Not all would pass muster in Singapore, but food isn’t always perfect over there either. The plate of Hokkien prawn noodles that I settled for during my stopover was dreadful.

On the other hand, the Singapore fried rice noodles at Litz are superlative--garlicky and laced with squid, shrimp, ham, scrambled egg and bean sprouts. Litz accompanies the noodles with a bowl of oily red chile sauce, most of which goes to waste. It’s so hot you can’t use more than a few drops.

As for Litz’s laksa, I remember it being terrific the first time I tried it, but on a recent visit, it seemed thinner, lacking the intensity of fresh tropical spices and the sunny, rich taste of freshly squeezed coconut milk. (That is excusable--fresh coconut milk is not so easy to get here.) The portion is large enough to share, and the bowl looks pretty with its garnish of fried tofu triangles and shrimp circling cut-up hard-boiled egg.

Litz’s laksa does have the traditional topping of shredded fresh laksa leaf. This herb, known as daun kesom in Singapore, is plentiful in the Southland. Vietnamese markets stock it under the name rau ram, and I often see it at the weekly farmer’s market in my neighborhood. It has a strong, almost soapy taste, which sounds nasty but is just right for cutting through the richness of laksa.

The peanut sauce on the chicken satay is quite good; not so the chicken itself. Instead of glistening, charcoal-browned, well-seasoned tidbits of meat on a stick, you get little chunks of gray, tasteless, oddly spongy chicken. Missing are the customary slices of cucumber and red onion to spear with your stick between bites of chicken.

Hainan chicken rice is a wonderful, consoling dish--the Singaporean equivalent of mother’s chicken soup. The difference is that the components are served separately rather than combined. However, at Litz the bowl of poaching broth is missing. Litz also serves the poached chicken cold, or maybe it was just room temperature on a very cold day. If you want to relieve the blandness, you can dunk the chicken in the two dips provided: ginger-garlic and molasses-like dark soy sauce. In a nice touch, you have the option of breast or thigh meat.

Seafood with Singapore sauce moves a tad up the heat scale. Still, the pinkish, creamy sauce is gentle enough to please anyone with fond memories of lobster Newburg. The seafood mix includes fish, scallops, shrimp and squid plus egg stirred into the hot mixture so that it coagulates. At $7.95, this is the most expensive of Litz’s seafood dishes.

Padang curry beef, the sort of dish that might accompany rice in the style of service known as nasi Padang, is definitely spicy. It’s a fatty cut of beef braised with red chile, spices and coconut milk. The curry is very good and tastes even better reheated the next day.

Kurmah chicken, described on the menu as green curry, is less successful. A rather murky green in color, it’s a one-note dish, hot with chile but lacking the interesting nuances that make the curry beef so good.

Litz’s Singapore spareribs soup is a big bowl of dark brown broth with a very few small pieces of rib. If you expect something meaty, you’ll be disappointed.

The one Singaporean dessert, bubor chacha, is usually a porridge of yam and taro cubes in coconut milk, served hot or cold. Here, it’s an interesting cross between that dish and another hawker stall treat called ice kacang. The latter is a mound of shaved ice gaudily drenched with canned milk and colorful syrups and set atop a bowlful of red beans, palm seeds, corn kernels, bits of gelatin and so forth.

At Litz, bubor chacha takes on the inverted snow cone shape of ice kacang. It also adds the red beans. A simple golden syrup replaces the brilliant colors that bathe the other dessert, and a cloud of coconut cream floats from the peak. I thought it was delightful.

The restaurant also serves Chinese-style steaks, sandwiches, macaroni, porridge and a few popular stir-fries, such as beef in oyster sauce and kung pao shrimp.

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WHERE TO GO

Litz, 201 E. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park; (818) 288-8882. Open 11 a.m. to midnight daily. Beer and wine. Lot and street parking. American Express. Takeout. Lunch or dinner for two, $20 to $30.

WHAT TO GET

Singapore fried rice noodle, Padang curry beef, seafood with Singapore sauce, bubor chacha.