PUTIAN CUISINE AT COFFEE SHOP STALL

There is more than meets the eye at Classic Putian, a shabby corner stall in a Jurong West coffeeshop where head cook Chang Yue Jie, 35, surprises with a few restaurant-worthy dishes.

For the Deep Fried Squirrel Style Sea Bass ($22 for dine-in; promotional price of $20 via GrabFood until end-November), he dips fresh sea bass that is deboned and scored in his own batter, then deep-fries it twice.

While the sweet and tangy sauce with onion, papaya and pineapple that accompanies the dish tastes a tad too much like ketchup, the fish is so crispy, you can hear the crunch as you bite into its skin. You can even eat its tail like a biscuit, yet the meat is moist and tender.

The stall has a wide selection of dishes on GrabFood, but some are better for eaten there.

The Herbal Bamboo Prawn is served in a specially crafted bamboo container for dine-in customers. The mininum order for dine-in is one serving ($6), while you have to order at least two servings ($12) on Grabfood.

Fresh water prawns are cooked in superior stock made from simmering old hens, pork bones and jin hua ham. The soup is flavoured with herbal wine made from steeping herbs, including dangshen (codonopsis root), chuan gong (Szechuan lovage) and dang gui (Chinese angelica) in Hua Tiao wine.