"Go To" Food

Recently I had a fetish. All of us need a "go to" place, some for food, others to a pub and in golf there will be days where nothing seems to work and you will need a "go to" club, a club that works even on a bad day, something you can rely on like a good old friend. Even in soccer, you have those "go to" players. When things are against you, when the chips are down, put in the "go to" players. 

My "go to" food most recently has been "Sa Bo Fan". It's not a sabo fan but clay pot rice.  I know of popular ones at Beach Road and Chinatown but I wanted them somewhere nearer to home and I found two places that served pretty good stuffs - one at Kovan and the other at Hougang. 

Good Chinese sausages, tender chicken, wee bits of salted fish and a great dark soy sauce with intense heat are important.

It is easy to eat, simple and delicious. 

Because I had clay pot rice and I saw someone ordered the "sesame oil chicken" I decided I have to have one too. This as you know are frequently on the menu when someone at home has given birth but that version has lots of ginger. The combination of sa bo fan and ma yau kai (sesame oil chicken) turned out potent and addictive. It can become a craving.

Still on a chicken run, I revisited a stall I frequented in the past, the famous chicken rice stall that had served  maverick chef Anthony Bourdain who visited Singapore and said Singapore is the most food obsessed country. 

Years ago, a young GuruGeoff said: "Chicken rice is so fragrant and delicious that it can be eaten on its own." Nobody paid any attention. Anthony Bourdain said it and it was front page. 

Tian Tian serves only steam "white" chicken that are always succulent but their red hot chili sauce is the most potent. 

Lontong is a great morning food really. Most veggies but the name Lontong refers to the compressed rice wrapped inside banana leaf and later cut into small cakes and thrown in. Today, not many prepare it with banana leaf any more. I saw them wrapped in plastic. 

From chicken to veg and now to pork. This Bak Kut Teh opens for business only during the day. So you can't do dinner with a cooler climate. Bak Kut Teh is literally pork rib tea but is is actually a soup. 

As the queue suggested, it may be worth the hotter period of day over lunch to sweat out the BKT here.

I know many of you will die for this. The great thing about Han's BKT is that their braised pork trotters are too fatty. 

In fact, it has chunks of lean and tender meat as evidenced here. Sometimes when I eat this, my thoughts wander to a vet centre and then seeing pigs being pushed out on wheel chairs. Can we animal lovers live without animals? Be kind to animals including those homo sapiens who behave like one. 

Singapore style BKT is different from the Malaysian type. The local one is more peppery while the latter herbal. Japanese are crazy for our local BKT. We all know about the famous ones at Rangoon Road and Tanjong Pagar but this is the one I like. 

Great soup, tender pork ribs and reasonably priced. Dip them into the dark soy sauce with red cut chili. 

 

From pork, we move to beef. I am sure there are a few good beef noodle stalls around your neighbourhood or somewhere in town but after savouring the best, I prefer to go back to the Hock Lam Street Beef Noodle at Upper Serangoon. The ingredients are just so fresh and of high quality including the wonderful bovine gravy and soup.

Only thing is that prices has gone up. If you want a mixed bowl with everything thrown in it will damage you by $8 but as I said the quality of the ingredients makes up for it. Everything else has    gone up except our salary and you can't complain as you won't start hunting for your own cow.

The Lorong Ah Soo Lor Mee is really good and good value that is why the perpetual long queue. Like driving,it is not enough to know just one way to get to a place. You need to know various so that if it's a red light ahead, you could decide to make a turn in another direction. So when you think the Q for the day is way too long, know some other good food stalls around the corner. 

If this guy who owned Guan Chee wish to sell, I tell you he could easily fetch $2 million like the other one reported in the papers recently. They are just at a coffee shop next to the Lorong Ah Soo market. Their roast duck, roast pork and char siew "got standard" as we say in Singlish. 

The service is prompt so a line forming must not deter you. 

The usual accolades and stickers. I should start issuing a Cari Makan Guru sticker soon. Watch for it's appearance someday.

The roast pork and char siew are truly well roasted and burned. Huge ovens could be found at the back of this stall.

I could not get over the sesame oil chicken so the wifey was kind enough to do it and I tell you this version was even better! The secret is in the sauce.

Sometimes, a good old simple food will do.

Simple yet nutritious.

We used only a high quality dark soy sauce. Mum's secret.

And probably the best pepper - from Sarawak.

It can make your day. Use a gulp and slurp strategy.

When there is a Q forming mostly, the food must be good? Not really true. Sometimes, it is just the hype. Partly because less people can cook or they don't cook, everything seems quite nice. 

Quite a variety awaits you at this stall at Shunfu market.

Accolades adorn the panels too.

Glutinuous cab be delicious and this is Hakka style.

The porridge is so so.

The yam abacus is really quite good so too the soon kueh. Chopped up tiny bits of mushroom gravy with the abacus made it special but the yam abacus feels a tad soft. Maybe this is the right way? I always love my mum's yam abacus best - firm in your mouth and tasty. 

I do not go around searching for food with accolades. If they do have, it was coincidental. So sometimes you will need a totally different taste so this is why Singapore is great - the great variety of food. We went to a Muslim restaurant cum coffee shop near Lorong Ah Soo. The satay was pretty good!

So was the mee goreng. I love mee goreng with lots of tomato and potato. This one only has tomato. I think I may go into cooking as the good food of yesteryear are mostly gone. We need a revival!

They did the tom yum respectably well.

It costs more than dining at a coffee shop but the food was quite good. Here you can get your teh tarik and milo dinosaur too. 

Here you can get your teh tarik, teh cino and milo dinosaur too.

Not many places in Singapore has this kind of road. Like clobber-stone in old Europe.

You may recognise it now. The old Jackson Market where once the "No Sign Board" chili crab was king! Even before this, the East Coast park satay bee hoon has its roots here. 

At this small coffee shop at Pheng Geck Ave...

There is this minced meat mushroom noodle.

I would not claim that this is the best but it is very good. The mee pok is cooked just nice and the mushroom tasted special.

When we were very young, some of us may sometimes go to a corner and cry. That is your "go to" corner. What is your "go to" food today? Mine is clay pot rice and sesame oil chicken. I just felt they are so in season, so I set the trend and tempo. Let's go to.....