The Legacy Returns
There’s something poetic about coming full circle. When Eat First reopened its doors at 287 Geylang Road, it wasn’t just another restaurant relocation—it was a homecoming. Steve, son of the legendary Sik Wai Sin founder, has brought his craft back to the very street where his father built a Cantonese zi char empire with just twelve perfectly executed dishes.
Ambience: No-Frills Authenticity
Step into Eat First and you’ll find none of the Instagram-worthy trappings that define modern dining. The space embraces the honest, utilitarian aesthetic of traditional zi char establishments—fluorescent lights cast their unforgiving glow over simple tables and chairs, while the open kitchen becomes theater, woks clanging in rhythmic percussion as flames leap and dance.
The air hangs thick with the perfume of sizzling garlic, caramelizing soy, and that indefinable essence of wok hei—the breath of the wok—that cannot be bottled or replicated. Conversations rise and fall in waves of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Singlish, punctuated by the satisfied clatter of chopsticks against porcelain. This is a space designed for one purpose: to let the food speak.
The Meal: A Study in Discipline
The menu remains defiantly concise—thirteen dishes where most zi char establishments offer fifty or more. This restraint isn’t minimalism for its own sake; it’s the confidence of a chef who has spent decades perfecting specific techniques rather than chasing trends.
Steamed Chicken ($20/$28): The Art of Restraint
The dish arrives with an almost austere presentation—pale jade chicken pieces glistening under a sheen of rendered fat, scattered with emerald ribbons of scallion. The hues are subtle, muted, honest. No artificial color here, just the natural ivory of properly steamed poultry against bone-white porcelain.
But to judge this dish by appearance alone would be to miss its genius entirely. The texture tells the real story—each piece yields with minimal resistance, the meat impossibly silky yet still maintaining structure. It’s the texture of chicken cooked at precisely the right temperature for exactly the right duration, where proteins have just begun to firm without tightening into rubber.
The flavor builds slowly. First comes the pure, sweet taste of quality chicken. Then the richness of the rendered fat coats your palate, followed by the sharp, bright bite of scallion. The traditional finish—tipping rice into the remaining juices—transforms the dish into something greater, the grains drinking up every drop of liquid gold.
Bean Curd with Prawns ($22/$30): The Golden Standard
This dish arrives as a study in contrasts and color. Deep amber tofu rectangles, their surfaces cratered and blistered from the deep fryer, sit in a pool of sauce that shifts from pale gold to deeper honey tones depending on how the light catches it. Coral-pink prawns curve through the composition, while ribbons of scrambled egg create cream-colored swirls throughout.
The textural interplay is masterful. The tofu exterior shatters with satisfying resistance before giving way to custard-soft interiors that have absorbed the seafood-rich gravy. Each prawn snaps cleanly under your teeth—the hallmark of perfect doneness—while the egg provides soft, cloud-like pockets throughout.
The sauce itself deserves analysis. It’s been kissed by the wok’s flame, developing those complex, slightly bitter notes that signal proper wok hei. The seafood essence permeates every element, binding the dish into a cohesive whole that demands to be eaten with rice, each grain becoming a vehicle for this symphony of textures and flavors.
Steamed Mince Pork with Salted Fish ($18): Texture as Technique
Here’s where Steve’s mastery of steaming technique truly shines. The minced pork arrives in earth tones—russet and umber, flecked with darker fragments of salted fish that provide visual punctuation across the surface.
The hand-chopping makes all the difference. Unlike the paste-like consistency of machine-ground meat, this pork maintains individual definition. Your teeth encounter varied resistance—some pieces larger, some smaller, creating a dynamic, engaging texture that keeps each bite interesting. The salted fish fragments provide sharp bursts of umami, tiny flavor bombs scattered throughout the dish.
The steaming has rendered the pork tender while keeping it cohesive. It’s not dry, not wet, but perfectly balanced, with just enough rendered fat to keep everything unctuous without becoming greasy.
Steamed Fish Head ($30): Three Months in the Making
This dish commands attention from the moment it arrives—a architectural composition of silver-white fish, glossy mahogany fermented bean sauce, golden pork lard chips, bronze-fried shallots, and crimson chili slices creating a color palette worthy of still-life painting.
The fish head itself flakes at the gentlest prodding, its texture pillowy and delicate. But the real revelation is that fermented bean sauce, three months in the making. It’s deeply complex, funky in the best way, with layers of savory depth that unfold gradually. The pork lard adds crackling texture and richness, while the shallots provide sweet, caramelized notes that cut through the intensity.
Sweet and Sour Pork ($20/$28): Balancing the Menu
After the delicate steamed dishes, this provides necessary contrast. The pork pieces emerge from the kitchen in their crispy armor—a burnished red-gold crust that catches the light, glistening with sauce that ranges from ruby red to amber.
The exterior texture is crucial here—a crackling shell that resists before shattering, revealing tender pork within. The sauce walks the tightrope between sweet and tart, never tipping too far in either direction. It’s sticky enough to cling but not so thick that it dulls the crispy coating.
Fried Kailan with Beef ($22/$30): Wok Hei Perfection
The greens arrive in varying shades of jade and forest green, charred edges providing almost black accents. The beef, seared quickly at high heat, shows gradients from deep brown at the edges to rosy pink at the center.
The kailan stems maintain their snap—they’ve been in the wok just long enough to lose their raw edge without becoming limp. The beef offers that sought-after texture of tender but still toothsome, each slice cut against the grain to maximize tenderness. The sauce is minimal, just enough to coat and bind without drowning the vegetables’ natural sweetness or the beef’s savory depth.
The Verdict
Eat First succeeds because it refuses to do too much. In an era of fusion experiments and Instagram-worthy presentations, Steve has committed to the path his father set decades ago: master a small repertoire completely rather than dilute your efforts across an encyclopedia-sized menu.
Every dish shows the hand of someone who has cooked it thousands of times, who knows exactly when the chicken is done, precisely how hot the wok should be, exactly how long to ferment the beans. This isn’t cooking as performance or innovation—it’s cooking as craft, honed over years until it achieves a kind of perfection that needs no embellishment.
The ambience may be humble, the space unadorned, but what arrives on your table represents something increasingly rare: the patient accumulation of knowledge, passed from father to son, refined through repetition until technique becomes second nature. In returning to Geylang, Eat First hasn’t just reopened—it’s reclaimed its place in Singapore’s culinary heritage.
Rating: 4.5/5 A half-point deducted only because perfection leaves no room for the pleasant surprise of discovering you were wrong about the ceiling.