Janggut Laksa

Every time you eat laksa with only a spoon, you're following a man called Beard.

Janggut is the Katong laksa to order if you care where the dish came from, and one half of a two-bowl lunch on East Coast Road, with 328 Katong Laksa across the road as the other. The Roxy Square stall serves laksa and nothing else. The compromise is the clock: it is a daytime stall that closes in the late afternoon, and it is not halal-certified. Come before lunch.

The name means "beard" in Malay, and it belonged to Ng Juat Swee, the hawker behind what the family calls the original Katong laksa. He started in the 1940s, carrying metal buckets on a pole around the Marine Parade beach area, moved up to a tricycle with his younger brother in the early 1950s, and by the late 1950s had a stall at 49 East Coast Road. He is credited with cutting the noodles short so the whole bowl can be eaten with a spoon, which may be the most useful idea in the history of Singaporean lunch.

The rest of the story is pure East Coast Road drama. After Janggut died in 1986 the family closed the stall, the space changed hands, and the woman who later founded 328 Katong Laksa had worked there. The Janggut family restarted around 1988 and settled at Roxy Square in 2000, across the road from 328. So when you order here, you are taking a side in a laksa feud, whether you meant to or not.

If you are new to the dish, Katong laksa is a homegrown take on Peranakan nyonya laksa: a shrimp-based broth with coconut milk, topped with prawns, blood cockles, fish cake, sambal and daun kesum, over those short, thick rice noodles. A spoon is all you need.

What to order is easy, since there is only one thing: laksa, in small, medium or large. Our advice is the medium here and a small at 328, one straight after the other, so you taste the feud rather than read about it. Both shops trace back to the same stall, and the honest answer to which is better is usually whichever one you ate first.

The family has since opened other outlets around the island, but Roxy Square, at #01-64, 50 East Coast Road, is the one with the history. Check the ordering page or social channels for current hours, come before the lunch rush and then walk across the road for round two. Two bowls of coconut broth before noon is a skill, and Katong has been training people in it for decades.

Good to know Find it at #01-64 Roxy Square, 50 East Coast Road. Hours and prices change, so check Janggut Laksa's ordering page or social channels before you go; not halal-certified. The Roxy Square stall serves laksa only.

Janggut Laksa | #01-64 Roxy Square, 50 East Coast Road, Singapore 428769