Of Kaya rolls and Chocolate cakes

I still remember the taste of a kaya swiss roll Qin bought a year ago. It was moist, rich kaya spread between fluffy sponge cake rolled and sliced into pieces small enough to pop it whole into your mouth or to savour a bite or two. Utterly delicious. So imagine my delight when she said that there was a bazaar at her workplace again! There were stalls selling cakes, nonya kuehs, swiss rolls and other goodies! And of course, the stall selling the kaya swiss roll was there and I got her to get a box home *wide grin*


The kaya swiss roll is really very tasty! The rich custard-like kaya carries the pandan flavour very strongly yet not too sweet so that you can still taste the eggy flavour. Yummmmmmmmm.



Other than that, Qin got a Chocolate Truffle Cake (not from the same stall tho). It was really good too! Oh man, what a sinful day... but who cares.



And last but not least, OR NEE!!!!!!!!!! The pics at Blue Plate already had me yearning for some for quite awhile and when Qin called to say she bought some, I was grinning widely inside. Uhm, yummy yummy.

I initially wanted to take a picture of the box which came with the kaya swiss roll but apparently it got thrown away. But what a pleasant coincidence when I saw this on the papers laid on the table for dinner! There was an article about good cake shops located in Singapore :)



Yup, the kaya roll came from Rich and Good Cake Shop. I had heard about a cake shop at Kandahar Rd but I never knew it was this one. Other than kaya rolls, other flavours include durian, chocolate and strawberry and some others which I couldn't recall (the flavours were printed on the box). Pop by down whenever you have the time because the cakes are too good to be missed!

Claypot froggies

I reckon that most of the younger generation don't like eating frog porridge or even frog legs for that matter and that includes me. The idea of eating an amphibian is sometimes a little too overwhelming and despite the constant assurance from my mum that it taste just like chicken, I'm still not that into it.

However, I'm going to contridict myself today because I'm going to introduce a place which specializes in claypot frog porridge. This stall called Tiong Shian Claypot Frog Porridge located at Chinatown, opposite Pearl Centre, first caught our attention when we noticed the large number of customers dining at the place. Looking at the claypots, bowls of porridges and frangrant smell of sauces, it didn't take long to know that the stall sells frog porridge (and of course, duh, the huge signboard which we initially missed).

Other than claypot frog with spring onion, they also serve them in "Gung Bao" style which is a combination of vinegar, rice wine and dried chillies? Other dishes include claypot fish head noodles, claypot "Gung Bao" fish slices, claypot "Gung Bao" prawns and an assortment of porridges which included pork liver porridge, mixed porridge, prawn porridge, minced pork porridge etc. There are also side dishes like braised chicken feet, braised tofu, teochew raw fish or "Yu Sheng" and oyster sauce vegetables.

I like the way how the ordering system operates tho. You queue up at the cashier, order and pay on the spot. After which you will get a receipt and your orders will be served shortly. It's a pretty good system considering that you don't have to have your arms flailing in the air like a madman trying to the waitress's attention. Besides, the huge number of staff means very quick service.



The claypot frog with spring onions ($8/$16) tasted okay to me and Qin said that the oyster sauce actually overwhelms almost everything; which I agree cause I can't really taste the spring onions also.



The pork liver porridge ($3.20) tasted pretty bland actually but it makes up for the blandness with a generous serving of pork liver and porridge enough to serve two.



The braised tofu ($2), however, was pretty good! It was very soft and topped with fried shallots with oyster sauce and a plate of chilli sauce. Really yummy.



We also had braised chicken feet but I didn't eat it (don't like the idea of eating an animal's feet?) and therefore can't give any comments. Although we didn't get to try the "yu sheng", it looked pretty good with a huge amount of raw fish. The toppings; fried shallots, chillies, oil etc, can also be topped up yourself if there aren't enough.

To sum up, the claypot frogs aren't much to rave about. But do drop by for their fast service and generous portions of ingredients in their porridges.

