Well, pretty much all of us know where Chinatown Complex is. It's the place where locals would go to after making a trip down to the Buddha tooth relic temple by choice, and where the tourists would not go to after their planned trip to the Buddha tooth relic temple. All in all, you must be able to see it from the Buddha tooth relic temple. If you can't see it... Then good luck to your life.
Anyways, most Singaporeans would know the place for it's super popular stalls, such as the one selling claypot rice, or that coffee stall owned by the supermom winner. I like that place, but it's always so crowded that I don't really like going there too often. Then I noticed this little queue along the bridge.
First thing I thought was that they were all queuing for the washroom. Then I thought "well the hawker food can't be THAT bad?" Decided to take a look.
Wah Lao Eh! I didn't know there was a whole cluster of other food stalls across the bridge! And to make things more interesting, some of them even had queues! This one, I'm not too put off about queuing. Gotta try.
Ordered a standard bowl with noodles. 6 Pieces for a total of $3. Then I proceeded with some addons: 1 Eggplant, 1 Stuffed Bittergourd and additional "Mini Abalones". The total cost was just $5. Seems okay for me.
As the name suggests, the noodles come with a generous sprinkle of freshly made Ikan Bilis, which is sun dried anchovies which are deep fried before serving. These little boys provide a little crunch to each bite so mix it well with the noodles to get a nice layering of texture. That said, I have a feeling that the noodles might not exactly be their specialty for two main reasons. Everyone else was ordering their kway teow and also the fact that the yellow noodles aren't exactly the best. The yellow noodles tasted a little too strongly of lye water, and was a little on the mushy side. All the more you need to mix it together with the ikan bilis.
On to the actual pieces. All of them are made using self made fish paste that's very fluffy and soft. Not bad. The soup's slightly more flavorful than the one at People's Park Food Center.
Of all the pieces, what I didn't really like were the ones wrapped in beancurd skin as I found that they could use another round in the deep fryer. Some might disagree as they could still taste the soy in that skin. To each their own.
As you can see, the fish paste they use are really soft and fluffy. It goes well with the tau kwa and the tau pok, but sometimes they're so soft it's almost impossible to keep them from falling apart. The texture when you put them in your mouth is that of a "melt in your mouth" kind of sensation. Really not bad!
I would assume that the fishball uses the same fish paste but with a little more flour or something to keep the balls from goo-ing off. As expected, they're really soft to the bite and very flavorful, you can taste the fish they use for it. If you look closely at the image, it has little dots of whatever they use to mix the fish paste with, something you don't really see with commercially made fishballs.
Next, let's look at the additional pieces. I'll start off by saying that you MUST get them.
This one's the stuffed bittergourd slices. At 50cents per piece, they're essentially deep fried bittergourd with fish paste filling in the center. Taking a bite into them, you'll initially be blasted with a wave of bitterness that is followed by a gradually sweet taste once you start chewing. I'd say that the bitterness actually makes the fish paste inside that much more enjoyable.
Then comes the stuff eggplant. In same fashion it is deep fried together with the fish paste. Main difference here is that I feel that it is a little more challenging to prepare this dish as eggplants can get very oily easily due to their oil absorbent nature.
For 50 cents, you get a fat layer of fish paste sandwiched between two sizeable pieces of eggplant then forced into a bondage through a deep fryer. How does that not sound awesome to you? When you bite into it, you bite into a flavor bomb that's a mixture of everything nice. Saltiness from the deep frying process, sweetness from the fish paste and er... eggplant-iness from the eggplant... Yeah... All in all I'd say that this is like the star product from the shop. I've never really been a fan of eggplant because of their somewhat tasteless nature but this one works for me.
On to disappointment. For $1 you get 2 pieces of MINI abalone (they passed me three, though). Sounds good right? No. They weren't kidding when they said mini. These little guys are so puny it's easy to miss them inside the mess of noodles! That said their small size doesn't mean that they lose any flavor. these guys are full tasting abalones that are just embarrassingly small. It's like taking a drop of 99% concentrated lobster bisque. Flavorful, but nothing to play in your mouth with. Not exactly worth the money if you ask me.
I suppose the queue does stand for something. They're no doubt good with what they make but it doesn't extend to everything that they sell at the place. If you're going to try it out, go for the 8 pieces without noodlese (same price) and get the additional eggplant and bittergourd option. Can't go wrong with that.
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