Just like intestines, fish heads can be absolutely sumptuous when cooked right. Take for instance this style of cantonese steamed fish head which is widely sold at Chinatown Complex Food Centre. I can guarantee you there are at least 2 dozens stalls at Chinatown Complex Food Centre selling fish head in this way and all of them have business that could be translated into the equation of them selling 20 to 30 fish heads per night no less. Now can you imagine how many fish heads are actually been sold in just a single night at Chinatown Complex Food Centre?

If like me, you grew up didn’t know how to enjoy fish heads and cannot understand the passion of others who do, and are looking for an opportunity to see whether that barrier can be broken, then today you have hit the nail on the head there because I’m going to introduce to you purportedly the best steamed fish head in the Chinatown Complex Food Centre.

Steamed Fish Head $13

Xing Long Food Stall is a typical Cze Char stall just like any others you can find in Singapore and their signature dishes range from Claypot Tofu to Pai Kuat Wong to Steamed Fish Head and they have been regularly recommended on newspapers, radios and TVs. Well I’ve not yet actually eaten fish heads from a lot of stalls at Chinatown Complex Food Centre to judge the measure of good at Xing Long but for those that I’ve had( around 3-4), Xing Long Food Stall beats them hands down. While other stalls might take ’shortcuts’ like boiling the fish head instead of steaming it, Xing Long Food Stall seriously take all the trouble to steam it. The difference between steaming and boiling is highly distinctive as in steaming, the juice are all kept in the fish head and so the meat maintains a very delicious flavour while boiling would seriously drain the delicious juice away. It’s like prawns are boiled or steamed, you can tell the difference for sure.

Pai Kuat Wong, good cut of the pork!

The sauce in the steamed fish head is what stamped it’s class. I suspect it’s a concoction of nothing more than soya sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil blah blah but it’s clearly very well mixed because every time after I eaten at this stall, I felt like wanting for more! Not once have I ever felt ‘jerlad’ eventhough there were always plenty of lards garnished.

The other dish that we ordered on this occasion was the Pai Kuat Wong. This is seriously good. I’ve not been a big fan of sweet and sour pork but yet I can give good marks for it at this stall. I think a lot of stalls actually uses vinegar to express the sourness but this stall seems to be using ketchups only. The sourness was not too sour and the sweetness wasn’t too sweet. Coupled that splendid blend of taste with the deep fried texture of the pork which are actually pork chops instead of cutlets as is the case with many other cze char places is a sign that Xing Long Food Stall is serious about producing terrific food. And as if that ain’t enough, there was no sign of any bicarbonate soda used, zilch!

Price: $13 for Fish Head and $7 for Pai Kuat Wong. No charge for rice.

Recommendation: Steamed Fish Head cantonese style(must mention cantonese or they’ll do a bean paste one for you instead), Claypot Tofu, Pai Kuat Wong, Oyster Omelette and many others.

Conclusion: Taste is authentic. Quality is good. Price is cheap. It’s a die die must try stall if you care about getting the best bang for your buck in Chinatown Complex Food Centre!

Likes: Authentic flavour of the dishes.

Dislikes: Nothing!

Address		Overall Rating
Xing Long Food Stall Blk 335 Smith St #02-134/161 Chinatown Complex Food Centre		Food: 8/10   Value: 8/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.5/10

Ok now, let me tell you why. First there is the fantastic Chao Ta(charred) bit, then there is the sweetened aroma as a result of the tasty marinated chicken. Then there are other exotic bits and pieces like liver sausages, pork sausages and salted fish and when you dumped them all into the claypot and charcoal fire it, a gratifying fragrance is what beckon.

For those who don’t know, this dish hailed from Guang Dong province in China and was considered a luxury dish in the old days. China, as you all know is very big and populated and so it wasn’t easy to be managed and amidst the political unstability and social neglect for almost 300 years, there was little progress and so food were hard to come by and people had to make do with very simple food like Dou Sha Bao or Tau Sar Pia.

For such simple food, I know it can cost a bit nowadays especially if you were to go to those branded ones, but truly, Tau Sar Piah is something in the past eaten only because people can’t afford anything else though things can change from time to time and from era to era, and as you can see now it is a different picture.

Well but it is a different story for Claypot Rice. In the past, obviously there were no ways to keep meat for long unless people were to wax them and then also to preserve other vegetables, they pickled them and for seafood, of course it was salted.