Simply Ridiculous

I'm pretty amazed by how a simple appearance on the television can propel an average foodstall to instant stardom. Take for example the latest foodie show "Where the queue starts" by Bryan Wong. In a few episodes back they went to review a stall at Ang Mo Kio Central which sells normal chinese rice dishes in silver hot bowls (I'm not quite sure what they're called). Well, I haven't tried the dishes there before but it looked pretty average and there wasn't any crowd to start with. After some "advertising" on the show, however, Boom! It was like the whole of Ang Mo Kio was lining up at the stall creating queues as long as 10m! They even put up temporary railings for the queues, I ain't kidding you.

Sometimes I wonder if these foodie shows really justify their good reviews? Don't get me wrong, no doubt there will definately be some gem in the masses, but I generally feel that the overwhelming media related food reccomendations have unintentionally created a feeling of falseness in their claims. I personally have eaten at a few of the "advertised" stalls and found their food to be just average. Look at the amount of advertisement we have! First we have Makansutra, then Makan Places Lost and Found, followed by a "Hao Chi Qin Bao" with Slyvester Sim on the cover and after "Where the queue starts" end, a foodie show featuring Fiona Xie is airing soon! Do we truthfully have that much good food places?! *Shrugs*

Anyways, I shall start writing my review on this place called Uno Beef House which was introduced in the latest episode of "Where the queue starts". It actually resides in a Kopitiam but occupies quite an amount of space with a fairly large amount of seating space. Upon reaching, we wanted to try the steak and black pepper chicken which included a special potato ball instead of the usual fries said to be popular among customers. After ordering though, you should have seen the ridicule on my face when the person told me that we had to wait for an hour. An hour?! For a plate of black pepper chicken in a kopitiam?! Dude, comon, you don't know how ridiculous you sound man. But since we already came so far, we decided to order and take a walk in Toa Payoh Central and come back after an hour. Since the show also featured this rojak stall in the HDB hub which looked promising, we went to get a bite. To my aghast, (yes, notice the strong word) the lady told us the minimum waiting time was an hour. OMG! What the hell was happening?! It is simply unbelievably ridiculous! An hour for a plate of rojak?! How good can it be?! Okay okay I should stop freaking out.



Back to Uno. The beef tenderloin was indeed tender and sufficiently marinated while the black pepper chicken was really very well marinated. Priced at only $5, the chicken chop was also quite a good deal. The steak however, only could only boast of it's freshness and tenderness and there wasn't a hint of red wine which there was supposed to be. The potato ball was also quite a unique replacement of the usual fries. What I suspect was that they added butter to the mashed up potatoes and deep fried them in bread crumbs giving it a very crispy soft combination with a slight buttery taste. To sum it up, the food served can be said to be top class kopitiam western food. To wait an hour for it though, I would say take your chance somewhere else cause it's probably not worth it. And regarding the rojak... I'm still finding it ridiculous.





Address:
Toa Payoh Lorong 5
Blk 51
Uno Beef House

Nuts about nuts

Most people who are on a weight loss diet recoil away once the word fat is mentioned. Of course, it is sensible to stay away from saturated and trans fat which are bad for your health and cholesterol levels. But did you know that there are certain kind of fats that are important for your well being and good for your health? Yeap, these EFAs or Essential Fatty Acids consists of two families; Omega-3 and Omega-6, which benefits include preventing heart diseases, maintenance of eye and brain function and even aiding in fat loss!

Omega-3 can be found in fatty fish like salmon or plant sources like flax seed. Any idea where Omega-6 can be found? Nuts of course! Other than containing the important linoleic acids, these little guys contain loads of monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats which are the "good" fats. Besides, frequent consumption of nuts have been found to reduce heart disease by 30 - 50 percent! That said, nuts are a two way thing; either you love them or you hate them. I personally love them to bits. There's just something about the richness and fragrance in them that can whet my appetite instantly. They're also quite a versatile bunch as you can chop them up, roast them, add them to dishes, make nut butter of out them or simply eat them raw (which is what I usually prefer).


