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I love a good David versus Goliath story. In Singapore’s food world, it comes down to small, family-owned hawkers up against big, scary franchises. Coincidentally, Old Airport Road Food Centre has recently become the staging ground for yet another one of these conflicts, with the established Wang Wang Crispy Curry Puff up against the prolific curry puff chain Heritage Tanglin Puff. It’s time for an Old Airport Road Curry Puff Showdown!
Let’s first give a brief introduction to our competitors in this Old Airport Road Curry Puff Showdown. Just think of me like an announcer standing inside a wrestling ring.
Wang Wang Crispy Curry Puff stands out as one of the best of Old Airport Road Food Centre’s over 150 stalls. The stall was opened by an ex-hotel chef more than two decades ago, with their son learning the ropes of the trade to one day take over the business. They’ve even opened a second outlet in Bendemeer Market & Food Centre. For a long time, Wang Wang Crispy Curry Puff was THE curry puff stall in the hawker centre.
And then we have Heritage Tanglin Puff. Previously going under ‘Tanglin Crispy Curry Puff Since 1952’, they’ve recently rebranded to prevent copycats.
Variety and Pricing
Both stalls have 4 available flavours of curry puff, but only share 3 — Curry Chicken, Sardine, and Yam. Each stall has a 4th flavour that I won’t be comparing; they are the Black Pepper Puff (S$2) for Wang Wang and the Otah Puff (S$2) for Heritage Tanglin.
When it comes to price, the stalls are pretty even. Wang Wang offers all their curry puffs outside of their Black Pepper Curry Puff at S$1.80, while Heritage Tanglin offers all their curry puffs at S$2. Both stalls are at the higher end of curry puff prices in hawker centres, but much more economical than the curry puffs you find at Old Change Kee and Polar. Honestly, that’s a win for both in my book.
Appearance
I’m sure you can see the difference between Wang Wang’s and Heritage Tanglin’s curry puffs. Wang Wang serves up a handmade curry puff that one can mistake for a work of art, with endless layers of crispy dough that resemble the walls of the Grand Canyon. It was immaculately crispy, with each fold of dough filled with oily flakiness.
However, the main weakness of such layering is that the curry puff itself is pretty fragile. The entire puff collapses into itself and falls apart after a single bite, and I noticed some puffs sagged in the middle due to how the weight of the filling. Some may also find the puffs to be a tad too oily.
Heritage Tanglin has 2 different curry puff shapes — the Chinese flaky layered puff and the traditional Malay epok-epok crescent. The flaky puff held together much better and stained my fingers with much less oil, and was overall a neater curry puff to eat. I can’t compare Heritage Tanglin’s epok-epok curry puff, but I appreciate the variety.
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Curry Chicken
Nailing the classic curry chicken flavour is a must for any curry puff stall worth their salt. Wang Wang had a watery curry chicken filling that disappointed me a bit, as there wasn’t much of the key components like chicken and egg. There was only 1 piece of chicken that was small, and a quarter-sliced egg tucked all the way to the end of the curry puff.
Heritage Tanglin played it very safe and standard, with equal parts potatoes and meat. I liked how the potatoes were particularly soft, and overall, it was better put together than Wang Wang’s.
Sardine
Take what I said about the curry chicken puffs and swap it around for the sardine puffs. The overwhelming flakiness of Wang Wang’s puffs paired well with their more solid, meaty sardine puff. I couldn’t taste any potatoes or onions, but I didn’t really mind.
Heritage Tanglin’s sardine puff is much more traditional in terms of ingredients and flavour, which isn’t a bad thing. Both receive a thumbs up from me.
Yam
Let me be absolutely transparent: this is my first time trying anything yam-flavoured in a long while. As a kid, I refused to eat it after trying yam-flavoured Potong ice cream.
Heritage Tanglin’s yam puff was just the right amount of moist, but mostly tasted sweet without the earthy hints one would expect from yams. The epok-epok puff was also half-hollow like a bag of Lays potato chips, with large chunks of the puff empty without filling.
In contrast, Wang Wang’s yam puff was a much more classical and balanced take. It was equal parts sweet and earthy and filled to the brim with yam goodness. The win is firmly in Wang Wang’s court for this.
Verdict
Believe it or not, it’s a tie! Both Wang Wang and Heritage Tanglin have their individual strengths — Wang Wang’s earthy yam puffs and Heritage Tanglin’s sturdy pastry. If I were to sum up this entire showdown, it’d be that Heritage Tanglin plays it safe for a larger audience, while Wang Wang caters to hawker-loving taste buds.
I will admit that I have a slight preference for Wang Wang, but that’s why the above chart helps minimise personal bias. What do you think about this Old Airport Road Curry Puff Showdown? I’d love to read your thoughts!
