Singapore food
Laksa: the two soups that share one name
叻沙 · laksa
One name, two soups: rich coconut curry laksa and sour, tamarind-based asam laksa. What goes in each, why Katong laksa needs only a spoon, and where the dish came from.
Laksa is a spicy noodle soup eaten across Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, and the one word covers two very different bowls. Curry laksa is rich and built on coconut milk. Asam laksa is thin and sour, made with fish and tamarind, and has no coconut in it at all.
Someone who says they do not like laksa may only have tried one of the two.
Curry laksa vs asam laksa
| Curry laksa | Asam laksa | |
|---|---|---|
| Also called | Laksa lemak, nyonya laksa | Penang laksa |
| Broth | Coconut milk and curry paste | Fish, tamarind and torch ginger flower, no coconut |
| Main protein | Prawns or chicken, fish balls, tofu puffs | Flaked mackerel |
| On top | Egg, fried tofu, bean sprouts, herbs, a spoon of sambal | Cucumber, onion, red chilli, pineapple, mint, laksa leaf, a thick shrimp paste |
| Taste | Rich and spiced | Sour and fishy |
| Home ground | Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley | Penang |
Laksa leaf, which turns up in many bowls, is Vietnamese coriander, called daun kesum in Malay and, colloquially, daun laksa.
- Type
- Spicy noodle soup
- Two main forms
- Curry laksa (coconut) and asam laksa (tamarind and fish)
- Singapore signature
- Katong laksa, short noodles eaten with a spoon
- Where it is eaten
- Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia
- Heat
- Spicy, with sambal served alongside
- Name
- Malay word, usually traced to Persian lākhsha, slippery
What is Katong laksa, and why is it eaten with a spoon?
Katong laksa takes its name from Katong, a residential neighbourhood of Singapore, and it is a coconut laksa with two habits of its own.
The noodles are cut into short lengths so that the whole bowl can be eaten with a spoon and nothing else. And the gravy is thickened with ground dried shrimp as well as coconut milk, which leaves a faintly sandy texture on the tongue. That grain is deliberate. It is how the style is recognised.
Penang asam laksa
The other pole. Mackerel, usually ikan kembung, is cooked and flaked into a stock soured with tamarind. The bowl is finished with finely sliced cucumber, onion, red chilli, pineapple, mint, laksa leaf and shredded torch ginger flower, and then a spoonful of hae ko, a thick, sweet shrimp paste that is stirred in at the table.
Ipoh laksa, from the city of the same name, sits close to the Penang bowl but tastes sourer rather than sweet and carries prawn paste.
Where is laksa from?
Nobody can point to a first bowl. The account given most often is Peranakan: Chinese traders who settled in the Malay world married local women, known as Nyonyas, and their kitchens mixed Chinese noodles with local spice pastes and coconut. A second theory ties the dish to the Ming admiral Zheng He, whose fleets sailed through maritime Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century. A third says recipes simply developed along the trade routes, in ports such as Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Medan, Palembang and Batavia, now Jakarta.
The word itself came into English through Malay. The commonly given root is a Persian word, lākhsha, meaning slippery, once used for noodles. An English-language mention appears in a Royal Geographical Society journal as early as 1846.
Sarawak laksa, Johor laksa and the other versions
- Sarawak laksa. A coconut broth sharpened with tamarind and sambal belacan, flavoured with galangal and lemongrass, over rice vermicelli with chicken, prawns and strips of omelette. Anthony Bourdain called it breakfast of the gods.
- Johor laksa. Made with spaghetti instead of rice noodles, in a thick gravy of coconut milk and fish, finished with mint, cucumber and pickled white radish.
- Klang Valley curry laksa. The Kuala Lumpur area bowl, with deep-fried tofu, cockles, long beans and mint over yellow egg noodles, rice vermicelli or both.
- Curry mee. A closely related coconut curry noodle soup. The names overlap, and in parts of Malaysia curry mee is simply called curry laksa.
How to order laksa in Singapore
In Singapore, laksa on its own means the coconut, curry-broth bowl. If you want the sour one, look for a stall that spells out asam or Penang laksa. It is standard fare at a hawker centre, the open-air food courts whose culture UNESCO added to its list of intangible heritage in 2020, usually a few stalls along from someone selling Hainanese chicken rice.
The sambal comes as a spoonful on the side or on top, so how hot the bowl gets is largely up to you.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between laksa and curry laksa? Laksa is the family name. Curry laksa is the coconut half of it; asam laksa is the sour half, made with tamarind and fish and no coconut.
Why is Katong laksa eaten with a spoon? The noodles are cut short on purpose, so a spoon picks up noodles, gravy and toppings together and no chopsticks are needed.
Is laksa spicy? Yes, in both forms. Curry laksa gets its heat from the spice paste and the sambal served with it; asam laksa from the spice paste in its broth and the sliced red chilli on top.
Is laksa Malaysian or Singaporean? Both, and Indonesian too. It grew up across a region rather than inside one border, and the best-known versions are named after the places that made them.
What does the word laksa mean? It is a Malay word, usually traced to the Persian lākhsha, slippery, a term once used for noodles.