Therefore, I shall introduce you my most interesting find; natural nut butter! This bottle of peanut butter by Harvest Best which I bought from Carrefour for around $2.50 was freshly grinded on the spot by a nut butter mill with no added sugar or preservatives unlike normal commercially sold peanut butter which contain loads of sugars, emulsifisers and TRANS FAT! I believe everyone should stay away from trans fat as they are definately not good for your health. You can visit this site here for more information.

Anyways, this bottle of peanut butter may be too bland for some of your tastebuds. However, I strongly feel that it exudes the natural nutty taste and rich texture not found in commercially sold peanut butters which are more like a paste and stick to your mouth like glue (ewww). They are sold in three textures; smooth, medium or crunchy and can be spread on wholemeal bread or biscuits or even eaten on its own . I personally like the crunchy ones tho as I like feeling the bits and the crunchiness.



Enough said, writing this post has made me drool thinking about my nut butter sitting by the table. So people, don't forget to grab your nut butter cause I'm gonna have some on a slice of bread now!

Mee siam mai hum

I'm sure most of you are quite familar of the "famous" phrase "Mee Siam mai hum" made by our PM on the national day rally speech and the funny podcast on it by Mr Brown. Simply hilarious. Okay okay, I shouldn't go on before I get majorly flamed online.



Anyways, this was what we had yesterday. Home-made mee siam!!! Prepared by my lovely grandma of course. Every week, my gf and I will pop by my grandma's place and she'll whip up some good ol' home cooked dishes. It's the only chance I can get to taste home cooked food now and it really makes me want to go home :(



Ooo look what we've got. Other than the usual ingredients, we also had stir-fry vegetables, otah, watermelon and home-made Cheng Tng! (Too bad we didn't take a picture of it tho)Oh and by the way, the mee siam and cheng tng were specially cooked for Qin cause my grandma knew that she loved it. So nice right?! N she'll be leaving for Japan this Saturday to visit my cousin and her family. Wahaha, of course I took the chance to ask her to get some Hokkaido red beans! Look out for some home-made tau sar coming soon!



After the meal, which took an hour because we were watching a show (and during the entire our we kept stuffing ourselves!), we were so stuffed we can hardly walk!

For all of you who can get to have home-cooked meals everyday, please do cherish it. Despite my love for all the yummy hawker food, restaurants in Singapore, I would gladly trade it all just to go home for a delicious meal cooked by my mum. I miss her awesome mee siam, laksa, stir-fry beef and many, many other stuff :( I awefully miss my mum and dad and most of all my little sis. 3 months to go home and 11 months more of slavery...

My green cream

I LOVE kaya. I love having it with my min jian kueh, having it spread on a good slice of multigrain bread, slapped in between two pieces of cream crackers or even having it own its own! Somehow the rich mixture of eggs, coconut milk and sugar never ceases to stir my tastebuds. The person who invented kaya must have been a genius! Plus, anything with pandan in it is simply too good to resist. Therefore today, I'm proud to say I made my first ever pot of kaya :)



The recipe was taken from Chubby Hubby whose home-made kaya looked deliciously nice. I also read from some other sites that traditional kaya is supposed to be custard like. Since this was my first attempt, I wasn't really sure how the process should go and I think might have made some mistakes. I also edited the recipe be reducing the caster sugar from 275g to 175g since I didn't want my kaya to be too sweet.

After steaming the kaya for a mere half an hour, I went to check on it and I saw a bowl of steamed egg staring back at me! Hahaha! I wonder if it's got anything to do with reducing the sugar. Help anyone? But thanks to my gf's brilliant idea of blending the "steamed kaya egg", we finally got a decently smooth pot of custard-like kaya which tasted pretty good! Although with the huge reduction in sugar, it was still quite sweet. I would suggest though, that if you are going to reduce the sugar, you should also take away an egg yolk or two since the final product tasted quite eggy. Actually, it kind of tasted more like egg custard *sheepish grin*
But still! It's my first pot of kaya and I'm proud of it!



