Ever since I heard about Hong Sheng Restaurant in Toa Payoh and had an opeh leaf hor fun there, I was dying to return to try out their cze char dishes. Aiyah, unfortunately this is one place you must really come early like 5pm or be prepared to wait for 1-2 hours for your food to be cooked. Nevermind that no stalls are allowed to open in the evening and they occupy the whole coffeeshop at dinner time, the fact is it is easy to get a seat but the modus operandi here is a bit different – the chef will cook “table by table”, which means that once an order went into the kitchen, the assigned chef will complete everything in that order before he moves on to the next. So if you have 5 orders infront of your order, then potentially you will be kept staring at the ceiling for at the very least, 1 hour.

Hong Sheng Restaurant kitchen

At 5pm on a weekend, the crowd already started to appear and there were 3 families with nothing on their table – yet. This place just smacks of authenticity. Opeh leaves were lying everywhere in the kitchen ready for takeaway food. For all your take away cze char staples like fried rice, fried bee hoon or fried mee, they would be packed in the opeh leaf($5).

Hor fun $3

After almost 30 mins of waiting, our plate of $3(non opeh leaf) hor fun arrived. This is technically the same thing with a $5 opeh leaf version except that this is a smaller serving with no opeh leaf. The taste in this is no doubt as good as the $5 version with the same colorful assortment of ingredients like pig stomach(tripe), seafood and generous amount of choi sum. Possibly one of the better $3 ones around though the wok hei was pretty weak.

红烧豆府 aka red broiled beancurd $8

On the recommendation of the waitress who took our order, we ordered a 红烧豆府 which is beancurd cooked in “red broiled” sauces with miscellaneous ingredients like seafood, pork and even pig stomach too. For $7, the portion is big but the gravy lacked the kind of oomph that can make this outstanding. Definitely not one of the better ones around but it’s attractive point is in the generous portion I guess. Wouldn’t mind to order this again next time though the flavour is not quite there when compared to the really tok kong(outstanding) ones I’ve eaten elsewhere.

Sambal Kangkong $7

The sambal kangkong is also quite a big portion and tasted quite good too though this is one dish that is very easy to impress and hard to disappoint so there were no surprises. If you need a safe fibre dish to go along then this is it. Lastly, the pai kuat wong though not exactly outstanding but didn’t disappoint too. Had the right balance of sweetness and sourness though there seems to be a hint of ginger flavour which is quite dissimilar with the flavour of common spare rib king but it was quite tasty nonetheless.

Spare Rib king $7

Hong Sheng Restaurant looks good on paper with all the ‘impressive credentials’ but my umami somehow didn’t quite kick in. Some says Hong Sheng is famous for it’s ‘Claypot Fish Head Stew’ so I might had ordered the wrong items but it is no doubt that the meal was quite satisfying and definitely not that bad for a cze char meal. $24 for 4 dishes at a place where ‘Toa Payohers’ get their cze char fixes for several decades just tells me that it is too cheap to be true though on this occasion, it only managed to satisfy me. I will definitely come back to try other popular dishes to see whether any of those can really shiok me.

Price: $27(included drinks of about $3)

Recommendation: Famous for Claypot Fish Head Stewed. Hor fun, salted fried rice and fried bee hoon are said to be good.

Conclusion: One of the cheaper cze char stalls around. Quality isn’t that bad but definitely has room for improvement. Would come back to try the other popular dishes.

Likes: Cheap. Kang kong is good. Hor fun is authentic.

Dislikes: Gravy of most items lacked oomph to be really outstanding.

Address		Overall Rating
Hong Sheng Restaurant Blk 203 Toa Payoh North #01-1121 Hai Fong Restaurant Tel: 6250 6980 5.00pm – 10.30pm Off: Monday		Food: 7.5/10   Authenticity: 8/10   Value: 9/10   Service: 7/10   Ambience: 7/10   Cleanliness: 7/10   Overall: 7.5/10

Other novelties include the pricing of it which usually will cost you something in the region of $10. Why? Because of the trouble to wok your hor fun and the obvious pricier ingredients used. But these ‘guidelines’ are just the basis to an opeh leaf hor fun, whether it’s appetizingly shiok or not, still has to depend on the skill of the chef.

