Well, for those who are interested to read more on Fei Lao, I’ve written 2 posts on it and it’s here and here.

Fei Lao Seafood Opeh Leaf hor fun $10

The wok hei is only one of the areas where Fei Lao stands head and shoulders above the rest. The other is the gravy which had that translucent look where the skillfully seared hor fun submerged in. Premium seafood like big sea prawns and sea cucumbers are this opeh leaf hor fun’s trademark while other miscellaneous ingredients like pork, liver, squid, fish, big mushrooms and choi sum ensure that it is a $10 well spent.

Fei Lao Seafood Opeh Leaf hor fun $10

Not to wax too much sentimental here, but a Fei Lao’s pack is highly regarded for it’s richness in the robust wok hei flavour and when the time comes for the chef to sear the hor fun, you can witness the most amazing smoky kitchen of your life. Well well, I’m half-suspecting that the hor funs are being barbecued instead of being fried!

I’ve eaten from Fei Lao since a long long time ago when they were still at Changi Lorong 108 and if truth be told, never once had I experienced a bad aftertaste after eating it so it is possible that very little MSG are used to enhance the flavour. The distinctive fragrance and taste is so unique that no where else in Singapore can you part $10 to get something as good. After eating from 7 stalls, I have no doubt that here is a clear winner.

If death is the only thing that’s certain in life, then this is one food you must eat before you die.

Fei Lao Seafood Opeh Leaf hor fun $10

Price: $10

Conclusion: This were sold at $10 in those days when a tin of oil was $15. Today a tin of oil can cost anything between $30 to $40 and it is still selling at $10. Undoubtedly still the best opeh leaf hor fun for me in the $10 bracket. It is one thing to see the picture( plus drooling) but another to eat it. You must make time for it, to witness for yourself how it can energize your umami harmoniously.

Likes: Robust wok hei flavour. Delicious gravy. Good ingredients.

Dislikes: On a bad day, you might get one that has a wok hei overdrive. Can be good or bad thing, depending on your taste bud.

Address		Overall Rating
Fei Lao Seafood Blk 86 Bedok North St.4 #01-165 Singapore 460086 Business Hours : 11.00am – 2.00pm and 5.00pm – 10.00pm Tel: 6346 4116 Off:Tuesday		Ingredients: 8.5/10   Gravy: 9/10   Wok Hei: 9.5/10   Authenticity: 9.5/10   Value: 9/10   Overall: 9/10

Of course we all know the irony, that Hainan Chicken Rice isn’t indigenous to Hainan and it was the cook who’s from Hainan, not the food. But the pak cham kai( white chop chicken) was actually an invention of the Cantonese and Hainan being near to Guang Dong, undoubtedly got the influence. When the Hainanese came, they brought along the pak cham kai and invented the chicken flavoured rice here. So strictly speaking, the chicken is Cantonese, chicken + rice is Hainanese and the world follows.

So you can see, the penchant for pak cham kai in a plate of chicken rice is very Hainanese, and while there’s no tales abound of Hainanese learning the art of roasting a chicken from the British, it is no doubt that roasted chicken is very much not Hainanese but a Singaporean thing.

If you have wondered why traditional Hainanese chicken rice were served in balls, well there are 2 theories. Before it’s rise to fame and be sold in sybaritic style(for eg, Boon Tong Kee, Loy Kee), it was actually comfort food for the ordinary people and it was said that chicken flavoured rice balls were cleverly invented for easy distribution to horde of labourers while others said that by making rice into balls, the warmth can be kept longer.

Hainanese Chicken Rice $3

I must confess that pak cham kai is something that I have never known the appreciation of and I see it as something likely to screw up my chicken rice meal instead. So thanks to this ‘Singaporean Invention’ of the roasted chicken that my chicken rice enjoyment can be salvaged.

Just in case you don’t know, the rice of a Hainanese chicken rice has compelling flavours from garlic, ginger, sesame oil and chicken broth. And the tender-flreshed chicken is made by plunging it in and out of boiling water and ice water rhymically to produce that jelly-like substance below the skin.

To be perfectly honest here, I haven’t got the faintest idea how a fantastic Hainanese chicken rice should be. But notwithstanding the lack of knowledge of a good Hainanese chicken rice, I still can distinguish a good flavoured rice to a bad one and it’s just happens that most chicken rice stalls can produce brilliantly perfumed rice though a little oily most times.

Fu Hainanese chicken Rice at Bedok Blk 538 has roasted chicken, no riceball but still alludes to a Hainanese version. The roasted chicken here exhude a compelling aroma, a result of the oily gravy which is slightly sweet. The rice is fluffy, only slight oiled, the very personification to the texture you get with coconut rice in Nasi Lemak. It tasted like the Viagra of white rice, each toothsome mouthful, every chew of it powers me into lubricated eating machine. Such balance in taste, the chilli might not even be needed but I’ll be frank with you for a moment: the chilli sauce is able to keep up with the game!

This chicken rice may looks simple but the munch is extraordinary smooth and the quality of it just wanders beyond bounds. For $3, it has all the styles, moves, tastes and everything you need to shout EXTRAVAGANT, and I’ve never bother with the hassles to look for something similar.

Price: $3

Conclusion: A very good chicken rice for me. Superb hint of sweetness in the gravy. Rice is fluffy and only slight oily. A chicken rice meal that’s devoid of ‘jerladness’.

Likes: Rice is fluffy, gravy is good.

Dislikes: None.

Address		Overall Rating
Fu Hainanese Chicken Rice Blk 538 #01-35A Bedok North Street 3 Blk 538 Bedok North Market and Food Centre		Food: 8/10   Value: 8/10   Authenticity: 8/10   Service: 8/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 8.25/10

So I went to check it out not expecting to find any but voila! Found it! You can call me sua ku here but I seldom look for food at those coffeeshops around that area. I mean Bedok South Block 16 has quite a lot of goodies to eat so who would want to walk near the coffeeshops right?

Lao Chai Shi Rou Cuo Mian which is translated to Old Chai Chee Minced Pork Noodles have been around for over 20 years at the Bedok Blk 16 area, if what I heard from that Bak Chor Mee owner is to be believed.

An Ah Ma greeted me at the stall and asked for my order. I asked her whether they have bak giao(pork dumpling) and are they related to Blk 85 Bak Chor Mee family, she answered yes to both questions. Tick, tick! Ah Ma said her daughter’s husband is operating a stall at Bedok Blk 85.

It’s interesting to note that this stall sells something like 5 different types of noodles soup and it’s to be the only one that see the need to diverse its ’sales market’. All of the other stalls I’ve visited are only selling Bak Chor Mee. So by that impression, I can’t help but being a little skeptical about the quality of Bak Chor Mee that I was waiting for.

老菜市肉脞面’s Bak Chor Mee

Mine arrived and it WOW me at first! It looked very very similar to my favourite Bak Chor Mee stall at Bedok Blk 85 which is the Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian. The minced pork in the soup was how I like it in my Bak Chor Mee. Finely grinded, sporadically floating in the soup and not too salty. The soup was more on the saltish side though still quite delicious. The bak giaos were impressive with a lot of tik poh(fried sole fish) flavour. The noodles were slightly more pong but nonetheless still quite good.

All in all, I would consider the standard of this bowl of Bak Chor Mee slightly above the average bowl but with room for improvements. The level of QQness of the noodles can be further improved though there wasn’t any customers so perhaps the water for boiling the noodles wasn’t running at max temperature and that could be the cause of the slightly ‘pong pong’ noodles. If the soup were slightly sweeter, it might come very close to the Bak Chor Mee at my favourite stall, Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian. But alas it did not though with dumplings and the finely grinded minced pork, it did scored a few more points.

Price: $2.50

Conclusion: A decent bowl to provide a quick fix if you crave for those Bak Chor Mee flavour at Bedok Blk 85. It’s strength is with the minced pork and dumplings. Noodles and soup not that bad too but can be improved. Dry version is available but eat at your own risk.

Likes: Dumplings and minced pork.

Dislikes: Noodles not QQ enough. Soup a little on the salty side.