Yay, I'm having kaya with toast for tomorrow morning's breakfast, and the next, and the next....

Recipe:
250ml cocont milk
8 pandan leaves
175g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 chicken eggs

Instructions:
1. Combine eggs, sugar and salt and stir till sugar dissolves.
2. Tie 6 pandan leaves together into a knot and bruise them to release the flavour
3. Pour coconut milk and leaves in a saucepan and boil till it starts to bubble
4. Stir in coconut milk into egg mixture slowly while stirring constantly
5. Pour mixture over sieve into a double boiler
6. Boil till mixture begins to thicken
7. Tie the remaining 2 leaves into a knot and place in a bowl. Sieve the mixture into the bowl.
8. Cover with foil and make small holes. Steam for 45mins - 1hour
9. Blend till desired smoothness

Tamako and a heavenly plate of Inari

This humble little Japanese restaurant, Tamako, was opened a few years ago by a lady called Min-chan and continues to serve true, authentic, mouth watering and reasonably priced Japanese delicacies. It was first introduced to me by my friend, Richie, and has since been one of our occasional "escapades" during lunch hour. What makes this restaurant special to us is the freshness of its food, the politeness of Min-chan and her assistant, and the homely feeling of the place. It's as if you stepped out of the busy city life into a comfortable dining place where you can eat at your own pace without waiters or waitresses bothering you. Besides, the wooden furniture and interior decor adds to the atmosphere as well.



All right, I should stop complimenting the place and get down to describing the goodies. Items that can be found on the menu include the dons, bento sets, sashimi, sushi, ramen, udon and set lunches which are available on the weekdays. During my frequent visits with my gf (yes she loves the place too), we usually order teriyaki chicken don which is served with white rice and five big chunks of chicken thigh marinated in sweet teriyaki sauce. It is one of the best teriyaki don I have tried as compared to more classy restaurants and the serving is generous while costing only $5.80.

Today, however, I ordered the Okinawa set lunch ($7.80) which consisted of nine, fresh, thick slices of salmon sashimi, Japanese rice, eda-mame, a small portion of pork stew, miso soup and a huge slice of watermelon. First of all, the sashimi is extremely fresh and is really firm to the bite with the "sweet" salmon taste. The pork stew with potato, carrots and onions also tastes exceptionally good with the vegetables being sufficiently softened and complimented with a thick and rich stew. Lastly, the miso soup they serve is also authentic (not those packaged kind) and is very, very nice.





Other bento sets we had were Teishuko bento ($10.80) which came in the same setting but with two extra gyoza pieces and an ebi tempura. Oh, did I mention that you can also choose sanma, saba or salmon shio for the main choice of meat? Yeap, its quite a versatile selection of orders :)



The bento and set lunches may be fantastic, but what sets this place apart from others is the exceptional taste of one of Japan's finest cuisine, the sushi. I can still remember the first time I sank my tooth into the salmon sushi ($2.20). The sweetness of its rice simply blew me apart! I have never tasted such sweet tasting and well made Japanese rice in my life, ever. Its as if the rice was dry yet wet at the same time and the sweetness just made the dish excellent.



Chancing upon this visit, I ordered the inari sushi ($1.20) which is my favourite sushi because of the sweet beancurd and to seriously test the standard of their sushi, I had to try it. The inari sushi was filled with the sweet Japanese rice mixed with white and black sesame seeds.



Looks pretty normal but when I took a bite, it was almost like an explosion of senses took place in my mouth. It was an absolutely extraordinary sensation; I closed my eyes and kept chewing, slowly releasing the sweetness and moisture in both the beancurd and rice and the fragrance of the sesame seeds, and felt like I was taken to heaven. Then I looked at Richie and said, "Richie, the inari is really, really, really good." The sushi was so moist I swear that there must be a hidden reservoir of sauces inside it! The beancurd was very soft, sweet and smooth and doesn't have the dry crumpled feeling as the ones I have tried so far. The rice was good as usual and the sesame seeds really added something special to the dish, making it very flavourful and fragrant. It was so good that we ordered six pieces!

