Lee Tong Kee Beef Hor Fun

Really?

Apparently so, and just to provide that extra assurance that you'll get a good meal, allow me to cast away any doubts you are harbouring in your unbelieving mind.

Lined in the midst of painting, art, calligraphy and figurine shops, a humble restaurant on the bend facing a newly built Chinese temple blends in perfectly into the setting, a developing fusion between rustic faces and drastic changes. But as time forces on its perpetual charge, changing and modifying and moderning everything standing in its path, people and cultures get absorbed into a whirlwind of change where thinking becomes liberated and cultures start to become obsolete. In the midst of it, food have taken the harsh brutal swipe of reality, losing its tradition, culture and ultimately, the passion that made it unique and with it, taste. Hawkers become food courts, markets have been transformed to tourist attractions and people, instead of cooking for passion, have begun cooking for money to survive in the unrelentless economy as traditionalists deperately cling on to the ways of old.

So as I stood outside this little eatery called Lee Tong Kee which claims to promise the taste of 1948, the ultimate question looms deep, "Has its taste survived the test of time?". That's what we're about to find out.



I certainly do not know the taste of its hor fun in 1948 but right here, right now, its beef hor fun ($5.50) tastes pretty damn good. Made from the silkiest strands of rice noodles, its softness lets you slurp it up and slide it down with the least effort. Really, the hor fun is the softest and silkiest I've eaten! The sauce is uber duperly good! Similar to Guangdong Braised Beef Noodles at Maxwell FC, this one is a thicker, richer, and more potent interpretation. Its hard to put the taste onto paper [or to type into my keyboard] but it coats every strand of noodle so well, the taste fills your mouth as it slides down your throat.



The beef is equally tender and moist, with sporadically spaced portions of melt-in-your-mouth fats. Theres certainly a good flavour in the beef also.



One other item to note is the Lee Tong Kee tender chicken ($8 for small) which is literally, super tender chicken! Unlike those served at chicken rice stalls which are slapped with the cleaver or done with whatever, this chicken is truly tender. So good that I felt the "jelly-ness" as I bit into that succulent piece of chicken. The accompanying sauce compliments the meat and the chilli sauce they provide is a more unique (and better version) of normal chicken rice chilli and brings out the flavour in the chicken and hor fun.

This is one beef hor fun I will recommend to my friends. Heck, its number one on my list now!

Address:

Lee Tong Kee Ipoh Sar Hor Fun
278 South Bridge Road
62260417
www.ipohhorfun.com

Hock Lam Beef Noodles

Clear clear clear!

I'm in such a mad rush to clear all my drafts before I post my Perth pics which unfortunately couldn't be posted because the dumb system in camp doesn't allow me to upload pics.

Oookay. I think I'm ranting more than usual nowadays. Haha, maybe I'm going bonkers. Or maybe I WAS already nuts... to start with. Nooooo don't leave me my dear readers! Hehe.

Oh yeah yesterday I ate like the most AWESOME (shizz Sam stop using the word awesome!). The most [add in your preferred spectacular word here] thosai ever. But unfortunately I forgotten to bring my phone so I couldn't take pictures. Ah ha! Gotcha on a teaser.

Which brings me to this post on Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeef noooooodles!

I love beef noodles. Totally dig em. When people were eating baby food I was drinking beef soup. Aye, no kidding, this boy likes his beef. I love the beef noodles at Rex (at Selegie road) which my dad a.k.a the most wonderful man, used to bring us a long, long time ago. Cooked by this old lady and served with damn good chinchalok (the white stuff with chilli) and loads of chye poh (preserved vegetables), totally awe...licious! The sauce was damn good and beefy also. Anyone knows if it had been passed down? Pleeease tell me pleaase I'm BEGGING you!

After that we found another beef noodle stall located at Scotts shopping centre food court and that became our next best thing over the years. But now Scotts is gone! Ahhh, they just want to rid me of my beeeeeeeef, don't they?!



Okay, so I've found Hock Lam. Well... it's not exactly up to that standard though. Hock Lam's beef noodle is strongly flavoured. Rrrrright, but in a different kind of way; the way of garlic and spices. Boy, it was strong, but in a subjective kind of way; as some people do not like garlic (not me). The sauce tasted mostly of (very) strong use of spices and reeked strongly of garlic. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but when you think about it, it's supposed to be a bowl of BEEF noodles.

Dude, the beef stock is simply not strong enough. The soup is also too salty and strongly flavoured and when both taken together, Phoo! A little unpleasant.

Not that it's a bad thing, some people like it but I don't. really. find. it. that. good.
I also don't like the idea of peanuts in my beef noodles? Oh well...

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)