Address		Overall Rating
Lao Cai Shi Ruo Cuo Mian 老菜市肉脞面 Bedok South Blk 16 Kopitiam 6am to 2pm Off every Thursday		Soup: 7/10   Noodles: 7/10   Bak Chor: 8/10   Dumplings: 8/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 8/10

However I’ve been brought to the attention of another 3 stalls. 1 stall is also in Bedok while the other 2 stalls are out of Bedok. Therefore there will be an extension of 3 more posts and this 8 part series will be done with this post(which is the last stall in Bedok) and the other 3 stalls which is outside of Bedok will be resumed in another 3 parts series of an extension of Bak Chor Mee Challenge which will be titled “Which is the best Bedok’s Bak Chor Mee outside of Bedok?”

What surprised me in this Bak Chor Mee adventure so far is the fact that most of the stalls recognise each other as relatives but distance themselves from this Bak Chor Mee stall operating at Bedok Blk 538 market. If you’re thinking that some squabbles took place that caused all of them to stop having any relationship with the owner of this stall, then let me tell you that’s not the case.

It’s indeed true that the owner of the stall at Bedok Blk 538 has nothing to do with the Bak Chor Mee’s family. His Bak Chor Mee’s skills and recipes are self taught and he just happens to snap up a stall in one of the last markets in Bedok, without a Bak Chor Mee stall for a Bak Chor Mee business. As far I know, the other market in Bedok that has no Bak Chor Mee stall is at Blk 16, though I was told that not too long ago, there was also a stall there.

Dumplings with bak chor

Soon Heng Minced Pork Mee at Bedok Blk 538 market come across as something that is trying to fake off as one of those authentic Bak Chor Mee stall. Well if most of the other Bak Chor Mee stall owners were quick to say ” no no no ” when you asked whether the one at Blk 538 is related to their family, you can’t help but think this way. Furthermore when I was waiting for my noodles at this stall, the chatty aunty confessed to me ‘They all are related except us”. With that, I was half expecting my bowl of noodles to come in shocking taste and flavour. I was really expecting the worst. I mean some of the related ones are even bad, how good can this be right?

And coming from eating the shiokadodo outstanding ones at Bedok Blk 85, it made it even harder to believe there is a better Bak Chor Mee stall somewhere that has no relation to the original Bak Chor Mee family.

Dumplings

Bak chor mee

But you know what, my Bak Chor Mee came in style that almost left my jaw dropped. The sight of it was awesome. I’ve never seen so many bak chor(minced pork) on my Bak Chor Mee before. And the best part is this, the bak chor was not in a lump but really finely grinded and just spread on top of the noodles in the soup. It was outstanding in looks and the generous amount of chopped spring onions made it look like a bowl of Bak Chor Mee made for the King!

Ok the time has come for me to taste the bak chor and I took a spoonful of the bak chor together with some soup. Oh my goodness gracious, it smacks full of that giam her(salted fish) mix with ti poh(dried flat fish) taste! Marvellous! This is the kind of bak chor in a bowl of Bak Chor Mee that I was waiting for and at last I’ve found it! With that shiokadodo delicious flavour in the bak chor, it made the soup taste like the most ‘pang’ soup amongst all the Bak Chor Mees I’ve ate recently. The good thing is that it also had the right amount of sweetness in it so I didn’t really feel like drinking a salted fish soup. The noodles as usual had that QQness to behold.

What further made it more impressive is the fact that the dumplings are chock-full of that tik poh flavour in the fillings. It was huge, the skin wasn’t too thick too, by far the best I’ve eaten.

This is simply no horse run!

This Bak Chor Mee’s triumph was unexpected. The wonderful style it came with, was the precursor to this tremendous taste which has won my heart in ways that no other Bak Chor Mee had. This is the only bowl of Bak Chor Mee that came with 4 dumplings, and also they’re the biggest and the most delicious thus far.

I don’t know how does that sound for you but I’m in love with it!

This Bak Chor Mee has hit a new high for me. It demonstrated ultra full flavour from the soup to the minced pork to the dumplings. This is a great bowl of Bak Chor Mee producing ‘world class’ level of shiokness for me because the ingredients used were not giam siap(stingy)!

I’m wondering now how could this GREAT bowl of Bak Chor Mee ever be overtaken.

Price: $2.50

Recommendation: $3 version and ask for giaos version!

Conclusion: This is a perfect bowl of Bak Chor Mee for me. This is something like ‘big prawn noodles’. This is a ‘big minced pork cum big shiokadodo bak giaos’ Bak Chor Mee! The soup just also happens to be very shiok! The noodles went very well with all of it and the thing is it doesn’t really need a genius to produce something like this but yet the ecstasy it created for me by this ‘unrelated’ seller to the Bak Chor Mee’s family has beaten not only those ‘entry-level’ ones but superior ones at Bedok Blk 85 by many miles!

Likes: Terrific balance of flavour. Terrific bak chor. Terrific dumplings. Terrific soup. Everything is just terrific!

Dislikes: Soup no enough! They need to use a bigger bowl for it!

Next Up: 3 parts series of Bedok’s style of Bak Chor Mee OUTSIDE of Bedok!

Address		Overall Rating
Soon Heng Minced Pork Noodles Bedok North Blk 538 Food Centre Blk 538 01-40A Bedok North Street 3 530am to 12pm(or until sold out) Off every Wed		Soup: 8/10   Noodles: 8/10   Bak Chor: 9/10   Dumplings: 8.5/10   Value: 8/10   Overall: 8/10

But you may ask, if that’s so, why aren’t people calling it a ‘Chai Chee Bak Chor Mee’ instead? Well, nobody may be calling it a Chai Chee Bak Chor Mee but at least one stall in Bedok is calling itself Chai Chee Minced Meat Noodle.

Over at Bedok Blk 216 market, Chai Chee Minced Meat Noodle has been around for many many years. When I asked how long, the lady serving me just said “Many years, hard to count.”. Upon questioning whether they have any relations with the rest of the stalls around Bedok, she said that the stall owner at Blk 58 is the cousin of her husband and she confims every stalls in Bedok are related in some ways except the stall at Bedok Blk 538. But she did mentioned that they have no direct connection with those stall owners at Bedok 85 though, so it’s more likely a case of long distant relatives or something along that line.

I had eaten at this stall in the past and wasn’t impressed, especially in the soup and bak chor(minced meat). This time, my bowl of Bak Chor Mee from this stall seems to hit a new low. I remember in the past, the soup in particular was really a let down because it had ‘flavour no enough’. This time the flavour of the soup was ok but the bak chor and dumplings(bak giao) let me down greatly. The bak chor not only has not much of a flavour, it came in huge lumps that sinked to the bottom of the soup, not really how I think a great bowl of Bak Chor Mee should be. It came with dumplings but the flavour was quite strange. The fillings tasted somewhat like Siu Mai with that sort of sweetness overkill. The noodles came with that similar QQness but can hardly make up for it though.

Bak Chor Mee

Chai Chee Minced Meat Noodle’s Bak Chor Mee

Overall, my bowl of Bak Chor Mee from Chai Chee Minced Meat Noodle was way off the mark. There was no queue at about lunch time and my bowl came just approximately 2 mins after I ordered. I also didn’t see any customers ordering at the stall right till the time I finished my Bak Chor Mee. It’s clear that Chai Chee Minced Meat Noodle at Bedok Blk 216 has some work to do before they can attain the level of popularity that’s so zealous at other stalls.

Price: $2.50 onwards

Conclusion: Other stalls have beaten this stall for sure in many ways. Could be due to the lack of competition but to be fair, that market has a lot of good food so that might make it that little hard for them to excel. My bowl of Bak Chor Mee was a complete let down. This would be the last place I’d consider going for my Bak Chor Mee fix.

Likes: None.

Dislikes: Bak Chor not fine enough. Dumplings too sweet. Soup needs more flavour.

Address		Overall Rating
Chai Chee Minced Meat Noodle Blk 216 #01-64 Bedok North Street 1 630am to 2pm Off every Wed 5pm to 10pm everyday except Mon, Tue and Wed.( The son covering evening time)		Soup: 6/10   Noodles: 7/10   Bak Chor: 5/10   Dumplings: 6/10   Value: 7/10   Overall: 7.75/10

Not so long ago, at Bedok Blk 511 Market And Food Centre, there used to be 2 stalls selling Bak Chor Mee in the morning. One stall is called ABC Bak Chor Mee(or something similar) while the other stall(which is the only one there now) is called Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian.