So all these well preserved ingredients were actually stocked up somewhere until certain festive days, they’ll take everything out and then cook them together. Now basically they threw everything they had together and cooked it with rice. Ok if you’re wondering why chicken ended up in the pot too then it’s probably because once upon a time, someone wanted something more in the pot and so walked over to the yard and saw a few chickens and so just decided to slaughter them and threw them into the pot together with the ingredients. Well I’m sure it’s not hard to imagine that a lot of food we are eating today were evolved in this way.

Ok now, some 300 over years later, I’m at the Chinatown Complex Food Centre sitting here comfortably. I was awaiting for this hawker to make me a pot of this legendary charcoal fired food. While waiting for it to arrive, I can’t help but wondered, how many hawker food are there that actually requires it to be cooked from scratch after a customer ordered. Ok of course there are things like Char Kway Teow and Chai Tao Kuey, but then those kind of food you only need like 5-10 mins to fry while this Claypot would need something like 20mins to 30 mins so that made me wondered how many pot of rice can Claypot Rice sellers actually ‘charcoal’ a day since it’s obvious they can only make only a few in an hour. Say during lunch time, people would be looking at a hush-hush lunch and so they would undoubtedly be looking for something quicker like Zhap Chai Peng(economy rice). So therefore, that justifies the high price we’re paying for this thing called Claypot Rice, agree?

If you are wondering why doesn’t Claypot Rice sellers cook the rice in advance in the claypot and then just chuck the chicken pieces in when a customers order, then let me tell you that you can get this version of Claypot Rice in many places especially at those Claypot Rice stalls at foodcourts. It’ll cost you something like $4-$5 for those kind of Claypot Rice but honestly if you care about quality, even if it is free you must turn that version of Claypot Rice away. I guess you can compare it to if you were to be sold Bak Chor Mee for 50 cent but pre-cooked long before you ordered, you would also rather pay more for a more decent bowl of Bak Chor Mee, right?

Ok now there are many stalls of Claypot Rice in Chinatown Complex Food Centre and it seem like every corner I turned, I can spot one. Of course if you asked those people who are Claypot Rice fanatics, they’ll direct you to a few that are quite popular and from memory, I’ve read about the one that is run by 3 sisters. Well the downside for those popular stalls is that, like all good things, there is a price to pay and usually the waiting time is long because there are very very long queues blah blah.

Sometime back, me and my family were looking to have Claypot Rice once at this hawker centre when it were housed temporarily at Outram. Then, we spotted this stall and thought that it looked pretty decent with son and father running it. Fwah! I tell you, it were to be one of the discoveries of that year!

My father used to bring us to this little lane in Chinatown where there were tables filling up the pathment and then at the side, there must be like 20 to 30 stoves in some kind of makeshift kitchen producing the most authentic Claypot Rice in town.

Now I not only remember those days but also the taste of the Claypot Rice vividly. We all agreed that this stall that is called Yuan Fa Claypot Rice is the nearest thing that can remind us of that Claypot Rice experience we had decades ago.

Claypot rice: 7.5/10  

The best thing about this Claypot Rice is that you get a really really well charcoaled rice at the sides in the way where you can take it all out easily. Now I’ve eaten at quite a few Claypot Rice stalls around the island and trust me when I say that this little bit of charred around the interior of the pot is what can realise the potential of an ultimate Claypot Rice experience but yet so often at other stalls, I found it almost impossible to take those charred bits out, and then even if I were able to force it out, it can hardly be consumed.

The meat at this stall is so well marinated that it has this perfect sweetness permeating through the tenderness. The bits and pieces of sausages and salted fish are those things that you really need to know when to put inside the Claypot. Put in too early and it will turn overcooked and soggy, put in too late and it’ll leave you a raw smell. So this dish has got a lot to do with timing and this person preparing this pot of rice had clearly perfected the art of bringing the best out of those ingredients.

Price: $8 onwards

Conclusion: One of those more authentic ones where the seller still insist on old school method of firing the claypot using charcoal, all by himself. Rice were charred perfectly and were easy to be removed from the interior of the claypot. Chicken was well marinated and had a sweet fragrance. The other tiny bits of ingredients just blended really well with it. A master of the Claypot Rice is what I would call this hawker.

Likes: Rice cooked to almost perfection.

Dislikes: Can be a little too oily.

Address		Overall Rating
Yuan Fa Wa Bao Fan 335 Smith St 02-222 Chinatown Complex Open 1200-2200		Food: 8/10   Value: 7/10   Service: 8/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.5/10