Top Seafood namecard

Top Seafood at Toa Payoh is a relatively new cze char stall and one of their signature dishes just happens to be an opeh leaf hor fun which is termed as Signature Hor Fun here. Top Seafood is misrepresented by some to be ‘Chi Hao Liao’ where in fact ‘Chi Hao Liao’ is the name of the coffeeshop and they are just occupying a small space of the shop to run a cze char business.

Top Seafood Opeh Leaf Hor fun $10

This is one opeh leaf hor fun that I thought resembles Fei Lao’s version the most. The gravy is quite tasty with a subtle wine flavour. Definitely one of the best amongst all of those I’ve eaten lately. There were sea cucumbers and king prawns which are just what you can find in a pack at Fei Lao. Here it goes one step better by giving you a few pieces of scallop. For value of ingredients, I thought this is the best plate among all I’ve eaten. These are not cheapsake ingredients, and there were some more other miscellaneous things like big chinese mushrooms and several stalks of choi sum. I don’t remember getting a plate of opeh leaf hor fun lavish with such good ingredients other than at Fei Lao, so if you are an ‘ingredients person’ for a pack of hor fun, who happens to reside on the northern part of Singapore and feeling lazy to visit Fei Lao, then Top Seafood would be a brainy choice.

So with ticks for gravy and ingredients, how did the wok hei fare? It was very good. I’m very tempted to rate the wok hei here better than Fei Lao but though it is as good, it loses a bit on the consistency. Certain part of the hor fun was not properly seared. But the part that was seared, is very very good.

Unfortunately, some of the ingredients(prawns/sea cucumbers) were not warm(yes, cold). This just means that the ingredients were precooked or it didn’t get enough wok time. What seemingly to be the most similar to the Fei Lao’s plate just happens to have certain basic elements intervening at the rating chart but I like to believe that it’s just a hiccup and not a choke to such a fine plate of hor fun. However, even with that ’short fall’, this is still one of the finest plate around. Won’t insist this is a better plate than one at Fei Lao but it is almost as good in flavour and not many areas to tweak to taste as shiok.

Top Seafood Opeh Leaf Hor fun $10

Price: $10

Conclusion: A very good plate of hor fun where the basics are right. Taste and flavour resemble Fei Lao’s the most amongst all I’ve eaten lately. Ingredients are generous. Not the slightest doubt that here is where I will get my substitute if Fei Lao just happens to be closed.

Likes: Ingredients are generous. Wok hei is very good. Gravy has the right composure with the right flavour and color(a little translucent)

Dislikes: Ingredients are cold(not enough time in the wok).

Address		Overall Rating
Top Seafood Chi Hao Liao Coffeeshop Blk 94 #01-30 Toa Payoh Lor 4 Tel: 8317 9288 4:30pm to 12am		Ingredients: 8/10   Gravy: 8.5/10   Wok Hei: 8.5/10   Authenticity: 8.5/10   Value: 8/10   Overall: 8/10

Moving on to now, my pick would be the wok hei. I mean wok hei on the hor fun isn’t something money can always buy. Try walking into 10 kopitiams randomly to buy a hor fun for the right wokheiness and if you can get even just 1, I’d say WELL DONE!

It’s just a pity that our local food’s standard had been dropping over the decades. I understand that the loss of authenticity in food is inevitable at some point but I guess there’s probably something more that can be done to preserve our food heritage? Should we develop some kind of efforts to help preserve it when it is not too late to do so or leave it to the nature to take its course which will almost certainly wipe out the already ‘inadequate’ authenticities we’re seeing in our food culture in the near future? Already we’re seeing restaurants selling Beijing or Sze Chuan food occasionally. My prediction is that it won’t be long before these ‘foreign’ foods become rampant in hawker centres. I guess it’s time we think about the ways to institutionalize the authenticities of our local food.