*I've removed the photo because I figured it isn't very polite posting it without the person's consent*

Okay okay, I think I should end this overly long post. If you happen to give Tamako a visit (which I think you should!), you can bypass the other dishes, but please please please please please order the inari!

Tamako Meal
128 Casuarina Road
Tel: 65534128

Big China

Everyone knows that Mid Autumn Festival is around the corner, to us floggers though, we call it Mooncake Festival! Wahahaha. Mooncake is one of the savory chinese traditional desserts which I love and with all the new flavours pouring in, sometimes its easy to get distracted from the traditional taste. And thus I shall present to you... *drum roll* Tai Chong Kok (Da Zhong Guo) Confectionary!

This traditional stall at Alexandra Village turns into a mooncake factory this time of the year churning out hundreds and hundreds of traditional baked mooncake in lotus or white lotus filling. Even though I prefer snow skin mooncakes, I felt that I should grab a few after hearing my buddy Des complimenting the mooncakes from Tai Chong Kok Confectionary. Due to the festival season, the stall only sells baked mooncakes with lotus and white lotus fillings and w/ or w/o egg yolks. Of course, the little piglet moulds are also available.





The filling is mildly sweet unlike some mooncakes where you can get a toothache just by biting into one. The taste of the crust is also not overpowering and the crust is quite soft and when eaten together, the smooth texture mixes really well with the filling. However, what I feel is distinctively good is the egg yolk. First of all, its not too salty and it retains moisture despite being baked. The mild saltiness also creates a nice balance with the sweetness of the lotus paste. Overall, the mooncake may not be exceptional. However, if you want to get a decently good mooncake at a reasonable price (SGD 5-7 range), you may want to check out the stall.

Address:
Blk 122. Bukit Merah Lane 1. #01-62. Alexandra Village. Tel: 62708994
Tai Chong Kok Confectionary (Opp Alexandra Village's claypot laksa)

Banana hey!

What to do on a boring Sunday? Bake of course! Since we haven't tried baking bread before, we decided to go it a go. Besides, there's still half a packet of flour left from the previous baking session. After browsing thru various bread recipes, the words "Banana Nut Bread" caught my eye and I know I just got to try it! I mean, nuts and bananas go so well together right? I love eating natural crunchy peanut butter spread atop a slice of banana, Mmmmmm the rich nut flavour coupled with the aromatic sweet taste of the banana makes the combination almost orgasmic. I can imagine dipping the two into chocolate and eating it cold. Okay okay, stop side tracking sam! Time to get to business!

Thoughts aside, the recipe for banana nut bread is a little different from normal bread in a way that it uses butter and sugar. There isn't any call of yeast in the recipe too. The colour also looks a little "off", but thats due to the larger amount of banana added in since we cut down on the butter and sugar. Sadly, Qin didn't like adding walnuts :( so we added raisins instead.

One loaf of pure banana heaven and another with some raisins :)



The bread loaves looked alright right? Wrong! Haha they turned out so moist that they became banana cakes! In a good way tho, I absolutely loved it! The added mash banana gave the "cake" the right sweetness and the moisture was quite dense, similar to that of a Kueh Lapis. Maybe we should start calling it a cake now. I must have done something wrong but it didn't really matter because half of the banana cake was gone in a matter of minutes. The banana taste was also quite strong and made the cake very sweet smelling and tasty. The raisins also served to add random "sweet spots" to the cake. Thinking about it, I still feel that the fat content is too high. Maybe I'll try a reduced-fat version another time.





