Yet Con

What if I told you the Hainanese chicken rice you've been eating all along, isn't really Hainanese at all?

What if I told you that real "Hainanese chicken rice" isn't that nice at all but rather, lacks the robust flavour you have grown accustomed to?

Don't go throwing chicken rice balls at me now. Well, what do I know? Qin and her family is of Hainanese descendant and her brother tells me that their chicken rice is dry, sauceless, and the chicken is really, really kampung tasting. Not that I'm complaining because I get to eat really good, tasty chicken rice here in sunny Singapore everyday.

If you want to get a taste of true authentic, Hainanese chicken rice though, get off your butt and visit this place called Yet Con, the only authentic Hainanese restaurant left in Singapore located in Purvis street.



In fact, their chicken although sauceless, isn't as scary as it sounds. It's got a nice chicken-y taste and is quite succulent in terms of juiciness and texture.

But why would you want to go through that much trouble just to taste some chicken rice? Well, I'll give you two more reasons; their tze char and steamboat.

Steamboat seems to be really popular over there and having tried it before, I'll say it's fairly good.

I'll be able to recommend a few tze char dishes though.



Stir-fry beef with kailan. Slightly tender pieces of beef with a robust sauce to rely on. Always something I'll order here.



Hainanese chap chye isn't like the sloggy and slimy and mushy chap chye you find in economic rice stalls. Here, it comes with a crunch, a guarantee of it's freshness. Plus, who needs sauces that reek of dried shrimps to make a good dish? Here, it's refreshing but flavourful and comes with seafood and meat, all the more you should get it.



Even if you have a distaste for all of the above, this is what you should be here for. Hainanese pork chops. Even if you don't take pork, comon try a bite, sometimes you need to live a little ya know?



MMMMMMMMMMmmmmm mmm! It's crispy and SO DAMN TENDER. Shockingly true, and not what I expected. It comes doused with a tomato based sweet n' sour sauce which is surprisingly, not tomato-ey at all. It's dark brownish rather, a testament to the other oriental sauces they add in to obtain the slightly sweet savoury taste with a nice tang from a good dash of vinegar.

So you don't wanna take a bite at all. Eat the potatoes that come with the dish, it's super duper nicely pan fried and have that old school taste. Oh, but what a waste.

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)