Lunch today at the new-ish WTF Studios, occupying the former premises of Narrow Marrow on Carnarvon Street. It just started its operations on 1 Jan 2021.
Here, owner Joshua Levi tapped into his Eurasian grandmother’s family heirloom recipe for the Devil’s Curry (or Curry Debal), which forms the basis for many of the dishes at this 1.5-month-old eatery. The task fell upon 24-year-old chef, Prabu Kalaivanan, to reproducing the Devil’s Curry according to Grandma Levi’s family heirloom recipe.
“Debal” is a Kristang-Creole word meaning ‘leftovers’ as this ultra-spicy traditional stew was cooked utilising Christmas roast leftovers in the olden days, with lots of chilis and vinegar thrown in - perhaps to also act as preservatives for the dish during pre-refrigeration times. In time, Kari Debal became the signature dish of Kristang/Eurasian cuisine, and its trademark chili-spiciness (plus some inadvertent mispronunciation early on) earned it the moniker Devil’s Curry, as it’s “hot as Hell”.
We opted for the Devil’s Feast lunch set for two
The set came with some chilled watermelon juice drinks - very handy to douse the ultra-spicy assault on our taste-buds which was to follow.
Started off with some golden-brown, crisp-fried Lucifer’s Balls, stuffed with devilled chicken and hellishly hot.
Crisp on the outside …
… deliciously moist inside.
Our main dish was, of course, Grandma Levi’s infernal Devil’s Curry, served alongside tiny cubes of pickled radish which provided a stab of sourness, and a creamy potato salad.
A meal here was like plumbing the depths of Dante’s Inferno - complex layers of flavors: the curious bitterness from the mustard seeds, a stab of sourness from the vinegar (early Portuguese-Eurasians here substituted vinegar for hard-to-procure Portuguese wine in their cooking - just like Goans did for vindaloo) and that ever-present, slow-burning heat from the copious amounts of chilis used.
We finished off with some refreshing Mexican Tepache (a kombucha-like fermented pineapple juice drink) which soothed our scalded tongues. Hell freezes over.
Address
WTF Studios
252A, Lebuh Carnarvon, 10100 George Town, Penang
Tel: +6012-592 5616
Opening hours: 11am to 11pm daily, except Tuesdays (closed)
).