We all know that for mee pok tah(dry fettuccine), the differentiation of ingredients can be broad to levels beyond belief. You can get a mixture of things like pork, prawns, fishballs, fishcakes, bak chor, braised mushrooms, different types of balls, different types of dumplings and so on. It is very common to get 2 fishballs and a few slices of fish cakes for a $3 mee pok tah, so much so that, anything more than that can be considered a BONUS.

Mee Pok Tah $3

Now I am going to tell you about this terrific mee pok tah stall which will give you a LOT of ingredients(seriously a lot!!) for just $3 and not only that, all their ingredients are handmade at the stall and not only that, it is a damn shiokadodoly good bowl of mee pok tah with every ingredients that come in the bowl taste damn shiok!!

Ingredients rack

Hui Ji Fish Ball Noodle cum Yong Tau Fu stall at Tiong Bahru market looks like one of those typical noodle stalls except that when it’s your turn to order, the seller will ask you ‘Yong Tau Fu’ or ‘ Fish Ball’ ?

I’m not sure about the yong tau fu but the fishball bowl is damn power alright! You get 4-5 fishballs, 2 big pieces handmade meatballs(extra shiok!), 2-3 pieces of fish dumplings aka her giao(made in the stall also!), 4-5 pieces of pork slices and plenty of delicious hand made fried fishcakes(super shiok)! It all looked more like a $6 bowl and truth is I would even be happy to pay $6 for it!

Mee Pok Tah $3

The best part of this mee pok tah experience for me is the ingredients which are seriously authentic. The chilli is also shiok and the soup is also shiok! For $3 I don’t know how a bowl of mee pok tah can get any shioker. The only gratitude I can show to Hui Ji Fish Ball Noodle stall is to say shiok shiok shiok many times on my blog. Do yourself this favour, show up at Hui Ji Fish Ball Noodle at Tiong Bahru market and pay them $3. It might just be the best $3 you’d ever spent for any meals. Indeed it was for me.

Mee Pok Tah $3

Price: $3

Recommendation: Fish ball mee pok tah

Conclusion: Super authentic mee pok tah stall. Everything is made at the stall in the morning so you are guaranteed to get the freshest ingredients in your bowl. The amount of ingredients are unbelievable for only $3.

Likes: Authentic. Very shiok. Generous portion.

Dislikes: Nothing.

Address		Overall Rating
Hui Ji Fish Ball Noodles #02-44 30 Seng Poh Road Tiong Bahru Market & Food Centre Time: 6am to 2pm Off : Wednesday		Food: 9.5/10   Authenticity: 9/10   Value: 10/10   Service: 8/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 8.5/10

My dad used to take us to Sin Swee Kee at Seah street for our chicken rice when I was young. It was a pretty run down kopitiam in those days and for me, the only difference that I can tell from other chicken rice is that, it comes with some kind of Hainanese pickles and sweet/thick dark soy sauce. Most tables would also order some kind of barley drink that came in a bottle(not sure if it’s a hainanese thing though).

That’s the furthest adventure of my Hainanese chicken rice. I’m not a fan of boiled chicken skin so you can be sure that in a hawker center, Hainanese chicken rice is one of those Hainanese food that I this Hainanese won’t buy.

Hainanese curry is actually quite similar to Japanese curry in the sense that it is very viscid. And it’s one of the few Hainanese food that you actually cannot find in Hainan. Hainanese in Hainan must be feeling the anguish that something the place is famous for, they don’t even know how it taste!

There are actually many authentic Hainanese dishes such as mutton stew which is very delicious but somehow didn’t make it into the hawker scene. When I was younger, my relatives also used to cook Hainanese mutton and beef curry, which somehow lost it’s appeal and identity along the years.

So for those who need a Hainanese Curry Rice fix, where do you go for it? I grew up eating Scissors Cut at Jalan Besar, so that’s where I usually go. And that is my definition of Hainanese Curry Rice and I frown upon some that I’ve eaten elsewhere because it tasted very different from what I’ve been programmed to know.

I guess as with all food, Hainanese Curry Rice flavour evolves from stall to stall and therefore it can be very different eating Hainanese Curry Rice in Jurong or in Tampines.

So this is what prompted me to set out on this mission to try and eat at some stalls(those popular one of course), and find out where actually is the best curry, best pork chop, best stew cabbage, best Hainanese lor bak, etcetera.

Newspaper articles

Loos Hainanese Curry Rice has been around for 53 years. It is a stall that’s well hidden in a quite run down coffeeshop diagonally opposite the Tiong Bahru market. Whenever I’m at Tiong Bahru market, I will glance at this corner and there were always queues and it always left me very curious about how good actually is this curry rice though my parents have tried it and didn’t quite like it themselves.

Unfortunately when I was there, they’ve sold out the stew cabbage and lor bak. So I had to order other things Hainanese food are famous for, like ‘ko lo yuk’ which is the sweet and sour pork, pork chop and stir fried long bean.

Hainanese curry on rice 5/10  

Hainanese pork chop 7/10  

The pork chop was well, just breadcrumbed pork, nothing much to rave about it and can barely hit my umami. Was a little bland actually and definitely not the best I’ve eaten. The ko lo yuk was quite good but can be better if the sauce is reduced in sweetness and thickness. The meat was quite tough but that’s how a ko lo yuk meat should be. The long bean with beancurd cubes was also quite good but I thought it was not distinctive enough. It tasted very much like one of those you can find in any chap chai peng stall. But it was still ok up to that point, what I really couldn’t resonate with is the curry that came on the rice. It is very very different from what I know of Hainanese curry. It seems to have a hint of a strange flavour that tasted somewhere between lemon grass and ginger. A very mild ‘Tom Yum’(without the sourness) curry was on my rice!