Hrmmm, I realise that my photography is kind of bad. Looking at photographs from blogs like Chubby hubby, Greedy Goose and Evan's Kitchen really make me envious of their good phototaking skills. I also realise that my K700i takes better pictures than my Sony Cybershot! Oh well, I may not take good pictures but at least I have some banana cake for tomorrow's breakfast :)

Recipe for 2 loaves
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cup mashed (or blended) ripe bananas
2 cups wheat high gluten flour
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
5 tablespoon low fat milk
2 chopped up bananas and raisins

Instructions:
1. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder together
2. Cream sugar and butter till creamy
3. Add lightly beaten eggs bit by bit into sugar mixture
4. Sift flour bit by bit into above mixture and mix well till smooth. Do not overmix.
5. Stir in milk and mashed bananas w/ raisins
6. Bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes at 175 degrees Celcius.

Tiong Bahru Market

After finishing my eye check up with my good friend Qungen, where else was there to go in Outram other than the famous Tiong Bahru Market? Besides hosting a wide array of food stalls including the famous Tiong Bahru Roasted Pig Specialist, Jian Bo Shui Kueh and Tiong Bahru Lor Mee, the new and revamped market is much larger and spacious than any other food centres in Singapore. The double storey market houses 250 market and retail stalls on the bottom level and a whooping 83 stalls at the 2nd level! The ceiling is placed quite high to facilitate the ventilation and tables are spaced well apart providing wide walkways, there are even alfresco dining seats to choose from! The architecture of the building is also well designed being connected like a triangle with a large airwell in the centre which allows sunlight in, thus making the place very bright and airy. Not surprisingly, this is one of the food centres Qin and I often frequent due to the good food and good seating.

Check out the stuff we ate!

The pictures weren't taken properly because our pupils were dilated (they dripped some weird eye drops) and we can't see closer than 30cm!

Even with all the tasty treats which can be found, Tiong Bahru Market will never be an icon without the one and only famous Tiong Bahru Pau. This stall serves up the best Char Siew Pau and Char Siew Shao in my opinion. The pau, unlike others, is slightly small and has a thin, smooth and glossy looking outer layer with a generous amount of filling wrapped inside. Sink a bite into the Char Siew Pau and you will immediately taste the difference. The unique thing about it is the juicy Char Siew filling which is mostly tender lean meat with a few pieces of soft fat and the dark colouring hinting of a very good marinate. The meat is also very flavoursome and slightly sweet being coated with sufficient amount of sauces and contained inside the dough.



The Char Siew Sau also uses the same filling. However, it is the pastry this time that does the talking. Usually when I think of pastry I get the thoughts of dry dough stuck to the surface of my mouth. Take a bite into their pastry, however, and you will be surprised at how soft it is. The pastry is extremely, extremely soft to the point that it seems all the layers are blended into one, almost similar to eating a kueh IMO. Being soft is not enough though, the pastry is well flavour and not bland at all compared to normal pastries. Eaten together, Mmmmmm heavenly!



The stall has two sections, one selling fried stuff and the other selling pau tim. Other snacks that are also sold are glutinous rice (Lor Mai Gai) which is also very popular, large sized Siew Mai, deep fried sesame balls w/ peanuts and lotus paste fillings (extremely soft and good), yam cakes and quite a few more snacks which I haven't tried (and thus can't remember).

If you haven't been to Tiong Bahru Market, I strongly encourage you to give it a visit. And while you are there, you MUST try the Tiong Bahru Pau!

Tampopo!

Tampopo stands for dandelion in Japanese and it's the name of a reaaaally old movie back in 1985 (when I was born!) about a widowed noodle chef and her "food adventures". I haven't seen the movie so I can't really tell you much about it. What I can tell you about Tampopo, though, is that it's a Japanese restaurant located at the basement of Liang Court which sells a variety of delicacies including katsu, sushi and bento sets with the ramen being their main selling point.

The restaurant claims to boil their Jangara ramen soup base over the course of two days in order to bring out the flavour of the pig bones used and the pork used is also different. Kurobuta, or black pig in Japanese, is used because there's more marbling resulting in a meat that is plump, juicy and rich with a deep pink colour (isn't this starting to sound like a good rump of beef?!).



