Old Chengdu Reprise

I headed back to Lao Chengdu recently with a group of old friends for dinner - it's a great place for loud, noisy, rowdy meals to catch up with people who like to eat a lot and talk loudly. Like me :)

凉粉 again - this was a favourite.

I liked their cold cucumber with garlic, but felt there was just a little bit too much garlic.

Their beancurd skin strips were reasonably tasty, with a good mix of chilli and sesame oil. I liked the Mi Si version better though, which had lots of coriander.  

The salted egg tofu soup was as good as ever, especially in extinguishing mouth and stomach fires

French beans with chilli, dried shrimp and black beans. This was reasonable...nothing to crow about.

梅菜扣肉- nice with rice. Not sure how authentically Sichuan this dish was, though.

Pork ribs with spices - I found the meat a bit tough. It could have been cooked slightly longer.

茶树菇 - this wasn't so impressive. The mushrooms tasted kinda weird, actually. 

Dou miao - can't go too far wrong with this dish

辣子鸡- one of the best in Singapore I think. Hot, spicy, and not too oily. Great on steamed rice.

Close up of the little firebombs

We also tried a serving of the 担担面 but it wasn't that impressive in terms of the stock and flavour. It needed to be slightly more oily, with a lot more sesame.

 

The noodles were nicely cooked, though. Good texture.

Mi Si Hunan Restaurant (密斯湘菜馆)

A colleague of Hunan origin brought me to this Hunan restaurant for lunch, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great knowing that it was an authentic place, and I'd be happy to go there again anytime.

The name of the restaurant on their tissue packet - I never know that Hunan food was called 湘菜.

 

干锅烟笋烧腊肉 - smoked bamboo shoots with waxed meat  ($22.80). This was amazing with steamed rice. The bamboo was extremely fragrant, and the waxed meat flavours complemented it perfectly.

干锅茶树菇($19.80) was a dish I had eaten many times in China, and really enjoyed. The mushrooms were a bit tough, but generally tasted similar to what I knew.

香锅飘香鱼 ($24.80). We wanted to eat the 双色鱼头王- fish head with chillies of 2 colours, but the waiting time was too long. The fish slices in chilli oil were very much like 水煮鱼, so it was more 川菜 instead of 湘菜. This was decent, but I would probably order something else next time. 

Based on these dishes, the restaurant is definitely worth a repeat visit.

密斯湘菜餐厅 

Tel: 6225 5968 

Add：24 Smith Street

Big prawn noodles from Kok Sen Coffeeshop

We spent $30 on this bowl of 大虾粗米粉 at Kok Sen coffeeshop along Keong Saik Rd which more than fed the 2 of us. Easily one of the most fragrant bowls of prawn noodles ever, without the soya sauce flavouring, and extremely rich in flavour with lots of hae bee and chilli.

Qun Zhong Eating House

This place is an institution along Tanjong Pagar Road where hoardes of hungry office workers queue patiently outside the building with pathetic faces looking into the restaurant silently praying for people to finish and leave. If you're not willing to queue or share a table, don't bother eating here. It doesn't really matter to them since business is so good. The service isn't great, although there are some nice older ladies who are quite pleasant. Strangely enough, I'm not too bothered by the poor service doesn't really bother me that much since this place reminds me of an old uni haunt where the staff were even ruder, the place dirtier (they were closed by the Health Inspectors for 2 months) but the food just as good.

But I digress. My once-a-week dumpling days are long over. I like eating here when I can find the time to wait, or if I'm having a late lunch alone, which isn't very often nowadays. My favourite starchy staple is the 炸酱面, or noodles with minced meat in spicy sauce($5), which I find even nicer with vinegar and chilli.

What it looks like after you mix it all up

We ordered xiaolongbao ($7), which I enjoyed too. The skins stayed intact when we lifted the dumplings up, and the soup was hot and tasty.

My personal favourite is the fried dumplings ($10). The filling is juicy, and the skin crispy. I have no idea how they do them so well.

From another angle:

The Chinese Pizza, Red Bean Pancake and Glutinous Rice Balls with Osmanthus are worth a try too. And look out for the parking wardens if you park at the URA carpark across the street...they are very vigilant.