For those who remember, ABC Bak Chor Mee used to be on the left side of the front row and just situated beside the pau stall. They also used to sell Mee Siam and the cook was an ah hia with a thick moustache and he always walks around in the fishmonger boots. Ring a bell? In my opinion, that was the better Bak Chor Mee stall of the 2 in those days. Their bowl of Bak Chor Mee also used to have that slurpy good effect and their Bak Giao aka dumplings were to die for. Unfortunately sometime back, for some reasons, they decided to close shop and so now the only Bak Chor Mee stall standing at Bedok Blk 511 is Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian. If anyone happen to see a ABC Bak Chor Mee somewhere, let me know ok?

Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian is not my favourite Bak Chor Mee stall in the past because I thought their soup had too much of that ikan bilis taste. Not a fan of that taste, so I seldom eat at this stall though I do know of people who rave about soup. It all depends whether you love or loathe the taste of the ikan bilis stock.

Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian’s Bak Chor Mee

For $2.50 here, you get a mixture of meatballs and bak giaos in your bowl though I requested to have a pure bak giao version. The giao was good though seemed a little small. The noodles in my bowl had very good QQness and seemed to be on par with Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian, which I liked a lot. Another thing I liked about this Bak Chor Mee is the minced pork is very finely grinded. The doneness of the minced meat is also good and it’s floating around sporadically, which is how I like my bowl of Bak Chor Mee to be but yet the taste of the soup spoilt it for me. If only the soup can have lesser of that ikan bilis taste and also less salty. This could had displaced Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian in overall score if they can get the flavour of the soup to be more balanced.

It wasn’t ’slurpy good’ unfortunately, instead, that common ikan bilis stock which you even can produce at home by boiling ikan bilis in water spoils my bowl of Bak Chor Mee.

Price: $2.50

Conclusion: Terrific in some ways but entire bowl was fatally spoilt by the soup. Not enough sweetness and overuse of ikan bilis in the soup mean it had that ’salty ikan bilis’ taste which is commonly found in many other soup. Not how I like my Bak Chor Mee’s soup to smell like. If you’re a fan of ikan bilis stock, maybe this will score very well for you.

Likes: Noodles had good QQness. Minced meat was very well mixed in the soup. Dumplings push the score up a little.

Dislikes: Soup had too much of the ikan bilis smell. A little too salty. Dumpling is quite small.

Address		Overall Rating
Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian 添南兴肉脞面 Bedok North Blk 511 Food Centre St 3 #01-10 Morning: 630am to 1pm Evening: 630pm to 1am		Soup: 5/10   Noodles: 8/10   Bak Chor: 8/10   Dumplings: 7/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 7.5/10

At Bedok Blk 85 Fengshan Market & Food Centre, it took 20 years to reach 3 stalls of Bak Chor Mee. Now probably because the growth was span over 20 odd years at Bedok Blk 85 Fengshan Market & Food Centre therefore Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian( the original stall) is still able to attract the bulk of the customers.

Ah Poh Meat Noodles at Bedok Blk 85 Fengshan Market & Food Centre seems to be attracting the odd Bak Chor Mee customer only. This stall is actually open by the younger sister of the owner of Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian(stall no 7 ). They also serve only the soup version and I read somewhere that says they have dumplings if you request for it though when I asked, they told me they don’t have dumplings aka Bak Giao.

I was told by a friend(who always visits this stall) that the original seller from Stall no 7 is actually now working at this stall though when I asked the man who was taking orders at the front of the stall, he kindly told me that this stall is open by the sister of the original seller and even asked me to go to stall no 7 if I want the original one.

Bak Chor Mee from Ah Poh Meat Noodles

My bowl of Bak Chor Mee from Ah Poh Meat Noodles is slightly different from the other 2 stalls( Xing ji and Seng Hiang). The noticeable difference is the Bak Chor is not that finely grinded and the soup is a lot saltier though for my friend who always ate at this stall, it has the best soup for her. The soup does have that bit more punch(though saltier too) but it left me a little thirsty after finishing up the bowl so that’s a minus point at the end of the day.

My noodles’ QQness was ok but the minced meat’s doneness was too ‘well done’ and so it had big chunks all over the bowl. Ah Poh Meat Noodles’ Bak Chor Mee is not refined enough for me and infact a little dull. It didn’t produce that slurpy good effect that I had with the other 2 stalls. This stall is probably good for those who likes their food to be that little saltier, otherwise the way I look at it, they’ve got it all wrong at the very basics.

Price: $2.50

Conclusion: Possibly the least points scored for authenticity so far. Eating the Bak Chor Mee at this stall gives me the feeling that the quality control can be improved. Didn’t make me yearning for more but left me quite thirsty at the end. If you like saltish food, this will probably wins your vote.

Likes: None.

Dislikes: Nothing special about this bowl of Bak Chor Mee. Also come with 5 meatballs – if they have dumplings then it might score some points. The noodles, minced meat and soup failed to complement each other well. Too saltish.

Address		Overall Rating
Ah Poh Meat Noodles Blk 85 Bedok North St 4 #01-245 Fengshan Market & Food Centre 6pm to 4am		Soup: 6/10   Noodles: 7/10   Bak Chor: 7/10   Meatballs: 7/10   Value: 7/10   Overall: 7.5/10

Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian(stall no 7 ) and Seng Hiang Food Stall(stall no 8 ) at Fengshan Market & Food Centre in particular are just like International Food Stall and Mizzy’s Corner at Changi Village. They are not only selling similar food and having similar taste, they are also operating very close to each other in the market.

There are even rumours that the 2 Bak Chor Mee stalls at Fengshan Market & Food Centre have the same suppliers for their ingredients and also, when one stall runs out of ingredients, they just go to the other stall to borrow. There are also rumours that International Food Stall and Mizzy’s Corner borrow chicken wings from each other when the need comes. If that’s the case, it definitely make people in the queue look silly since they can buy the same thing without queueing at the other stall.

When I was there, Seng Hiang Food Stall(the one beside no 7 the original stall) definitely had a shorter queue and the waiting time was only 5 mins while Xing Ji tooked almost 20 mins. Seng Hiang’s Bak Chor Mee is very very similar to Xing Ji’s Bak Chor Mee. I am suspecting they are not only sharing the same suppliers for ingredients but their recipes too. From the soup to the bak chor(minced meat) to the noodles, it was 99% similar. My bowl of Bak Chor Mee was as slurpy good as the bowl from Xing Ji. The only slight difference is that the noodles don’t seem to be as QQ aka al dente, but I can understand that it’s not possible to get the same level of QQness all the time.

Seng Hiang Food Stall’s Bak Chor Mee

Another thing is Seng Hiang Food Stall has a dry version though I don’t recommend you to try it if you’re coming all the way from Jurong because of the simple fact that the dry version is not what Bedok’s Bak Chor Mee is all about.

All in all, the differences if any, are quite negligible. For $2.50, you get the same bowl of slurpy good noodles that has no dumplings but 5 meatballs. So if at Bedok Blk 85 Fengshan Market & Food Centre, you’re wondering which stall to order your Bak Chor Mee from, go to no 7(Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian) if you care about eating from the original stall or go to no 8(Seng Hiang Food Stall) if you care about having a shorter waiting time.

Price: $2.50

Recommendation: $2.50 soup version though they have dried ones too but order at your own risk because I was told lesser than 1% of the customers eat the dry version there.

Conclusion: Bowl of Bak Chor mee was shiokadodoly similar to stall no 7(the original stall). For some reasons, most people still head to no 7. Indeed in the past, whenever my friends asked me which one should they order from, I always point to no 7. But you’ll be surprised that when I went around the market talking to other hawkers, a few of them told me they prefer no 8 though I’m suspecting that they just dread the long waiting time which indeed looks quite unnecessary.

Likes: Nice balance of the noodles, minced meat and soup were having similar hits on my umami as those I had from stall no 7(Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian).

Dislikes: Noodles seemed not as spongy compared to stall no 7 but the fantastic combination of the soup and minced meat more than make up for that lack of slight QQness.

Address		Overall Rating
Seng Hiang Food Stall Blk 85 Bedok North St 4 #01-08 Fengshan Market & Food Centre 5pm to 3am Tel: 9018 9846		Soup: 8.5/10   Noodles: 7.5/10   Bak Chor: 8.5/10   Meatballs: 7/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 7.5/10

In Fengshan Market & Food Centre at Blk 85 Bedok North St 4, there are currently 3 stalls of Bak Chor Mee. 2 of the stalls are operating side by side at the outer row of the market while the other stall is somewhere in the middle row.

Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian and famously known as the no 7 stall at Fengshan Market & Food Centre is infact the first stall to sell Bak Chor Mee in the market. I remember my father brought me to have my first bowl of Bak Chor Mee when I was about 7 or 8 years old and it was from this stall. Back then, no 8(which is also a Bak Chor Mee stall now) was not a Bak Chor Mee stall but a you char kway cum hum chee peng stall.

Sometime around the mid 90s, the you char kway seller quitted and someone took over the no 8 stall and renamed it as Seng Hiang Food Stall and starts selling Bak Chor Mee. About 2-3 years ago, another Bak Chor Mee stall, Ah Poh Meat Noodles opened somewhere inside the market. So you see, for people who are virgin Bak Chor Mee eaters, they can be spoilt for choice but yet, coming all the way here to have a Bak Chor Mee experience, surely you wouldn’t want to go to the imitation one right? So if that’s the case for you, remember by heart that the original stall is at no 7 and is called Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian.

I haven’t been whacking Bak Chor Mees for many years and I realised a few things have changed at Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian. First, they no longer serve those pork dumplings aka Bak Giao. Bak Giao consists of nothing more than marinated meat with some grinded dried sole fish and it’s more towards the saltish side more than anything else. If you ask me, Bak Giao is a die die must have ingredient in a bowl of Bak Chor Mee because it’s one of those things that I used to look forward to fishing out of the bowl. It’s just like if I were to remove the mutton from your murtabak, what would you have with? Just a kosong prata right? And so wouldn’t mutton is a die die must have thing in a murtabak?

Unfortunately Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian sellers do not agree. They’ve removed the Bak Giao from their Bak Chor Mee for at least a few years already and instead, your bowl of Bak Chor Mee for $2.50 comes with 5 meatballs. Meatballs are great too but somehow it cannot replace Bak Giao for me. Of course I can understand the removal of Bak Giao, making Giaos is a labour intensive and time consuming process and in the past, they probably had to allocate 1 or 2 staffs to do nothing all day long but wrapping Giaos. However I’m just wondering why haven’t they thought of passing the recipe of the Bak Giao to dumpling’s manufactuers and outsouce the work to them, I mean I don’t think it would be any more expensive than buying meatballs and that will surely keep many eaters happy. So are there any Bak Chor Mee sellers or dumpling’s manufacturers listening?

Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian’s Bak Chor Mee

My bowl of Bak Chor Mee from Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian came and you know what? I finished it in record time of I think around 3 to 4 min. I must mention that I was not that hungry if you’re thinking that way. It’s just that the whole bowl was just so damn slurping good. The noticeable thing about Bak Chor Mee from Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian is that it doesn’t come piping hot. It is warm and seem to have the right warmness. It was hot but yet not enough to burn my tongue. The noodles had that superb QQ texture but yet had a good warmness for you to keep eating it without the need to stop. The minced meat was finely grinded and was sporadically floating around the soup and what seriously impressed me was that minced meat blended extremely well with the soup and noodles. It seems cooked to the perfect doneness, had a hinge of sweetness but yet not too much. The flavours were just so even that it kept me going on and on. And that’s what I did, I slurped away the bowl in record time to the very last drop of the soup.

Any food that you have finished eating but yet still makes you yearning for more is good food. Any food that gives you the ‘jerlad’ or any other bad aftertaste is not a good food. Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian’s Bak Chor Mee reminds me of how a good bowl of Bak Chor Mee should be and I definitely did not get this slurping good feeling while eating those 2 stalls at Bedok Blk 58.

Price: $2.50 onwards

Recommendation: $2.50 version

Conclusion: This stall has a revenue of $65K a month so that obviously tells you something. It’s a pity dumplings are no longer served but the overall combination of the noodles, minced meat and soup blew me away. It reminded me of how a bowl of Bak Chor Mee should taste after eating so many lousy ones elsewhere. The authenticity about Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian is surprisingly not in the flavour but how other things all complemented each other so well. The doneness of the minced pork stimulated my appetite and the warmness of the soup was just hot enough for me to slurp it away. And from memory it was like that too in the past. Fabulously balanced!

Likes: Right warmness, not too hot and not too cold. Minced meat was fine and tasted quite shiok due to the right doneness, though doesn’t seems to be marinated but it was really quite shiok still.

Dislikes: No dumplings. If they had great dumplings too then there would definitely be no horse run! Though I can see now it might take a lot for other horses to beat this.

Address		Overall Rating
Xing Ji Rou Cuo Mian Blk 85 Bedok North St 4 #01-07 Fengshan Market & Food Centre 5pm to 2am Tel :9835 7884		Soup: 8.5/10   Noodles: 8/10   Bak Chor: 8.5/10   Meatballs: 7/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 7.5/10

However a lot of bosses rely on their cooks or kitchen hands for that task and I can understand that part because the boss can never do everything. But indirectly you’ll be letting your staffs gaining the control and it may all come to a point where a staff’s performance is not that productive but yet he is too precious to be sacked because you need to depend on him for something.

In that situation, what would you do?

Well we all have heard stories of staffs, after learning how to run the entire kitchen, come out to strike on their own. These stories are of course real and indeed we have a case in New Upper Changi Road Blk 58 Market & Food Centre.

The cook behind the operation of Li Fa Rou Cuo Mian at New Upper Changi Road Blk 58 Market & Food Centre is a disciple of 58 Minced Meat Mee. Being an apprentice there for many many years, he of course has enough knowledge to run a stall by himself. From what I’ve heard, the split was due to some minor squabbles which escalated to become a ‘divorce’ case.

Though both stalls are literally ‘back to back’ against each other in the market, the customers are obviously all heading for the original stall still. When I was at Li Fa Rou Cuo Mian and it was during a lunch time, there was no queue and the odd customer appears every now and then.

They have exactly the same modus operandi with price starting from $2 with no dumplings to $3 with extra dumplings. The noodles here are ‘upsized’ further in terms of that ‘pong pong’ effect to almost zero QQ(al dente) texture. This further guarantees no misses and 200% hits if you’re not taking the chance for undercooked noodles.

Li Fa Rou Cuo Mian Bak Chor Mee

The dumplings are not as huge though the flavour of the dumpling’s fillings are distinctively similar. Not hard to imagine the seller wrapping a few thousand dumplings in the past for 58 Minced Meat Mee. The soup had that same level of saltiness or you can call it ‘flavour’. What however is better at this stall is the minced meat seems to be grinded finer though it’ll be hard to fish out a decent piece of minced meat clot together in the soup unlike 58 Minced Meat Mee. It was scattered all over in the soup and I didn’t managed to find a decent good lump. Can be a good thing or bad thing, depending on your preference.

At Bedok Blk 58, if you’re dreading queues but still yearn for a bowl of Bak Chor Mee, Li Fa Rou Cuo Mian should be able to offer you a good bowl. Probably 90% there in terms of duplicating that authenticity but it’s clear that in some little ways, he has not yet mastered the finer details to become a 100% copycat so it still loses out to 58 Minced Meat Mee in one way or another. That’s probably the reason why those in the queues at 58 Minced Meat Mee are still not heading this way.

Price: $2, $2.50, $3 ($2 without dumplings)

Recommendation: $2.50 version

Conclusion: Almost there but still not effective in attracting people from 58 Minced Meat Mee’s queue. It’ll probably take a while before Li Fa Rou Cuo Mian can shake off that ‘ex apprentice’ image of 58 Minced Meat Mee. If they can survive long enough to wait for that day, I’m sure it won’t be long before people going to New Upper Changi Road Blk 58 Market & Food Centre and wondering why it also has 2 stalls selling Bak Chor Mee with similar taste just like the those 2 side by side stalls at Block 85 Market And Food Centre.

Likes: The mince meat is finer and scattered which is very similar to what I always had at those stalls at Block 85 Market And Food Centre.

Dislikes: Dumplings smaller and the noodles too much ‘pong pong’.

Address		Overall Rating
Li Fa Rou Cuo Mian New Upper Changi Road Blk 58 Market & Food Centre Blk 58 #01-168 7am-2pm		Soup: 7.5/10   Noodles: 6.5/10   Bak Chor: 7.5/10   Dumplings: 7.5/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 7.5/10

If you’re staying in the west side, I can feel your anguish over the need to travel so far just to eat this simple but authentic food, but however, if you die die must come all the way to have a Bak Chor Mee experience, then this Bak Chor Mee eight-part series(12 parts in the end) that I’m going to write can help you to decide which stall to go.