Hainanese ko lo yuk 7.5/10  

Long bean with tofu 7/10  

Ok, Loos Hainanese Curry Rice though has a rich heritage that stretches back to the mid 1940s, it unfortunately couldn’t do for me what my favourite Hainanese Curry Rice stall can. Definitely needs a little bit of getting used to for the curry. This stall has showed me how vast the flavour of Hainanese curry can be in this little red dot.

Price: $4

Recommendation: Ko lo yuk and pork chop.

Conclusion: The dishes are ok though not exactly fantastic. The curry is not ‘Hainanese’ enough for me. Maybe this is the definition of Hainanese Curry Rice around Tiong Bahru area but it’s rather different from the taste that I had acquired.

Likes: Ko lo yuk sauce is good though a little too sweet.

Dislikes: Flavour not distinctive enough. Flavour of the curry is a little strange for me.

Address		Overall Rating
Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice Blk 57 Eng Hoon Street #01-88 Tai Kwang Huat Coffee Shop 8am to 2pm Off: Alternate Thurs		Food: 7/10   Value: 7/10   Authenticity: 7/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.75/10

You and I know that not every hawker centres sell Bak Kut Teh. There was even once, I searched the entire spread of Beach road area looking for a Bak Kut Teh stall and couldn’t find any. In certain places, Bak Kut Teh stalls can really be so scarce that you might wonder do you have to travel all the way to somewhere just to have a bowl.

The truth is Bak Kut Teh is not as common as Chicken Rice, Duck Rice or Hokkien Mee. Heck I would say western food is even more popular than Bak Kut Teh. For instance, those coffeeshops near where I’m staying, I don’t remember seeing any Bak Kut Teh stalls and if I want to have a bowl, I probably have to travel out of this area. But if I want to eat western food, fwah, just about every kopitiams nearby have a stall. So now, who are we to kid if we agree with foreigners that Bak Kut Teh is a die die must eat dish here? The fact is statistics are showing that there are other food that are much more popular as far Singaporeans are concerned.

Some of my Singapore friends were saying Bak Kut Teh is a fusion food because the Chinese loves meat and Indian loves spices and so when migration activities took place in the 1800s, they mixed their ingredients and so here comes Bak Kut Teh. But if that is so, then I want to know why Bak Kut Teh exists in places as far as Taiwan or even China. Now of course the Bak Kut Tehs there are very different from ours but then isn’t Singapore’s version of Biryani is also somewhat different from India’s version in some ways? Taste of food will undoubtedly evolve from place to place just like for example, Mee Siam is derived from as far north as Thailand(apparently because Thailand were once called Siam) and if you think they have no food that taste like Mee Siam, then tell me does Mee Siam or does not Mee Siam taste like Bee Hoon in Tom Yum soup?

The fact is Bak Kut Teh is a food that existed for a long time in many Chinese communities and in some parts of Indonesia, they even have their own version of Bak Kut Teh and those people have never lived in Singapore or Malaysia. Therefore contrary to popular beliefs, Bak Kut Teh should be a Chinese food but definitely not cantonese because you really can’t find it in Hong Kong. Well I read somewhere that claimed Bak Kut Teh to be a in Hoklo food. Hoklo basically mean the ethnic-cultural group from southeast China which is also the Fujian province and their native language is Min Nan which we all know as Hokkien. So now with such facts staring at us, the best excuse we can find for popularity of Bak Kut Teh here is that we served better Bak Kut Tehs than others therefore it is more popular here than else where.

I don’t remember going to any Bak Kut Teh stalls just because they served really nice Bak Kut Teh soup or even nice Bak Kut Teh meat. I mean usually they have other side dishes that would claim the honour instead. Like Kong Bak with Preserved Vegetables, Lor Bak or Lor Chicken with Tao Kee among many others.

This Bak Kut Teh at Tiong Bahru around Seng Poh road is quite something, according to Bak Kut Teh fanatics. Ok for one they are opened everyday at around 7am in the morning. Already it’ll be hard enough to find people wanting to eat Bak Kut Teh at that kind of hour but yet they can open and do business and setup the tables and chairs as if they’re going to get people flooding the place in no time.

Bak Kut teh meal: 5.75/10  

But after having a meal here, I can guarantee the soup has nothing to rave. The meat were tender though and fell off the bones easily. We had the common stuff like You Tiao and Preserved Vegetables and Dao Kee cooked in some sauces. Well like all famous place, it’s usually more expensive. The above mentioned side dishes together with 2 bowl of Bak Kut Teh soup costed us $20.30. I’m not exactly sure how much is the soup but I would roughly guess it’s in the range of $5 to $6 per bowl with the side dishes going for $2 each.

Well I’m not sure if this place is suffering from the usual ’standard drop’ effect which is contaminating many popular eating places. But with the kind of Bak Kut Teh soup I had here which tasted peppery more than anything else, I really can’t see myself coming all the way here to have a bowl again. I mean what’s so hard about adding peppers into the soup if I want to make myself a pot at home. The side dishes were good but I’m sure it’s not something I can’t find anywhere else. Other than that, maybe the big carpark beside this kopitiam does help to bring the business but the next time I’m here, I’m definitely be more obliged to check out those Lor Mee stalls upstairs.

Price: $5-6 a bowl

Recommendation: Nil

Conclusion: The soup were average, meat were tender, side dishes were good but not great. Cracking my brain to undertand the fuss about this place.

Likes: Side dishes were good.

Dislikes: Soup were average.

Address		Overall Rating
Old Tiong Bahru Bak Kut Teh 58 Seng Poh Road #01-31		Food: 7/10   Value: 5/10   Service: 6/10   Ambience: 5/10   Cleanliness: 6/10   Overall: 7/10