Have you ever wondered why Beef Kway Teow is hard to come by in hawker centres? If you think about it, it seems a fairly easy dish to prepare. The flavours of the soup are from those beef ’spare parts’ and the ingredients used are beef or those spares and that’s really about it. Unlike Mee Pok Tah or Hae Mee where you still have the bits and pieces of other ingredients like fishcakes or minced pork, Beef Kway Teow is really just all about beef. Very similar to something like Mutton Soup. But yet it’s these kind of food that are not easily found in hawker centres, have you wondered why?

It does seems to be that the theory of demand and supply is at work and maybe when food sellers are looking to setup stalls, somehow they’ll be more inclined to sell food like Mee Pok Tah or Hae Mee or Char Kway Teow which are eaten widely but what is the reason or reasons that Beef Kway Teow and Mutton Soup can’t receive the same level of demand? What do you guys think?

And the truth of the matter is that if you see a Beef Kway Teow or a Mutton Soup stall, more often than not, it is a family run business with closely guarded recipes passed down through the years or even decades. So that brings another argument, are these food not easily found because food sellers have not an idea how to cook them as oppose to something like Hae Mee where really is all just about putting the prawn’s shell in the water to boil? Well I think the answer lies in the fact that very few hawkers are willing to take the risk to produce a normal bowl of Beef Kway Teow and if they were to risk, then why not they go for more widely eaten food like Hae Mee, make sense? And possibly when that happened in a large scale, we see a hawker centre housing several stalls of Mee Pok Tak but yet only a stall of Beef Kway Teow exists in the entire neighbourhood.

Talking about closely guarded recipes, it’s all to do with authenticity. When it is really authentic, it is so special that you almost can’t find it anywhere else. Take for example, there is this famous Bak Chor Mee at Bedok Blk 85 market that everyone who are staying in the east must have eaten it but yet if you were to refer the name Bak Chor Mee to people who stays in the west, they’ll be thinking of another thing which is the Teo Chew style of Bak Chor Mee which is something eaten dried most of the time just like Mee Pok Tah except that there is a hint of vinegar in it and also comes with some braised mushrooms most of the time.

Now for those who doesn’t know, this kind of Bak Chor Mee that exist only in the Bedok area and are eaten in the soup version 99% of the time, is something that is really authentic. You can only find it in Bedok Blk 511 market, Bedok Blk 85 market and Bedok Blk 58 market and all of these stalls are actually relatives and so they’re really selling some food that their own family invented, now that’s really as authentic as it can gets.

It’s almost the same story for famous Beef Kway Teow around the island. Some Beef Kway Teow can be so authentic that you can get a particular flavour in a particular stall and no where else and the famous Hock Lam Beef noodle is one example.

Beef Kway Teow $4

Lagoon Leng Kee Beef Kway Teow thrives on something similar. For as long as I’ve eaten from this stall, I cannot remember eating another bowl of Beef Kway Teow with the kind of authentic flavour I get from this stall. Some of my friends that I’ve brought to eat at this stall have told me that it’s nothing fantastic and the funny thing is I agree with them that it is indeed not the best but yet I willingly swear by this flavour that it is really authentic. Afterall, authenticity has nothing to do with being the best right? Taste indeed is a relative meter and are we all not programmed to like or dislike certain taste due to our past eating habits which is also called taste acquisition?

I’ve eaten at Lagoon Leng Kee Beef Kway Teow since I was very very young and the flavour of the beef soup here is really something that is different from what you can find elsewhere. Well at least for me and so it really sets them apart from the rest. Beef being just beef and kway teow being just kway teow, therefore there’s really nothing fantastic about those ingredients here but the soup here is very special for me and because it has that hint of sourness which complements the entire bowl of beef kway teow very well. I think the sourness derives from the use of giam chai(preserved mustard greens), I’m not 100% sure but it looks(or rather taste) like it. The chili sauce that comes with it is good though I wouldn’t call it fantastic.

I’m not sure if many people will agree with me about this stall being authentic but then the long queues that I witnessed every single time without fail I suppose is a testament to it being a little special to those people in the queue at the very least. A bowl of beef kway teow here would cost you $4 for nothing more than a few pieces of beef on top of some kway teow with a few pieces of giam chai but yet the authentic soup here can more than make up for the lack of good ingredients. For that reason, it is special for me and indeed for many others especially those in the queue.

Price: $4 and above

Conclusion: The beef soup here is all that I’m coming for. If you like beef ’spare parts’ then maybe you can relate more to the $5 version otherwise if like me who don’t know how to appreciate those parts then $4 is sufficient.

Likes: The shiokadodo beef soup.

Dislikes: Beef is very normal, chili not sour enough.

Address		Overall Rating
Lagoon Leng Kee Beef Kway Teow East Coast Parkway Stall 33 East Coast Lagoon Food Village		Food: 8/10   Value: 7/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10