For those who doesn’t know, this style of Bak Chor Mee is actually a family business and most of the owners are related in one way or another. I’m not exactly sure how close they are but I have heard of things like this seller is the brother of the wife of that seller or this seller used to be working in that stall, etcetera etcetera.

These Bak Chor Mee stalls are all in Bedok except 1 stall(that’s the only one out of Bedok as far I know) which I will reveal in one part of this series.

All these Bak Chor Mee stalls are not only having different operating hours, their taste somewhat are also different as they have evolved along the years. Some have dumplings while others only have meatballs. Dried version of Bak Chor Mee are not what they’re famous for but yet some stalls do have it and is actually quite authentic too. With all these differences, it can be confusing even for me, deciding which stall to eat or what to order.

So once and for all, the Bak Chor Mee’s moment of truth will be revealed as I visit all the stalls to find out what’s actually going on in every stalls.

At Blk 58(not a typo error), 58 Minced Meat Noodle has been around for a long long time. When I was staying at Bedok long long long time ago, my dad used to patronise this stall for his Bak Chor Mee fix. Today he still goes to this stall for it. My first impression is that this stall looks quite authentic. The signboard looks old fashion and has no graphics. They still don’t have a proper brand and still identify itself using the Blk number. When after you placed your order, they’ll proceed to retrieve a bowl of cut chili and fish sauce and put on your table. Smacks of very old school way kind of serving if you know what I mean.

The person perfecting the bowl of Bak Chor Mee for you inside the stall 20 years ago is still the same person perfecting it for you today. You have guessed it right if you’re thinking he should be quite old by now. Indeed he looked almost something like 65 but he is still taking charge of the main operation inside with what looked like his son and daughter helping out at the front.

My dad says he liked this stall because the soup is Si Bei Tok Kong(super shiok!). I found that they seem to have marinated their bak chor that came in the soup and so making the soup that little saltier and that in turn seemed to produce more flavour. The dumplings are huge and fresh(wrap on the spot) though 1 of it did became loose. So there’s still a tradeoff for it to be freshly wrapped since it may not have time for the skin to stick together so for that, you gotta see your luck.

58 Minced Meat Mee’s Bak Chor Mee

Cut chili and fish sauce

This stall still has a $2 version if you are looking to spend economically though there is a catch. There are no dumplings in the $2 version. Unlike other Bak Chor Mee I’ve eaten, their noodles are slightly thicker and are not served ‘al dente’ aka QQ. Here it seems to spend more time in the water and it’s that tad softer and pong pong(expanded).

The Bak Chor also seems to be ‘rougher’ and not finely grinded so you can really fish out a big chunk somewhere in the bowl and you can instantly feel the marinating flavour in it. This is what make the soup more ‘pang’(flavoursome) I think.

58 Minced Meat Noodle come across as more authentic than other Bak Chor Mee stalls that I’ve eaten. The normal taste slightly deviates a little and if you’re a regular at Blk 85, you definitely can tell the difference. The noodles and the dumplings are also distinctly different but that’s a good thing. It’s the biggest dumplings I’ve eaten from any Bak Chor Mee stalls and the noodles are at least guaranteed cooked whereas I’ve eaten Bak Chor Mee at other stalls that was too ‘al dente’ because the cook obviously ‘miscued’. The quality of dumpling is their strength and the minced meat seem to make the soup more ‘pang’ though also saltier.

This stall opens at around 6am till mid afternoon around 2-3pm. The morning will require a wait of about 20 to 30 mins unless you can be there before 7am. If you’re going at lunch time, be prepared to wait for 1 hour because all these years my dad had been waiting for 1 hour without fail.

Price: $2, $2.50, $3 ($2 without dumplings)

Recommendation: $3 version. You get about 7-8 dumplings and it has huge fillings inside therefore it’s extremely value for money!

Conclusion: May need that bit of getting used to if you’re familiar with that authenticity at Blk 85 but it is definitely good in it’s own way and at the very least, their dumplings will make you realise that you’ve been eating lousy dumplings from elsewhere. Though I’m more used to my soup being that bit more bland but this definitely is quite authentic and the bak chor flavour is definitely better here.

Likes: Dumpling is huge. Soup has more flavour(or saltier, depends how you perceive it). Bak Chor is marinated to a good flavour.

Dislikes: Noodles are soft. Noodles with that QQ texture are always the best though I’ve experienced equal no of hits and misses so if you dread misses, then this will surely and definitely offers you 100% hits!

Address		Overall Rating
58 Minced Meat Mee New Upper Changi Road Blk 58 Market & Food Centre Blk 58 #01-151 630am-2pm Off on Monday		Soup: 8/10   Noodles: 7/10   Bak Chor: 7/10   Dumplings: 8/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 7.5/10

It’s also the same reason why authenticity of Singapore’s food had been deteriorating. As we all know, due to our competent government, we have a good education system and so a lot of us have the chance to improve our literacy. In a city environment where there are many more opportunities than say a kampong, it’s no wonder a lot of us are out looking for something more lucrative, and so a lot of food businesses are dying a slow death, with no takeovers and disappearing too is the authenticity. But that doesn’t mean that there are fewer and fewer foodstalls in the market, it’s just that we are having more ’startups’ and these newbies have to start from scratch and food authenticity is something that takes time to build, well imagine that happening in a large scale? So that’s how Singapore’s food is not as delicious as Malaysia’s food, make sense?

When we talk about authentic, then it must be the kind of food that has their own flavour which is something you cannot get anywhere else other than that particular stall. Bedok’s Bak Chor Mee or Changi Villages’ Nasi Lemak is a obvious case of authentic food. So when I was told about this Cheng Tng stall at Bedok Corner being authentic, I was left wondering ‘How much more authentic it can get since Cheng Tng means ‘Clear Soup’ in Mandarin and whether will it be authentic until ‘not that clear’ ?

Yue Lai Xiang Cheng Tng has been around since 1939. This stall sure looks authentic. They still use old kind of signboard with a dull red background instead of those modern ones that has all kind of patterns on it. The long queue is a testament to it’s authenticity, well it looks like it. The price starts from $1.50 and moves up to $3 for the special version. That stroked my curiosity and has me wondering whether should I go for the $3 version since coming all the way here for this, I must try the best of the best right? Alas I didn’t, after looking at their display racks and found that the ingredients aren’t exactly something that can whack my umami hard. I mean things like dried persimmon, white fungus or sago isn’t exactly something that I really like eating and I can imagine my $3 special Cheng Tng coming with loads on it and so immediately my mind rings a “NO! NO! NO!”.

Sago, sweet potato, barley & persimmon.

Cheng Teng.

Mine came and I took my first spoonful. I allowed the Cheng Tng to swim around my mouth so as to feel the level of authenticity in the flavour. Alas it tasted very normal. I found my first spoonful and subsequent spoonfuls tasted so normal that I felt like drinking some syrup water. The more noteworthy thing is that it tasted slightly sweeter than any other Cheng Tng I’ve had. Inside were miscellaneous ingredients you can find in any other Cheng Tng like white fungus, dried barley, gingo nuts, sweet potato, sago, dried longan and extra ingredients were dried persimmon and something else that looked like dried winter melon which was extremely sweet. The sagos were huge though as bland as anything without flavour. The whole bowl is sweeter but that’s about it. This bowl of Cheng Teng seems to thrives on people’s unfathomable inability to tell the difference between shiok food and sweet food. Well at least that looks like it.

Sweet potato and dried winter melon strip.

Dried persimmon.

This stall sure looks authentic but impression is one thing and facts another. This is just another Cheng Tng for me unfortunately. But all is not lost yet though – that is, if you are into preserved sweet stuffs then you might have more faith in this stall. But this definitely doesn’t worth my $2 and this Cheng Tng can be fantastic or shiokadodo to anybody but disappointing for me. Distinct lack of depth in flavour of the soup mean that this isn’t something that’s going to worth my time again. Another bowl of Cheng Tng from somewhere for $1 with ‘upsized’ syrup might just duplicate this.

Price: $1.50 – $3

Recommendation: $1.50 version

Conclusion: Just another Cheng Tng. Did not quite hit the spot for me though the queue was long. I’m half suspecting they’re relying a lot on regular customers. Uses canned ingredients and some of it in the soup are ultra sweet. If you have a sweet tooth, this surely can make you shiok.

