Zi Char

Zi Char is so much a part of our food culture that it will never go away. Problem is that they still "zi" but seldom "char" these days. When I was a child, there were a couple of zi char stalls at nearby coffee shops and both were very good. Those days, we seldom have the opportunity to order different kind of dishes like meat or fish so we often settled for the simplest form of food to fill your stomach.

I would often just order bee hoon mixed with yee mee either in soup or typical zi char style or hor fun. They would throw in some pork, fish slices, prawns, liver and squid. These days you could hardly see any of it, just a wee bit here and there and the rest just noodles. We decided to dine out recently at a nearby zi char stall near the Buangkok MRT. The stall is called Master Crab.

To show their collection of prizes in the form of crab shells, they hung it all over the place, perhaps evidence that they are the crab master just like how you would display a deer head at home if you were a hunter. Or the "Predator" in the movie who collects human skulls and spines.

We had the har cheong kai (prawn paste chicken). The coating was a wee bit thick but it was hot and freshly fried and naturally tasted good especially when dipped in the chilli sauce.

The deep fried sea bass in a special sauce with pickled garlic was really quite good. Something new and untried.

When it was all over, I made it looked like a war zone. I haven't behaved like a cat for the longest time. That chew it up and spit out the bones experience.

And finally the pork ribs in special sauce with pickled onions. They always say "special sauce".

We had a vegetable, pork, chicken and a fish with rice all for $57. Is this a good or reasonable price for a dinner that fed four? Less than $15 a person. This is char, zi char.