Tze Char - Great Food @ Hao Ji

I like surprises as in surprising finds. An element of surprise always please everyone and stuns your opponents. I have also been lamenting about the state of our local food since quite some years back that we are losing our heritage in particular hawker food and tze char stalls. 

In my youth and younger, within a 500 metre radius where I used to lived there are at least three tze char stalls and they are all good. There was one called Red Leaf, the chef was a fair and skinny man who was the towkay himself. His stove with raging fire was near the front where you order your food and it always intrigued me watching him parade his skills tossing the food in it he air from the wok burning the hor fun and fried rice relentlessly. I could only afford hor fun, yee mee or bee hoon fried or soup. His food is good and I frequented because it was less dear and the wait is shorter.

One block away there was another which was very good but I never remembered its name may be because it was written in old style classic Chinese fonts. This stall's price was reasonable, food was very good but the wait was always long. When I was older, I would come home at 10pm from work, ordered my hor fun, went home for shower, read the papers and came back to collect half an hour later. Time management. 

The third was four blocks away behind at the hawker centre called Boon Teck Garden. Often crowded, food was very good but they were expensive. If you notice that food everywhere tasted the same these days it is because few people make their own stuffs these days. They either buy off the shelves or they come from a central kitchen. All commercial. 

In the old days, most movies from Hong Kong were sword fighting. It seemed they need not work. Just ride their horses around, eat all over the inns, drink wine and start fighting for many different reasons. It must have been fun to ride horses around and drink wine all over. One of the most famous was "Ku Long" who had a famous quote: "The most dangerous place is the safest place".

It means that sometimes, good things are right in front of your noses but you did not know. Like some movies, the woman he loves was right there but he did not know and went searching all over till at last he found out but...but...its too late. Or a happy ending? Anyway, I discovered a place, okay it was my son who told me about it. Only people who do management by walking around will learn such things. Nearby and behind the Evergreen Park condo. It is a few blocks behind where my parents lived. SO near and yet unknown to so many people.

There is this new shop called "Hao Ji". Again, please do not go rushing there and queue and jam up the place and make me queue for two hours. If this ever happens, I will become a hermit and really go to the mountains to seek solace. 

With ample parking just in front of the shop. The first thing I saw was a tank full of frogs. Actually frog legs are very nice and healthy but some people just would not eat it. May be they thought they might some day turn into a prince. That was kissing not cooking. Or they imagined the workers coming out from the kitchen pushing out frogs on wheelchairs.

I ordered some very simple, basic food. Kai Lan, Wat Tan Hor Fun, Smbal Petai Rice, Fu Rong Omelette, Har Cheong kai, Heh Cho, Fried Bee Hoon and Fried Rice.

The hor fun has wok hei (breath of the wok), a burnt taste as they were kissed by the wok each time they were tossed.

I ate there again too and it was still good but I guess if you happened to get hor fun that was just burned then great but you may still get a whiff of wok hei though not as freshly burned if they were left for awhile. Compared to most tze char stalls at most coffee shops, the food here is much better. Don't compare with the best we have had of course. There was an old Cantonese man who sell tze char at a canteen at the old traffic police HQ in town (now torn down) who made absolutely, fabulously wok hei burnt hor fun. Wonder where he is now? If you find him , let me know.

Hor Fun without wok hei is just hor without the fun. Then I tasted the fried bee hoon, I feel it was quite a gem. Wok hei was even better without any gravy.

Har Cheong Kai was seething hot when we ate there and was good. Some tze char stalls have too much coating of flour on the chicken wings but these ones did not.

Dipping it with sambal made my day.

Their fried rice is good. You can taste each grain of rice being well burned and I could imagine the rice being tossed in the air from the wok over and over again as I ate it. They have a good sambal fried rice too which gave it a different flavour which was both a little spicy and pungent.

This is my current favourite place for a nice meal that is reasonably priced, have ample space for parking, located at a quiet, clean and bright corner of Blk 335 Hougang Avenue 7 and you will not have to join a long queue. May be I will make them famous. So I have to let them know that I put this article together. Special treatment for me, I won't need to queue.