Likes: The sweet potato tasted fresh.

Dislikes: Ingredients are too sweet. Soup not enough pandan leaves flavour. Sago tasteless and too big.

Address		Overall Rating
Yue Lai Xiang Cheng Tng Bedok Corner Food Centre Stall 31 Off on Mondays		Food: 6/10   Value: 6/10   Service: 6/10   Ambience: 6/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.5/10

For food like Hk style French Toast, it makes absolute sense to pay $3.50 for it when you would need a lot of oil for the whole toast to be fried at home and then you have to crack your brain thinking how not to waste the oil afterwards.

Joo Chiat Chiap Kee’s Mee Pok Tah has been around for a long time in Bedok Blk 216 market. It is one of those stalls in the market that has super long queues during meal times and of course, like all stalls having long queues, there is a good reason. Chiap Kee do not believe in outsourcing their fishballs and so makes their own. A family run business since 1965(according to the signboard), not only their fishballs are fantastic, their chili is seriously good too. There is a lot of sambal taste in it and it can create this super delicious ‘chopstick’ licking good effect when mixed with all other ingredients(pork lards, onions etc) in your bowl of Mee Pok Tah.

Clearly this is one of those stalls that still prefers to stand out from the crowd by delivering authentic food. The fishballs here are small in size though big in flavour. It is full of that fresh fish taste and does not possess that ‘factory’ spongy texture. I am not a big fan of fishballs so I got them to change to meatballs and her giaos(fish dumpling) instead and it came in something like 5 meatballs and 5 her giao in the soup. I don’t know about you but for $2.50 I’ll grab that anytime!

Kuay Teow Tah Geh Hiam $4

Pure meatballs and her giao

Price: $2.50 onwards

Recommendation: Kuay Teow Tah

Conclusion: The special thing here is their non ‘factory’ made fishballs. Meat balls and Her Giaos to go too for $2.50 is an extremely good deal there. But the chili is power too so personally for me, it takes a lot to beat this stall interms of value. Go for pure meatballs or her giao version and I’m sure you’ll be left wondering why are they not charging you $4 for it!

Likes: Fishball is good. Not stingy with ‘liao’(ingredients) and of course the power chili!

Dislikes: Would be good if the soup can be that bit more ‘pang’. Maybe a bit of minced pork in it can do the trick!

Address		Overall Rating
Joo Chiat Chiap Kee Bedok North Blk 216 Hawker Centre #01-31 Closed on Wednesdays		Food: 8/10   Value: 9/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.5/10

I remember when I was first introduced to Ayam Penyet, I was left thinking “What’s the difference between this and Nasi Ayam?” To me it is almost the same thing. From the rice to the chicken to the cucumbers to the soup. After eating it, it is indeed Nasi Ayam though it did came on some kind of wooden plate with noticeable more chili but that’s about it, what do you guys think?

I did mentioned that while touring Jakarta, Bali and Bandung few months back, I did not come across a single Ayam Penyet stall there and the closest thing was something called the Ayam Kremes. And the other interesting thing is that the Ayam Goreng(fried chicken) that I ate there came with the crispy bits that we see in Ayam Penyet here. So that seriously left me wondered whether is this Ayam Penyet a real thing or some kind of food that’s invented or tweaked to serve the local taste. I’m sure if you guys been to European countries and saw the Asian food there, you would had a good laugh about it. So whenever I see a Ayam Penyet, half my thoughts were also imagining Indonesians coming here and having a good laugh over it. Well if you don’t believe me, try google for Ayam Penyet and see whether will you or will you not land on Singapore blogs and websites.

Penyet is seriously the right name to use for whatever flatten food they’re trying to sell. For those who don’t know, Penyet means ‘Flatted’. Yet at the same time ‘PENYET’ does sound like ‘BIAN YE!’ which is also mean ‘FLATTED’ in Mandarin. Now if this name was newly invented by any Indonesian guy because they want to make us pay for Indonesian’s brand of flatted food, then he has absolutely got it right!

Indonesian 8 is a stall selling Indonesian food at Bedok Food Centre(Bedok Corner). I was told by a good friend that this is a rather famous Indonesian stall and their Satay Power is to die for though on this occasion I had the Ayam Penyet. Not impressed by my past experiences of eating Ayam Penyet elsewhere, I wanted to see how far better it can gets.

Ayam Penyet with ikan keropok on top.

Soup with rice.

The power sambal chili with tofu and tempeh at the back.

It arrived in style with Ikan keropok covering all over the wooden plate. I thought the chicken didn’t looked very appetising but it tasted a lot better. The goreng was good and wasn’t very ‘herby’ unlike those I’ve had in Indonesia and it was extremely crispy because it went into the deep fryer again before being flatten. Beneath the chicken and the keropok was sambal chili which was one of the best I’ve had. And what surprisingly greeted me was 2 pieces of freshly fried Tofu and a big piece of Tempeh(fermented soybeans in cake form) which provided a timely distraction from the chicken and keropok. The soup that came with it was equally good. It had a strong Ayam Soto flavour and went really well with the rice which had a whiff of the coconut milk. All of that for $3.80, it definitely went up a notch for me compared to my past Ayam Penyet makan experiences.

Price: $3.80

Recommendation: Ayam Penyet

Conclusion: The authenticity is there with the tempeh, tofu and keropok as evidence. It’s very similar to how Ayam Kremes are being served in Jakarta.

Likes: Authentic flavour.

Dislikes: Wish the chicken can be that little more juicy though I must admit that it’s much better than those chicken that I’ve eaten in Jakarta.

Address		Overall Rating
Indonesian 8 Stall no 8 Bedok Food Centre Bedok Corner 469572		Food: 6/10   Value: 6/10   Service: 6/10   Ambience: 5/10   Cleanliness: 5/10   Overall: 7.25/10

Wanton Mee Dry

Wanton Mee Soup

Price:$2.50 and above

Recommendation: Soup version of Wonton Mee

Conclusion: Not what my favourite Wonton Mee should be but yet this is one of the more popular ones. The dumplings were quite good. The dried version isn’t the best but definitely quite good. The flavours were well balanced. Not my favourite but probably one of my top 10.

Likes: The dumpling and the soup.

Dislikes: Sauce and chili shiokadodo no enough.

Address		Overall Rating
Tong Aik Wanton Noodle Tong Aik Wanton Noodle Bedok North Street 3 Block 511 Market 01-09 Tel: 90694141		Food: 7/10   Value: 7/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 6/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10

As a matter of fact, ‘Outsourcing’ exists in many areas of our lives. Long long time ago, our forefathers were still catching their own fishes and growing their own greens. Then barter trade became effective because it makes sense to concentrate on developing specific skills. When there is a need to make something a benchmark of value, gold standard was invented and so that’s how this era has developed into a currency world.

Quality unfortunately is offsetted in many cases of outsourcing when emphasis is being placed on delivering value more than anything else and so mediocreness became rampant as is the case with mass produced food. Yet for many hawkers, the risks derive from outsourcing are hard to be quantified because they are only doing small scale businesses.

So that is why stalls that still make their own ingredients like fishballs, noodles or carrot cakes are really a gem in the eyes of many customers. Do you guys think some hawkers who die die must make their own ingredients have that little more passion in delivering quality food? Or do you think they actually care more about earning that few bucks more? The truth is most of the time, these hawkers who choose to produce their own ingredients really do have a certain amount of authenticity in their food, at least the diluted flavour which is so commonly found in factory made ingredients is not visible. So what do you guys think? For passion or for more profit?

But however to be fair, certain factory produced ingredients do have some standard and still can be quite shiok. Take for example ingredients like carrot cake, sometimes I do wonder how much better can carrot cake gets since it’s just still the cake of the carrot and also a plate of carrot cake is not all that cake of the carrot that matters but how the seller fries it. And also for food like Char Kway Teow, does it not matters more of how the seller fries it than the quality of noodles or kway teow per se?

This carrot cake stall at Bedok Blk 511 is renting a small space from an evening Cze Char stall to sell carrot cake in the morning because a Cze Char stall obviously doesn’t open in the morning. I do notice that this kind of partnership is becoming more and more popular where stalls are also ‘outsourcing’ their space for their lull period. This kind of arrangement must be a good thing for customers because utilising stalls in this way can infact decrease the overheads for hawkers and lets hope that all these savings are passed on to consumers – fingers crossed!

