Beng Thin + Beng Hiang

I love working at Tanjong Pagar because it's so easy to get to good eating places. Maxwell and Amoy hawker centres are just a stone's throw away are 2 amazing hawker centres. Walk about 5 minutes more and there's the Tanjong Pagar Hawker Centre or Kreta Ayer Food Centre. Then there's the abundance of great restaurants at Chinatown - Telok Ayer, Tanjong Pagar and Kreta Ayer - as well as China Square, Raffles Place and Shenton Way.

I have a bunch of lunch kakis that love food from the different dialect groups, and frequently make the effort to try out different restaurants in the vicinity. For Teochew, we tried Lee Kui (Ah Hoi) at Mosque St and found it good but a bit expensive. We also gave Huat Kee a miss since we used to host official meals there almost once every 2 months for almost a year.

For Hokkien food, there's the 2 Bengs - Beng Hiang and Beng Thin - close by. Beng Hiang, at Amoy Street, has a strangely comforting old school charm with its Chinese tea served in glasses and peanuts on a melamine plate. You would almost expect pink serviettes and beer served with ice cubes to appear on the tables. It's one of my favourite places for a feel-good pig out lunch with colleagues. The hae chor (prawn roll) and ngoh hiang are really yummy, served hot and crispy on the outside, succulent and moist on the inside. I love dousing them in the sweet sauce and vinegared chilli sauce.

The steamed herbal chicken was decent but not all that exciting. My absolute favourite - dark thick hokkien noodles with a very rich sauce.

The kong bak is also absolutely delicious, with the meat cooked long enough to almost melt in the mouth.

Fans of crispy oyster omelette will be very satisfied. Oysters galore too.

On another occasion, we walked to the OCBC Building to try out Beng Thin. The interior appears a little more upmarket than Beng Hiang, and it's filled with business lunch types (compared to Beng Hiang which had a few more tables of uncles and aunties). But the food was really good as well.

We had the duck salad, which had mango, cucumber, jellyfish and rockmelon.

All stirred up with a combination of plum sauce and peanuts - it had a very interesting flavour. It didn't exactly taste like yusheng, but was slightly more savoury. I enjoyed it very much.

Crab meat with fishmaw soup - always good! Especially with vinegar and pepper.

The hae chor and ngoh hiang were delicious too.

One dish that I was pleasantly surprised by was the braised duck - it was so tender and tasty.

The duck was amazingly flavourful, and the sauce was worth licking up as well.

Their Hokkien noodles are not as dark or full of sauce as Beng Hiang's, but also very rich in flavour.

The oyster omelette was very crispy, and they were also very generous with the oysters.

They have pretty good orh nee with pumpkin and gingko nuts too.

Both places are great, and if I don't recall incorrectly, Beng Thin was just a little more expensive. Beng Hiang has a less upmarket feel about it. I would return to both any day, making my choice on whether I was feeling more homely (read:ugly) or a little more presentable.

Beng Hiang Restaurant

112-116 Amoy Street

Tel: 6221 6695 / 6221 6684

Open 7 days from 11:30am - 2:30pm and 6:00pm - 9:30pm

Beng Thin Hoon Kee Restaurant

65 Chulia Street#05-02 OCBC Centre

Tel: 6533 2818/6533 7708

Open 7 days from 11:30am-3:00pm and 6.00-10.00pm