Tian Tian Seafood - Live-Tank Crab and Late-Night Zi Char

Along a stretch of Outram Road, Tian Tian Sea Food Restaurant runs as an open-air zi char and live-seafood operation that comes alive after dark, with tables spilling onto the walkway and into the back alley.

The draw is the row of tanks holding crabs, prawns, clams, frogs and swimming fish that are netted to order, which keeps the kitchen working with seafood that is alive until the moment it is cooked. The menu runs wide, from wok-fried classics to steamboat, and the kitchen keeps going into the early hours, making it a supper destination as much as a dinner one. The dishes below are the ones diners return for.

Prawn Paste Chicken

This is the dish most closely associated with the kitchen. Chicken pieces are marinated in fermented prawn paste, or har cheong, then deep-fried so the coating crisps into a thin, savoury crust while the meat stays juicy beneath. The prawn paste carries through clearly on the skin, giving the fried chicken its distinctive funk, and the kitchen keeps the finish on the dry side rather than heavy with oil. It is ordered as readily for supper as it is for a full sit-down meal.

Bamboo Clams with Garlic

Long bamboo razor clams are steamed in their shells over a bed of glass noodles, finished with a generous heap of minced garlic, ginger and sliced spring onion. The clams stay tender, and the soy-based juices released during steaming soak down into the noodles, which are meant to be tossed through the sauce and eaten alongside the shellfish. It is one of the dishes regulars name first, and the freshness of the clams pulled live from the tank is central to it.

Chilli Crab

Mud crab is cooked in the classic Singapore style, in a thick tomato and chilli gravy bound with egg that runs sweet, savoury and gently spicy. The crab is cracked so the sauce works into the shell, and the dish is served with fried mantou buns for mopping up the gravy. Because the crabs are kept live and weighed to order, the dish is sold by weight rather than a fixed price.

Black Pepper Crab

The drier counterpart to the chilli version, this preparation coats the crab in a dark, peppery sauce heavy with cracked black pepper and butter. The sauce clings to the shell rather than pooling, and the heat comes from the pepper itself rather than chilli. Diners who want to compare the two styles often order one of each from the same batch of crabs.

Live Fish Steamboat

The steamboat is built around fish taken live from the tank, with the flesh deboned and the head added into the pot to enrich the broth. The soup is the centre of the dish, drawing body from the fish over the course of the meal, and diners add to it as they go with ingredients such as beancurd sticks, sliced fatty beef, vegetables and fish balls. The signature addition is live drunken prawns, dropped straight into the simmering broth, which release their sweetness into the soup as they cook and lend it a layered, umami finish.

Hong Kong-Style Steamed Fish

For those who prefer the fish on its own rather than in a pot, live fish such as grouper or turbot are steamed whole in the Cantonese manner, dressed simply with light soy, ginger and spring onion so the freshness of the flesh leads. The fish is selected from the tank and priced by weight, and the steaming is timed to keep the flesh springy and just set.

Garlic Butterfly Prawns

Large prawns are butterflied open and cooked with a heavy dose of garlic, so the sweet flesh takes on the fragrance of the aromatics. The butterflying exposes more surface to the garlic and makes the prawns easier to eat, and the kitchen also runs herbal and plain steamed versions of the same fresh prawns for diners who want a lighter treatment.

Salt and Pepper Beancurd Sticks

A regular order alongside the heavier seafood, dried beancurd sticks are fried until crisp and tossed with salt and pepper. The result is light and crunchy, working as a snack to pick at through the meal, and it appears often in the orders of repeat diners who treat it as a fixed part of a Tian Tian supper.

Seafood Hor Fun

Flat rice noodles are fried and then napped in an egg-thickened gravy studded with prawns, sliced fish and other seafood. It is a one-plate staple of the menu that rounds out a table of sharing dishes, and the gravy carries the wok work that defines a good plate of hor fun.

Fried Sotong with Salted Egg

Squid is fried and coated in a salted egg yolk sauce, which gives it a rich, grainy, savoury crust. The salted egg clings to the crisp exterior of the sotong, and it sits among the dishes diners single out as worth ordering on a return visit.

For fresh seafood lifted live from the tank and cooked to order in an unfussy open-air setting, Tian Tian Sea Food Restaurant covers the full range of Singapore zi char and steamboat, and its late hours make it a reliable stop well past the point most kitchens have closed.

Address: 239 Outram Road, Singapore 169042
Opening Hours: 5:00pm – 3:00am daily
Tel: +65 6324 1082