Now it’s probably for this reason that this particular stall is still selling chai tow kway from $1.50! Forget about the quality, it’ll be hard enough to find a plate of any food for $2 nowadays ok? But yet this stall is dishing out one of the best dark chai tow kway from $1.50, isn’t that a very fantastic deal? Dark chai tow kway is not all about putting the dark soy sauce into the wok only but the timing and the wetness is extremely important. For me this stall has got it right because they actually take the effort to fry the carrot cake till a little crispy before adding the right amount of water and dark soy sauce to form this fantastic texture that can go very very well with your prawn noodle soup or bak chor mee soup. Absolutely a must spend $1.50 if you want to have a fulfilling breakfast in this hawker centre.

Price: $1.50 onwards

Conclusion: This carrot cake is one of the cheapest but yet one of the better ones around. Simply can’t ask for more!

Likes: Crispy and sweet enough.

Dislikes: Would be good if it can go a little more wet.

Address		Overall Rating
Somewhere in Bedok Blk 511 Market		Food: 7/10   Value: 7/10   Service: 8/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10

For a brief period in my life, I was actually stocking up slabs of pork, beef or lamb(chops or ribs) by the dozens. Now if you have lived in any Western countries, you would realised that for some reasons it is actually cheaper to cook Western meals than Asian’s. Say if you want to make a plate of Hokkien Mee or Hor Fun, first you have to buy the mee or hor fun, then you have to buy the ingredients like seafood, fishcakes, spring onions, beansprouts or vegetables. Due to higher material cost in Western countries and possibly smaller customer base, these ingredients unfortunately needed very high markups to keep the business going.

And what’s worse is most stores over there are packaging these ingredients in bulk, meaning gone are the reality where you pay 30cent for a handful of beansprouts, instead you have to buy $2 beansprouts or whole big bunch of spring onions even if you only need just a small amount. If you’re thinking that you can keep those ingredients for other meals, that’s only half true. The fact is ingredients like mee, hor fun, beansprouts, spring onions are perishable goods and so they don’t usually last more than a couple of days.

So unless you don’t mind eating the same hor fun or mee for a couple of days, you are going to have a lot of wastage and chances are you may have to fork out something like $10 to $15 just because you crave for a plate of Hokkien Mee. But yet $10 to $15 can easily get you at least a dozen slabs of pork, beef or lamb in those places. Now even if I can ignore the equation of getting a bigger bang for the buck, unless your father is a Hokkien Mee seller, with that money spent you are still going to produce only a mediocre plate of Hokkien Mee, to put it mildly. So if you need to spend $10 to $15 just because you want a plate of Hokkien Mee, doesn’t it make more sense to trade that money for 10 plates of pork chop instead?

If you’re thinking about the ingredients for the side dishes for your pork chop, then you’ll be glad to know that over there, a 5kg bag of potatoes can be found as cheap as only $2 and other things like cabbage or broccoli are very affordable and so you can really make your own slaws or salads very cheaply. So in a way there’s really no escaping, you really do need to consider eating potatoes when you’re surrounded by people who’s staples are potatoes.

And finally if you don’t know what to do with a slab of pork, just heat up your wok or pan and when it gets hot enough, just sear the pork on it. For first time cookers, you can see for the first time the magical power of the wok or pan turning your raw meat into a piece of delicious pork and you can decide for yourself how charred you want it to be. For the taste, you can use salt and pepper for delicate mild flavour or you can visit your nearest supermarket for those roast gravy powder which you just need to pour warmed water into it to make some fantastic roasted flavoured gravy which you can spread it on your pork. And that might just make you wonder why you have always been paying $5 for it. The value of asian food in western countries unfortunately holds the same truth for western food in asian countries. So you can practically forget about duplicating that same pork chop ‘purchasing power’ when you are back in Singapore.

There seems to be 2 kinds of western food outlets in Singapore. First is the family run business kind where you get a whiff of that authentic flavour which seems to have a culture of it’s own especially in the gravy. Then another kind that has been flooding our markets are something that looked like franchised but yet doesn’t bare any brand names.

The latter would give you some kind of standard flavours which are easily recognisable in many many Western Food stalls. If your eyes are sharp enough, you would even notice that they have similar signboards displaying the same pictures and in most cases, their prices are even the same and they would usually also have a small display counter where there would be a few chicken wings and a few spring chickens staring at you under some spotlights. These look like another Aston Specialities kind of western food franchise business except that I’ve had difficulties trying to find out the brand name. And usually such western food stalls are halal and from memory I’ve even came across one that was setup by a Malay.

Jet Winds Western Food is a family run business and has been around for a long long time. I remember when I was little and was brought out to meals at Bedok 511 Food centre, they always seem to have the longest queue. Their food had that hainanese western food kind of flavour in the gravy if you know what I mean but I’m not exactly sure if the owners are indeed Hainanese.

The pork chop here is quite authentic to me simply because the taste isn’t very ‘factory’ as oppose to many others that can be found in the market nowadays though the side dishes are very common kind like fries, beans and slaws. Very old school kind of western food outlet where taste seems to be derived from traditional ideas more than anything else. Well so it all depends whether you’re a side dishes kind of person, if you are maybe Aston would deserves your thumbs up but otherwise then you’ll be appreciative towards this type of family run business western food.

Price: $5.50

Recommendation: Pork Chop, Prime Sirloin

Conclusion: Traditional and authentic flavoured western food which seems to be vanishing very quickly in the market nowadays. If you care about how western food were served in the past where there wasn’t any franchised ones yet, then this is it for you.

Likes: Authentic flavour especially in the gravy.

Dislikes: Side dishes a little dull.

Address		Overall Rating
Jet Winds Western Food 511 Bedok North Street 3 #01-29. Singapore 460511		Food: 8/10   Value: 7/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10

If you were to sell just 1 kind, your targetted audience will be reduced. If you were to sell more varieties, though you can reach a bigger targetted pool but your quality of food may suffer since you have to spread your concentration among all the food, something akin to ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. So which one is better?

Of course like many other things, there are no absolute answer here. Either situation can turn out good. Mee Pok Tah stalls can make money, Mee Pok cum Hae Mee cum Lor Mee stalls also can make money. Business decisions like this sometime require more than just making the decision. I do wonder will the most successful hawker we can find in the market be also successful if they were to be in another trade, because it is clear that the most successful ones are not those that can only produce delicious food but they can make a lot of right business decisions too.

The fact is whenever I’m in an unfamiliar eating place, I would try to avoid outlets like Char Kway Teow cum Hokkien Mee stall or Chicken Rice cum Western Food kind of stall. Food like Char Kway Teow or Western Food isn’t exactly something that you can have a bad plate and then forget about it. The ‘unhealthiness’ is so great that if I really need to eat one of those high calories meal, I want the best deal possible. And if I were to see a Western Food seller spending half his time chopping chicken, that will undoubtedly make me wonder whether he can give me the best deal.

At first look, Song Chew at Bedok North Street 3 Block 511 Food Centre come across as one of those stalls that are keen to target a big pool of eaters. They sell Lor Mee by day, Char Kway Teow and Laksa by night. Now I already know that their Lor Mee is quite good but yet those kind of food is something people don’t eat at night so they came up with this Char Kuay Teow and Laksa combination at night which I must say is quite mean. One is stir fried and the other is spicy, it’s really one of those combination where you can order one of each and share it with your partner, eat a spoonful of Char Kway Teow and then follow by a spoonful of Laksa soup, slurp!

Now we all know that it is common to see a Hokkien Mee cum Char Kway Teow stall or a Hae Mee cum Mee Pok Tah stall because sellers obviously would like to sell food that has the same cooking method, so they can use the same wok or use the same pot of hot water etc. But yet Song Chew is doing the ultimate! The seller needs to Char the Kway Teow one min and then boil some noodles for Laksa the next. It does seems like he’s doing it for good reasons, so lo and behold I decided to give it a shot.

Absolutely spot on! It was an above average plate of Char Kway Teow which has hits that seem to be quite effective on my umami. There is enough wok hei, enough wetness, enough sweetness and most importantly, enough delicious lards and fresh hums to go around. It is slightly wetter than what I would expect from a Char Kway Teow but it does have it’s own kind of uniqueness and definitely not too far off from being a killer plate. Would be interesting if it had been that little more dry but yet with the same level of wokheiness. This is a rather safe $2.50 spent and I must also say that the photo doesn’t do justice to the taste, it definitely tasted better than how it looked above.

