Delightful Hawker Finds

After being alive for a long time you will find that life really is still too short. The elixir of youth is still elusive. Some eat to live and others live to eat. After eating for a long time you can get tired and one can walk around a food centre not knowing what to eat. This is eating fatigue made worse by the reduction of good hawker food as even the food scene in Singapore now has been commercialised. You own a food stall, decide what to sell, employ a couple of foreign workers and you just come back to collect your earnings. Almost everywhere you go to, the stalls look the same. Perhaps even the food tastes the same.

Yet it is the hawker food that drives the economy and the irony is that some or quite many of these are bad for our health when they are too oily or salty, etc. But make no mistake, Singapore is food heaven. Hong Kong may boast better quality but if variety is the spice of life then Singapore has few peers. For me, it is getting harder to find good food stalls that is still old school and yet delightful. 

One such food that I discovered is at a sleepy part of Upper Serangoon Road - the Song Kee Fishball Noodle way back in 2012. I ate there every few weeks and when I met the the guy who started it all, I spoke to him and confirmed that he was once from my old neighbourhood. His son is manning the shop now. They opened from 4-4 (pm to am) so at the time 6-7pm was okay but now I heard that you have to wait for 30-45 minutes. They are now famous. The newspapers featured them too. My friend told me not to waste my time to queue there as they care less about service now. Could it be they found it hard to cope without the manpower? I mean once they appeared in the newspapers everybody wanted to try it. This was my previous posting: 

http://gforce-guru.blogspot.sg/2012/02/fishball.html (highlight this link, right click and click at go to:)

I later found another fish ball noodle stall with the same name. I saw that the woman's face was familiar. She is probably the founder's daughter. I remembered her face but we were much younger back then. When I looked back at those younger than me and now are of a certain age, I begin to realise I am no immortal. I am just the Highlander. "There can be only one".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq4SqgxIKM0

They used to have hand-made fish balls when they were at Toa Payoh. Their fish dumpling (hee kiaw) are the best. A good dry mee pok must come with lard and the chilli sauce must be good. This is as good as the other shop - the fish ball, chilli, noodle tasted the same. I asked her and she confirmed that she was once at Toa Payoh. Her stall at Ang Mo Kio Ave 10's market food centre just behind the popular Pine Garden Cake Shop operates only in the morning till early lunch time. Certainly a great pick me up food that you can have any time of day.

I needed to get some stuffs at Balestier, was alone and it was close to lunch hour so I headed to Whampoa. I explored the market side's food stalls and remembered the "Lor Mee" that has a long queue during lunch. Because I was early, there were only 3 or 4 people ahead of me.

The first in the queue was a woman then an old man. As the woman got her food and left, I heard the old lady stall owner asked the man who was cooking "ler wu lao pee kang huet boh?" (Did you nose bleed?) and he just smiled as he was busy cooking. And then I almost burst out laughing. This was because that woman who was first in the queue was voluptuous and she was wearing a blouse with a plunging neckline.

The lor mee serving was generous. The crispy stuffs were fragrant and there was quite a variety of ingredients including slices of braised pork and chunks of fish meat. Fill up with vinegar and red cut chilli if you like and bingo. It came with thick tasty gravy.

The chunks of fish meat was for me the champion. Very fresh and of a good quality. Better than most  others that I have tried. It was a satisfying meal. Only thing I did not know was whether the guy's nose was bleeding when he was preparing my food.

Bak Kut Teh comes a long way. My first experience was when dad brought me along with his friends for fishing each Sunday when I was in primary school from morning till evening and we will mostly ended up at some Bak Kut Teh stalls. There are quite many BKT stalls all over the island, some are very famous but also very expensive. Some very peppery, others herbal. The herbal style is more like those in Malaysia. The Japanese are crazy about our Bak Kut Teh. I like my BKT to be just peppery enough but not having an overpowering pepper taste otherwise might as well just have pepper soup. Herbal is okay but not to taste like medicine. Most importantly, the pork ribs must be tender. I found one near the office which I would visit every now and then at a small coffee shop next to the Klapsons Hotel.

It is quite popular but you do not really have to queue and service is fast and efficient.

It is served to you filled to the brim with soup in a clay-pot steaming hot. Just looking at it makes one go hungry. 

Pieces of bean curd were also added.

The pork here is consistently fresh, soft and tender. One other important aspect for a BKT is the dark soy sauce with red cut chilli. The quality of the sauce must be good - thick and sticky.

Then there was satay stall that have been serving the residents around Hougang for years. Hougang is not somewhere near Houston but near Upper Serangoon Road. They were originally from the Upper Serangoon six and half mile old wet market where it is now a Kovan condominium. Plenty of good food used to be there. They shifted to a coffee shop at Hougang Street 21. They remain the few authentic satay that gives you a good choice cut of meat that is well marinated and satay peanut sauce that is mixed with pineapple puree. I like this as the pineapple mixed with the peanut sauce gives a different flavour and makes you feel like you can have another go at it. 

I have previously featured them in 2012:

http://gforce-guru.blogspot.sg/2012/01/endangered-species-food.html (highlight link, right click and click go to:)

This time I am writing about them because the aunty was once quoted in the newspaper that she wanted to quit and could sell her business away as she could not cope doing all this alone. When I visited recently, she was no more there though there was a satay stall there with the same sign board, it is not the same. Sigh. Another one bites the dust. 

Finally prawn noodle. Forget all the so called famous ones with the long wait and all. I want things simple. There is a very good one at Shunfu which is much further from where I lived. I discovered one nearer home which was a tip off by dad. So I went to Blk 118 Lorong Ah Soo on the food trail. Original prawn noodles of old used to slice their prawns in two. Then some smart alec came along and introduced large prawns and the prices shot up from $2 to $5 and now at some place I heard could go up to $12. 

First I tested their bee hoon/mee dry. Good chilli base, fair bit of shallots. The vermicelli and noodles were done just right. The prawns were special. 

The soup is on par with any good ones you may know. Tasty. It means you can even have kway teow/mee soup and it will be good.

When I went there again, I tested them on their mee pok dry. Not many can do mee pok dry well. Lots of shallots but I asked for all prawns without pork slices. Not the huge prawns which you could also get if you like. I wanted the normal prawns and somehow the prawns here are the best I have ever tasted. They are very crunchy, succulent, fresh, sweet and juicy. Where they got them and how they prepared it beats me.

This is how it looked like after I got it well mixed. Very delicious!

I then noticed that the lost and found "Tai Seng Herbal Turtle Soup" has relocated here. Some folks love this but others are disgusted with it. Have you ever tried this?

There are many Hokkien Mee around the island that are good. Not too far from home, Toa Payoh Lorong 1's Come Daily is very good and so is Old Kallang Airport's Nam Sing who actually hails from Upper Serangoon Road (six and a half mile) years ago and I was a regular patron. Nam Sing and some other stalls use the thin bee hoon (vermicelli). Two others I know are the one at Serangoon Gardens "Chomp Chomp" just near the left entrance and this one at the Lorong Ah Soo market food centre called "Blue Star" that use thin bee hoon.

Those that use thin vermicelli creates a different texture and taste because only thin bee hoon could absorb the gravy and the natural goodness of each ingredient thrown in. You can't do a good hokkien mee without using lard and without fatty pork slices. The latter seems hard to come by these days as hawkers short-cut the process.

I hope that such good food will be around for a long time such that even at an advance age and we can't remember much, at least the food taste good. Then you forgot you had your meal and you order another. Have a good food-hunting weekend!