New Malaysian Hawker Eatery Sugar Prawn Opens in Collingwood

There’s a new Malaysian food hall in Collingwood called Sugar Prawn, and the first mix from its in-house radio station (you read right) sounds like walking through KL’s heaving, colourful, satay-fumed night markets.

Titled Seoult ’n’ Pepper Squid (really), it comes courtesy of DJ Seoul and is 56 minutes of glittering techno and dirty funk — in other words, just what you'd want to be listening to as you tuck into hawker-style street food, sipping on Sugar Prawn’s tropically obscure cocktails (we’re liking the sound of the Hotel Formosa, with Nashi pear, green tea liqueur and yuzu).

Sugar Radio — housed in the Prawn’s front window — is officially launched this Saturday and will be streaming live online soon. But it’s only number one on the list of everything that is just the right amount of kitsch about the booze-oriented Smith Street eatery — from plastic garden chairs to free 100plus (the uber popular Southeast Asian sports drink) with lunch plates and a saccharine pink paint job. That last one seems fitting for somewhere called Sugar Prawn, but is actually not where the restaurant got its name. Chef, co-owner and 'head prawn' Travis Tong — who also owned Masak Masak, which previously occupied the Sugar Prawn site — named the place after his late father.

The kitchen is open now from 12pm daily, pumping out chilli crab claw and grilled stingray with salsa, along with more familiar Malaysian treats like chicken satay and barbecue pork. But the jewel in the Sugar Prawn crown is Tong’s “decadent san choi bow” — master stock bone marrow (bone marrow) served on a prawn cracker. Our advice when that one shows up on your table? Close your eyes, take in the tunes, and chow down.

Via Good Food.

Find Sugar Prawn at 230 Smith Street, Collingwood. Open Monday to Sunday, 12pm-11pm.