MP Thai - Grilled Pork Jowl, Claypot Prawns and Isan Papaya Salad

MP Thai occupies a second-floor unit in Vision Exchange, an office block in Jurong East, and holds a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide Singapore — one of only four Thai restaurants in the country carrying that distinction.

The kitchen is run by a Thai owner with an all-Thai team, and the menu stretches past two hundred items across salads, grilled meats, curries, noodles and communal hot pots, with a pronounced lean towards the northeastern Isan style: sausages fermented in house, pickled fish sauce dressings, and Korat-style papaya salad. The restaurant moved here from Bukit Batok and brought its following with it. Here is what the menu is built around.

Prawn Tom Yum Soup

MICHELIN inspectors singled this out among their favourite dishes from the Singapore Bib Gourmand 2024 selection. It is the clear-style tom yum rather than the milky version, a red broth built on lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaf, holding the four tastes Thai cooking balances against one another: sour, sweet, spicy and salty. The prawns are the centre of the dish, and inspectors noted their bounce and depth of flavour. Spice level is specified at the point of ordering, which regular diners use to dial the heat up or down.

BBQ Squid

The second dish MICHELIN inspectors named in their write-up. Whole squid is grilled over fire until the edges char and the flesh firms, then cut and served with nam jim seafood, the hot and sour dip of lime, chilli, garlic and fish sauce that Thai kitchens pair with grilled seafood. The grill work carries the dish, and the same squid appears elsewhere on the menu stir-fried with chilli paste, deep-fried with garlic, steamed with lime, or in a yellow curry.

Papaya Salad with Pickled Fish Sauce

MP Thai lists close to a dozen papaya salads, and this is the one that signals where the kitchen’s sympathies lie. Pla ra, the fermented fish sauce of northeastern Thailand, gives the dressing a depth that sweeter Bangkok-style som tam leaves out. Green papaya is shredded and pounded in a mortar with chilli, garlic, lime, tomato and long beans so the strands bruise and take up the dressing. A Korat-style version sits alongside it, along with variants built around fresh prawn, salted egg, pork sausage, and Thai laksa with crispy pork lard.

MP Handmade Esan Sour Sausage

Sai krok Isan is made by packing minced pork and cooked rice into casings and leaving the mixture to ferment for several days, which produces the sourness the sausage is named for. MP Thai makes its own rather than buying them in, and lists a second house-made sausage in a spicy version. Both are grilled to order and cut into rounds, and the fermented tang is the reason the dish reads as northeastern rather than central Thai.

Moo Ping

Skewered grilled pork, sold in sets of three sticks. The pork is marinated in a blend of soy sauce, garlic and sugar before it goes over the grill, and the sugar in the marinade is what draws the char and the caramelised edge as the sticks cook. It is a Thai street staple, the kind of thing bought from a roadside cart with a bag of sticky rice, and MP Thai keeps sticky rice on the menu to go with it.

BBQ Pork Jowl

Kor moo yang, and one of the most ordered items on the menu. Pork jowl is a small, well-marbled cut from the neck where fat runs through the muscle rather than sitting in a layer, so it renders on the grill and bastes the meat as it cooks. MP Thai serves it sliced with a hot and sour dip. The same cut turns up again in an Isan-style salad, tossed with toasted rice powder, chilli, lime and shallots.

Deep-fried Pork with Garlic

A dish diners return for. Pork is fried until the exterior crisps, then finished with fried garlic scattered over the top rather than marinated into the meat, so the garlic stays crunchy and distinct from the pork. The kitchen runs deep-fried versions of pork belly, pork intestines and sliced chicken on the same section of the menu, and sells crispy pork lard as a side in its own right.

Claypot Prawn with Glass Vermicelli

Goong ob woon sen. Glass noodles are laid in a claypot with prawns, ginger, peppercorns and coriander root, then cooked over heat so the noodles swell and absorb the prawn juices while the aromatics steam through them. The dish once appeared only as an off-menu special at MP Thai and now sits on the printed menu, a rare permanent listing in Singapore for a preparation more usually found in Bangkok seafood shophouses.

Crab Omelette

Khai jiao is cooked in hot oil so the outside puffs and crisps while the centre stays soft. MP Thai runs it plain or folded with pork, chicken, prawn or crab meat, and also serves lava-style versions poured over rice, where the omelette is left loose in the middle and spills across the plate when cut. A crispy omelette rice and a crab omelette lava fried rice appear on the single-dish section.

Red Ruby

The one dessert on the menu. Water chestnut is diced, coated in tapioca flour and boiled until the coating turns translucent and reveals the red-dyed chestnut inside, then served in sweetened coconut milk over crushed ice. The texture is the point: a chew on the outside, a crisp snap at the centre.

Thai Milk Tea

Brewed strong from Thai tea leaves and cut with condensed and evaporated milk, with sweetness and ice adjustable on request. The drinks list also carries Thai coffee, iced o-liang, lemongrass and a rose-syrup bandung.

Bib Gourmand recognition rarely lands on an office-tower unit in Jurong East, and MP Thai earned it on cooking that leans harder towards Isan than most Thai kitchens in Singapore attempt. The menu is deep enough to reward repeat visits, and MICHELIN advises booking ahead.

2 Venture Drive, #02-41/42 Vision Exchange, Singapore 608526
Opening Hours: 11.30am – 9.30pm (Mon – Sun)
Tel: +65 9757 5403