Singapore Veg Healthy Frankie: The Flyin' Bread Review

Note: This place has been closed down.

If you are from Chennai, or actually from Bombay - you will know Tibbs Frankie. It is this awesome bite meal with a tangy, spicy, evil taste that lingers for a while. For long, a trip to besant nagar beach was NEVER complete without a paneer frankie. It is clearly not a healthy meal, with a maida ( plain flour ) based paratha, rolled and served hot with a oily gravy ( not tandoor cooked) filling. Yet, like all unhealthy stuff, it was pretty awesome.

And it was only 35 rupees. Or may be 40. Does not matter.

Come to Singapore,and I forget the frankie. This one is the closest resemblant one can find here. The rolls we get in sandwich stores here are mundane, boring and very sloppy in taste. And yea, i do like subway stuff, but anyone who has had a frankie will find it blasphemous to compare. A random late evening post walk work inside Plaza Singapura got me to The Flyin' Bread.

From the outside, the store looks like any other kiosk.

Image Source here

I noticed a live grill pan and loads of chicken around, and quietly asked if there are any veg options. The man at the counter probably understood I was a lost vegetarian roaming around, and immediately suggested a paneer flyer. I chose a medium one for two reasons - I did not exactly want to hog at 7pm, and later spend the night thinking if I should have dinner or not. Two - I was not prepared for a spit away tofu roll with laden mayo.

Big mistake. The roll was stupendously good. You either make good, soft, delectable paneer or you serve leather shoes. This one was fantastic. It seemed correctly spiced and was rolled well with lots of lettuce ( salad, whatever) and had mint chutney, a dash of something like imli chutney and wrapped in a roomali roti. Yes, not a prata. A roomali.

Image Sources - mailed by Vikram ( the one who owns this place). First pic - Potato Flyer. Second pic - Grilled panneer :)

They also serve set meals with avacado milkshake ( once again, same BIG mistake!) with chocolate on it. The best part is the BBQ idea and indianizing it beautifully with chutneys and flavours. The menu had a lot of offers, I did not bother to look beyond anything when he said paneer. A look on their website also shows this interesting video on how the chef makes the roomali. I did not see the act, but it sure looks nice. That is also why the rolls are called flyers.

Going with the final say,

Excellent branding. I have always loved, loved when small things are told well. Esp, in the food business. A good mix of taste, some neat package deals, convinient location and a great name. Who could have christened it better!

The medium roll costs $6.90. It is not exactly cheap, but it is not expensive either. Would not call it a whole meal as it is a mere binge.

The portions are generous, which makes up for the money in my opinion.

They should consider giving a fork/spoon along with the meal. It is not easy to really bite into the meal, especially for clumsy, multi tasking eaters, like yours truly.

The paper cover got very soggy and dripped along, and hence I had to throw away some sauce. Though it is nice to give in paper, some skill is needed in eating this :)

They have two stalls - one at Plaza Singapura, and another at Somerset. For the complete menu, offers, check here.

P.S :Apparently, their beef and chicken flyer is really nice as well. Do try!

Special thanks to Vikram for being absolutely sweet and mailing the pics, along with the permission to use material from his site.