For those who have lived in Toa Payoh, I’m sure you have heard of Hong Sheng Restaurant. Ok, for those who have not, this is probably one of the oldest restaurants(a cze chat stall in kopitiam) in Toa Payoh. They are probably something like the Fatty Weng of Toa Payoh? Anyway that’s what I was told. I have never heard about Hong Sheng so I am one heck of a suaku turning up at Toa Payoh Blk 203 for a meal.

At Hong Sheng on weekends, the waiting time is minimum 1 hour while 2 hours is the norm. I was lucky. I turned up at 5pm on a Saturday and they’ve just opened for business. Rumors have it that when Hong Sheng have opened, all the other stalls in the coffeeshop must be closed. Hong Sheng have the exclusive use of all the seats available in the coffeeshop. That’s one of the privilege Hong Seng managed to get it down in the lease agreement.

Can’t really blame them because Hong Sheng have a steady swarm of supporters who visit them on a regular basis. Just the other day, they ran out of ingredients by 9pm because they were featured in a newspaper article the day before. You see, the boss of Hong Sheng don’t believe in franchising the business. He believed in just having 1 branch using 3 trusty chefs whom he trained personally to maintain the authenticity of his food. And it’s interesting to know that Hong Sheng is somewhat related to Fatty Weng, in what ways I don’t know but from a credible source, there is a connection.

Ter tor aka pig stomach

Well, connection or not, there is indeed a similarity even in the opeh leaf hor fun. Ter tor(pig stomach) which you can find in the Fatty Weng’s pack is used here as ingredients too. You only need to have $5 to enjoy an opeh leaf hor fun orgasm here. I thought at that price, it’s a steal. Ok, can’t really compare the ingredients in this with a $10 version but for $5, you will be hard pressed to find something of equal quality and quantity.

There is no single thing that is truly outstanding here but rest assured that all of thr things are a few notches above the average plate. And of course I mean the gravy, the wok hei and the ingredients are quite good.

Hong Sheng Restaurant Opeh Leaf Hor Fun $10

The gravy had the correct tempo and almost comparable to Fei Lao’s version, ALMOST. I guess it just lacks a bit of oomph to become really impressive but make no mistake, it is good. The ingredients should be considered as generous with the colorful assortment. Prawns were medium size but quite tasty otherwise while the sotong, pork and ter tor just makes you feel that for $5, it is a fair deal. And if you are really a ‘fibre’ person, you’ll be glad to know that the choi sum was so much that it looked like a good 500gram(at least!) of it were dumped into the wok. I was seriously having trouble finishing the greens more than anything else, but yet truly enjoyed every moment of it.

The hor fun had a good wok hei but sporadically only. I guess if there’s one thing that needs urgent rectification then it is the wok hei. But then no dark soya sauce was used so it’s good that there is no manipulation of the wok hei color there. For $5, one can’t really ask for the sky right? This is not the classiest plate around but classy enough to make me feel worthwhile.

Hong Sheng Restaurant Opeh Leaf Hor Fun $5

Price: $5

Conclusion: This opeh leaf hor fun reminds me of the Fei Lao version where old school ingredients are used and cooked in some kind of tasty gravy. Wokheiness, ingredients and gravy loses out to Fei Lao but the consistency is there. It’s all above the average. It only cost you $5 and served on an opeh leaf, not the best but no serious flaws too. Extremely value for money.

Likes: Portion is good enough for 2 at least. Amount of Choi sum looks like plenty enough to charge you $5 on another plate. Gravy is quite authentic. Ter tor added extra dimensions in overall flavour. Pork lard served.

Dislikes: Hor fun a bit thick. Wok hei can be improved.

Address		Overall Rating
Hong Sheng Restaurant Blk 203 Toa Payoh North #01-1121 Hai Fong Restaurant Tel: 6250 6980 5.00pm – 10.30pm Off: Monday		Ingredients: 8/10   Gravy: 7.5/10   Wok Hei: 7/10   Authenticity: 8/10   Value: 9/10   Overall: 8/10