Devagi’s Restaurant

Address 01-03, Thomson Imperial Court (opp Longhouse food court) 200, Upper Thomson Road

Telephone 6255 2440

 

The restaurant’s décor has a comforting orange aura with touches of purplish, bright olive and maroon sheens. Huge naturally lit pictures of Thai green curry, salted egg yolk prawns, fish head curry and even tiramisu fill the walls and entertain you. Black leather chairs beckon after you glide past her full height clear glass doors sand blasted with her menu offerings. You sense you are walking into an eclectic mod Asian café with hints of western touches until you notice the restaurant’s name- Devagi’s.

“Many think it’s a high class roti prata and mee goreng restaurant. Hence my problem,”, and Ms Devagi Sanmugam adds, despite her celebrity status and well publicized culinary heritage, “ very tough to tell people that I am an Indian selling Singapore food and stuff I enjoy cooking”. She sense that the casual observer will see her as an Indian Singaporean selling Indian food. Ms Devagi conducts her own cooking classes, hosts numerous food TV shows, is officially acknowledged as Singapore’s most published food book author(15 books to date) and now she’s a celebrity restaurateur.

As a child, raised in her welfare status family grounding, she had to turn the government provided food pack ration packs into whatever local dishes they can imagine. “Those days, they gave mainly ang-mo food items like milk powder, spaghetti, soy bean , corn and biscuits. So we cooked them in all sorts of spices and herbs in various techniques. I did not start with formal Indian food.”

Despite being located in the roti prata ghetto of Upper Thomson Road, she’ll never sell South Indian food, for the very logical reason of commercial survival, “how to make money from the 80 cents roti and 70cents teh tarek in a restaurant like this”, she calmly rationalizes, adding that it is not easy to consistently churn out the numerous curries, dhals and chutneys with dough mixtures that require overnight fermentation. It does not help, in her words, “that this south Indian food culture here has a cheap peasant makan brand association”. Opened since December last year, she still get customers asking for roti prata (which she resolutely avoid serving). It is a brand association war she admits having trouble winning. And as a first time restaurateur, it does not bug her as much as the agonising trials and tribulations of being a rookie in the business, graduating from book to cook.

Devagi recalls some of her very humbling experiences and lessons her customers taught her. Once a Chinese man complained about being served cold rice, “I checked my rice steamer and it was steaming hot and fluffy. Then it dawned on me that just-in-time service was not addressed. We plated the rice and it sat in the kitchen waiting for the other accompanying dishes to be cooked. I apologized profusely and he was nice about it and earnestly warned me about another eatery nearby that also once served cold rice, adding…it is now closed for good!”.

Mutton Briyani

Also, being a culinary intellectual of sorts, with fifteen published titles and status as a consultant, she realized that cooking for a class is very different from doing it in a restaurant. “To begin with, the pots and woks are so much bigger, I can’t even hold them up and cooking for ten and for one hundred are two different games. For example, the cooking chicken curry with ten chickens is not about multiplying the ingredients and recipe in my cook book. The amount of oils, juices and umami released calls for different levels of curry powder, salt and water for balance.” Once she served a portion of vegetables that was bigger to a table and another saw it, so they ordered too. It came smaller and she had an earful for the blunder. But “I only gave the first one more because I felt like a generous host, not knowing about portioning consistency”.

Which all helps make her particularly conscious when dishing out her very popular mutton nasi briyani ($9.90). The soft yellow basmati grains does not come shy of chilli and is very spicy. The mutton tears apart easily and is steamed the pot of rice which is bigger them usual. Best part, not oily.


Assam Pedas Fish Head Curry

Although she offers the regular snapper fish head curry, it is the Assam Pedas version that flies off the kitchen most often. It comes extremely assammy (tamarind) and is a refreshing bite for the palate. It is a tad thicker than usual and is perfect with a bowl of steamed rice. For some reasons, mutton does very well in her restaurant. Her other popular favourite is the mutton steak, done very softly and drenched in a thick and rich masala curry. Have that with rice and achar and it’s soulfood to many people, including me, a Chinese, who loves Indian makan in Devagi’s, an Indian restaurant touting Singapore food. A truly rojak situation, not dissimilar to Devagi’s.

Mutton Steak