The soup was indeed much thicker and stronger in flavour than other ramen soup bases and the taste of pork is quite distinctive. The long boiling time produced a soup base so thick that it looked milky. Actually, it tasted a little milky as well, Hrmm, maybe they added carnation milk? Although the Kyushu Jangara Ramen, with cod roe and pork loin, was the thing to go for, Qin opted for another version which comes with additional chilli powder. Good option eh? The only bad thing is the pork loin became pork slices which, with a surrounding layer of fat, still taste good! The difference in quality of the meat can also be noticed easily as it is soft, bouncy and juicy without the usual rough fibres in pork.



How it looks like after adding the chilli powder.

We also had Wafu beef which was served on a hot plate with bean sprouts. As this is my first time trying Wafu beef, I can't make any comparisons. However, I do feel that the beef was cooked quite well being "crisp" yet tender at the same time with a slight buttery taste.



All in all, visit the place if you like a good bowl of ramen sold at a reasonable price. You can also check out Meidi-ya for it's Japanese products you may never find them in our local supermarket!

Address:

Basement of Liang Court
Tampopo (beside Meidi-ya)

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Suqing! Remember the Bull's eye cheesecake we made a while back? Yeap, it's for her. This time round, we tried to make the cheesecake again but something went wrong AGAIN! We messed up the chocolate part. So after a little bit of brainstorming *thinkthinkthinkthinkthink* we came up with Apple cheesecake! Ready to be given after a little decoration of course.





Tada! It looks quite nice doesn't it? I'm not sure taste wise though. Plus, check out the fold-it-yourself cake box we bought for just $2! Hope she likes it :)

My night in Geylang

Ya ya ya, Geylang may be well known to be Singapore's red light district, but along it are also loads of food stalls and coffeshops selling delicacies ranging from dim sum to soft and silky beancurd and of course not forgetting the numerous road side stalls with their neat rows of yummy delicious durian! Open the thorny shell up and you can see rows of rich, fleshy, lucious meat and with a scent so aromatic I swear it's got to be some kind of drug. Oops, please forgive me for my excessive raving on this fruit because I lurrrrve to bits. When I was on my diet a few years back (yes I was very fat in the past) I restricted almost everything except durian, declaring that it held no calories. Haha, it quite hilarious now thinking of it. Well, too bad I didn't eat durians this time round, so lets leave it for another post for another day.

I've not been to Geylang many times before, but a few memorable visits included having some pretty nice dinners. This time round, after reading on a review on Geylang's famous beef hor fun, we bravely decided to go try it out. Why bravely? Because most hor fun I've tried tasted rather bland. Other than that, I still recall images of white hor fun stuck together in clumps or sauces that are so lumpy you can make a ball out of them.

The stall wasn't that crowded when we got there (around 1/2 full) but we could already see that most of the patrons ordered the beef hor fun. So we plomped down in our seats and got the smallest plate. Priced at $5, the serving is definately not stingy at all with hor fun filled to the brim of the plate and a generous serving of beef covered with an appealing dark brown sauce which at least looked like its been fried.





First taste: Mmm! It really is quite good. The hor fun has been fried and is quite fragrant to eat on it's own. It's not too mushy and it doesn't clump together either. Next, the beef: Very very tender beef. You don't even need to chew it. Nuff said. Lastly, the sauce: Rich sauce with a very strong beef flavour and cooked to the right thickness. Not too watery and no lumpy stuff anywhere in sight. Verdict: So good that the plate of green chillies will spoil the dish. A definately must try because very little places sell such good hor fun!

Next, we hopped to the next stall which is quite famous for their yu tiao and soy bean and ordered just that, with an extra bowl of oyster mee sua. The soy bean drink was just average but the oyster mee sua is a extremely good. I've never tried the one at this stall before and it suprised me how good it was. The taste was very capturing and when dipped with the you tiao, proves to be quite a pleasant combination.




Look at how large the you tiao is, and at only 80 cents!

Arghhh! I know I'm supposed to be on my diet but I just couldn't resist it !!!

Address:
Geylang Lorong 9.
Geylang's famous Beef Hor Fun
(and the stall beside it)