Price: $2.50

Conclusion: You’ll like this if you like your Char Kway Teow to be a little more wet. Though it’s that tad more wet, the wokheiness and sweetness were not compromised.

Likes: Wokeheiness and sweetness comparable to some of the best Char Kway Teow around.

Dislikes: If only it can go that little more dry.

Address		Overall Rating
Song Chew Fried Kway Teow Bedok North Market & Food Centre Blk 511 # 01-34 Bedok North Street 3 Singapore 460511		Food: 7/10   Value: 7/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 6/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10

Hor Fun is one of those food that I eat frequently during those days when I used to whack supper. When I was doing my national service and having to do duties at night, the occasional supper would always be Hor Fun. When I met up with my kakis at kopitiam to la kopi and needed some food to go along, Hor Fun would be ordered. It is really the kind of food that can hit your umami the hardest for $3 in the middle of the night. So from those many nights of Hor Fun whacking, I’m sure you can roughly guess what my Hor Fun credentials are worth.

Fei Lao’s brand of Hor Fun is undisputably the best Hor Fun for me in the $10 bracket. You didn’t read it wrongly, Fei Lao hor fun will cost you $10. Every single time I ordered, they’ll say this to me “It’ll be $10 a pack you know?”. Of course I know. But for those whose jaws are dropping at seeing the price, you’ll be glad to know that you’re getting quite a bit of seafood for the pack. You get something like 5 really fresh king prawns, about another 5 pieces of sea cucumbers, a few big chinese mushrooms and other common ingredients like squid slices, pork slices and generous amount of Choi Sum. All that with a big portion of fantastically charred(wok hei) hor fun.

The funny thing is eventhough I see it as a marvellous $10 spent, somehow I get the feeling that very few people actually agrees with me. Let me tell you why. I have not a single time saw queues forming at this stall. Not even once I ordered have I needed to wait for more than 10 mins for my hor fun. For those who doesn’t know, they have actually shifted a few times around Bedok area and even gone to Joo Chiat area for a while before they shifted back to Bedok area again this year. Now it ain’t rocket science to guess the reason they’ve moved a few times is because business wasn’t too good at those places they were at.

So with such statistics it always make me wondered why don’t they change their business model and do what everyone else is doing and charge $3 for a plate and take away all those premium ingredients. At least that can attract the common eaters who are not looking to spend beyond the market rate and Fei Lao can at the very least steal a lot of hor fun business near the vicinity. The unfortunate thing is not many people know about Fei Lao hor fun and the business depended heavily upon nostalgia customers like myself.

Looking at the way Fei Lao Hor Fun defined itself, I would roughly guess that they will forever going to remain a family run business and if you’re living somewhere in the west or anywhere but the east, I can feel your anguish over the need to actually travel all the way here to just have a plate of hor fun even if it can be a very shiok plate. Just like I feel the same when everyone was talking about this particular brand of Nasi Lemak called Fong Seng somewhere in the west. Even if I’m in need of a Nasi Lemak fix, why would I travel all the way to the west? There are so many good ones in the east and I definitely need a better reason to spend those petrol money.

Regardless, even if you’re staying in the west I’m still going to convince you to come all the way here to eat this. The hor fun here is really really excellent in taste and flavour. I would even venture to say that in terms of wok-heiness, no cantonese hor fun I’ve eaten can match this. We all know how good cantonese hor fun can gets right? So now go figure.

Other than the wok-heiness, the broth that comes with it is really so shiok that if I were to tell you to imagine, then I have to tell you to think superbly wokhei-ed hor fun in the best shark’s fin soup you can find(minus the sharkfin). Now that’s about the best I can describe, you really need to eat it to understand the kind of shiokness level it can be attained.

Fei Lao hor fun has a special place in my heart because it has all the necessary characteristics of a world class Hor Fun. You probably can find a plate to match this taste in some world class restaurant like Tung Lok, I’m not sure. But even if you can find, the price would definitely not be in the $10 bracket. I’m seriously a fan of Cantonese cuisine and if I say no cantonese version of hor fun I’ve eaten can match this then don’t you think that at least once in your lifetime you die die must eat?

Price: $10

Recommendation: Hor Fun eventhough they’re a cze char stall

Conclusion: I don’t think it is easy to get any better than this one. You probably have to pay 3 times more to get just a notch higher.

Likes: The wokheiness and the broth.

Dislikes: Can do without the premium seafood which isn’t a must have ingredients in a plate of terrific hor fun.

Address		Overall Rating
Fei Lao Seafood Blk 86 Bedok North St.4 #01-165 Singapore 460086 Business Hours : 11.00am – 2.00pm and 5.00pm – 10.00pm Tel: 6346 4116 Off:Tuesday		Food: 8/10   Value: 8/10   Service: 8/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10

Somehow their faces gave me the this-thing-is-delicious-ah-sure-or-not kind of look. I don’t blame them, often when I was eating Mee Rebus, I wondered how is this sauce been made. The sauce looked a mix between the common curry and those water from the pail where all the customer’s unfinished soup were poured into it. If not for the familiar ingredients that were sprinkled on top, even for me it really resembles something not too far off from a pranked dish.

Mee Rebus of course didn’t taste like anything that is out to prank people. The gravy infact is quite delicious as we all know. It is as delicious as other muslim food like Mee Siam or Mee Soto but yet in appearance wise, it is well beaten by the other 2.

Come to think of it, have anyone ever wondered that Mee Soto or Mee Siam might be a fusion with other cuisines like maybe Thai or Viet? I’ve tasted something in Thailand that is somewhat very similar to the combination of Mee Soto and Mee Siam. Well it was bee hoon served with plenty of fried onion and chicken minces and it had that familiar Mee Soto taste but with a hint of sourness to represent the Tom Yum flavour and there and then I was thinking “Isn’t this kind of taste, we also have in Singapore which we called MEE SIAM?!”. Well so there you go, there might actually be some connection there for Mee Soto, Mee Siam and Tom Yum but I will bet with all my money that Mee Rebus has nothing to do with cuisines from those places.

For those who haven’t heard of, as to what many people believed, Mee Rebus is a dish from Indonesia. Over there people called it Mi Celor. If you wondered what kind of funny things go into the gravy, it is just curry powder and soya bean. The rest of the taste is up to the seller to tweak but curry powder and soya bean being mixed together unfortunately doesn’t give us that beautiful sight we all like in our food.

I should say that this is one Malay food that must be ‘not very popular’ because we can see Nasi Ayam stalls, Nasi Padang stalls, Mee Siam Stalls but seldom we come across a Mee Rebus stall, right? I think Mee Rebus is the kind of food where the common food sellers can’t foresee how it is going to make them a decent livelihood if they were to just to sell Mee Rebus. And the fact is I don’t know anyone who need a Mee Rebus fix every week or even every month.

So with that kind of situation, it’s no wonder that I’ve ever only eaten Mee Rebus from one stall. Selera Kita, a Mee Rebus stall is situated at Bedok Block 58 market and has been around for a long long time. When I was younger and staying at Bedok, my parents used to only patronise this stall for Mee Rebus. Today my parents are still patronising this stall for their Mee Rebus. And something unusual about this stall is that it’s price is still cap at $1.20 today and for the $2 version, you can really get a jumbo plate.

The queue at Selera Kita is quite legendary around Blk 58 Bedok south as I can’t remember any stalls matching it’s queue whenever I was there in the morning for breakfast. Mee Rebus isn’t exactly one of my favourite food so I only eat it once or twice a year at the very most. I’m sure it’s the same for you guys, right? But however if you’re around Blk 58 Bedok market and are looking to stretch your dollar, then if for $1.20 you can get yellow noodles bath in some kind of addictive gravy that is full of curry and prawn-tinged flavour, you can’t ask for more can you?

Price: $1.20

Conclusion: Since I haven’t eaten many Mee Rebus, I can’t tell if they have long queues because it is cheap or because it is really good. But since they’ve been around for a long time, I give them the benefit of the doubt that they indeed are serving a decent plate at least.

Likes: Thick sauce and full of that prawn flavour.

Dislikes: None.

Address		Overall Rating
Selera Kita Blk 58 New Upper Changi Road #01-182 New Upper Changi Road Hawker Centre S461058		Food: 7/10   Value: 9/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 6/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.25/10