21 Neil Road

Tel: +65 6221 3060

Opening hours: 11.30am – 3.00pm; 5.30pm – 9.30pm.

Closed Wednesdays

Claypot Rice and Tang Yuan

Working in Tanjong Pagar is great with plenty of good cheap food around. The only challenge is finding a place to sit. Yesterday my makan buddies and I decided to walk to Chinatown for lunch at the recently-renovated food centre at Chinatown Complex.

There's a claypot stall tucked away at a corner on the second floor that is usually extremely crowded. It was fairly quiet yesterday, maybe because it was Monday. My husband and I had tried to eat there on 2 occasions a few months back, but had given up because they were too busy one time, and because they had run out the other time.

They cook the rice with all the condiments on these stoves.

CAN YOU SEE THE STEAM??? It was such an adventure when the claypot was brought over to our table, and when the stall server opened the lid.

Closer look sans steam. They have chicken pieces, lap cheong, veggies, fatty pork slices and bits of salted fish scattered randomly. They also give you black sauce to add as liberally as you want.

The mixed rice. Super yummy. Even better were the charred bits of rice at the sides of the claypot.

If you're after dessert, there's a famous tang yuan shop just a few feet away.

Not cheap at $2.50 a bowl, but it's enough to make you happy : )

Zhao Ji Claypot Rice, Stall No. 02-53

Open from 11.30am onwards, closed on Wednesdays

Hai Seng Ah-Balling 海星 Stall No. 02-59
Open from 12pm on, closed on Mondays

Both stalls are at Blk 335 Smith Street, Chinatown Food Complex

Xiu Ji Ikan Bilis Yong Tau Fu

My husband and I needed to pop by our respective workplaces on Saturday morning, and Chinatown Complex is located directly in between. We have a favourite yong tau fu stall there, and while we usually patronise the stall on weekdays, we usually avoid the place on weekends and public holidays because the queue is really really long (our record queuing time is 45 mins). Because I was craving the yong tau fu, the poor husband didn't have much of a choice.

There are 2 stalls operated by the same family: the one on the left is where they scrape the fish, prepare all the different yong tau fu items, and sell fishcakes from, while the one on the right is where they prepare and sell the noodles from.

The stall originally started operations with the patriarch and matriarch doing most of the cooking and preparation, and the operations team seems to have expanded to include the children and inlaws doing most of the menial work. The old man can still be seen helping out on some days, but I haven't seen him doing the cooking in a long time.

Check out the queue ahead of us (and it was equally long behind us!) - it took us 30 minutes to get our food. The man behind us complained to my husband that he was only in the queue because his wife was craving the noodles, and if it was up to him he wouldn't waste his time. My husband, to his credit, just smiled quietly : )

There are 7 varieties of yong tau fu that they add to the soup, including fish balls, tau kwa stuffed with fish paste, tau pok stuffed with fish paste, and fish paste wrapped with beancurd skin. The ikan bilis is to the right of the picture in a big bowl with a plastic spoon. They fry it with sugar until crispy.

They also have really nice chilli sauce that you can add to your noodles using a huge pitcher. I usually like to pour a bit more on my dry noodles.

After 30 long minutes, this was our loot: I had a mixture of noodles and kuay teow.
The noodles come with 7 pieces of yong tau fu in a certain permutation pre-determined by the serving lady. One serve cost me $3. If you don't want the noodles, they charge you $3 for 9 pieces.

The fishcake (50 cents each) is also really yummy, but when they're running full steam, it has to be bought separately from the stall on the left hand side. The husband went back to queue for another 5 mins to get our fishcakes.

Close-up of the precious fishcake.

You can see from the picture that the texture was really smooth - this was taken after I had bitten into it. It's bouncy, fresh and tasty.

To add to the Chinatown ambience, the drinks stall next door likes to blast 1980s Mando-Canto pop music. They serve pretty good ice milo too.

Xiu Ji Ikan Bilis Yong Tau Fu

#02-87 and 88, Blk 335 Smith Street

Chinatown Complex and Food Centre

Opening hours: 5.30am - 3.00pm 7 days a week.