I sincerely apologize for the fact that our blog mainly feature restaurants. It's not that I despise hawker centres or coffeeshops, I do eat at those places very often and in fact, grew up a hawker kid. It's just that usually I reach these places horribly hungry, and proceed to wolf down my food without thinking about blogging about them. And because many of these places are frequent haunts, somehow it become such a normal thing to be there that it really doesn't occur to me that I should take photos to show. Just like how I always forget photos at Chinese restaurants because my natural instinct is to fight with my cousins for the food the moment it is set down on the table (although that is changing these days because of the more polite significant-others that will give way to us uncivilized people). So I decided that this should change. Slowly. I can't promise that I will remember to take photos before I tuck in, but I will try. There are so many hawker food that I love, and do think that they are worth sharing. So here goes the first hawker post.
We were thinking of somewhere to have lunch other than the two usual canteen and coffeeshop - these were ok, but get boring. So J thought of going for a Bak Kut Teh (direct translation: pork rib tea) lunch. Instead of heading out to Song Fa where we usually go when the craving hits and the time permits, he thought that we can hunt out a nearer one. He knew that there's one that's quite renowned in the Tiong Bahru market area, but wasn't sure of the exact location. Nothing Google can't solve, and the location was pinpointed in no time. It didn't have a rave review on HungryGoWhere.com, but neither did Song Fa, which we liked. So no harm giving it a shot.
It was a relatively nice day (how nice can Singapore get anyway), so we decided to walk. Got there in about 15 minutes. The staff were like super speeded Mario, zipping around efficiently. The moment we sat down, our table was set with chilli, chopsticks and spoons, wet towels, and dishes of you tiao (fried fritters - which we didn't ask for actually). We placed orders for a bak kut teh with rice each, and a plate of stir-fried tapioca leaves and preserved vegetables to share. Plus Chinese tea.
The tea set was brought up very quickly, but we found it very dirty. Got the attention of one of the uncles zipping around and tried to tell him that we wanted a cleaner set. In his 'efficiency', he somehow misunderstood us and proceeded to make our tea for us in a jiffy. Ah well, dirty eat dirty grow up (la sap jia la sap tua - a freqently used dialect phrase). The tea was very strong, literally tea-expresso... I think it kept me awake for a good part of the afternoon. Everything else arrived equally quickly. I felt that I was having an accelerated lunch.
The soup here is less aromatic than Song Fa's, less herbal and less peppery I think. J say he remembered their ribs being much more tender before. I guess standards dropped with commercialization. The vegetables were so so. At least so normal that I actually don't remember them. I didn't like how the chilli were so soaked in the soya sauce that they had turned black. Looked super unappetizing and I didn't use them at all. Only ate the chilli padi we requested for and were given without soya sauce. They topped up our soups at our request (for free). It was, however, quite uncomfortable to drink hot soup on a hot day at a somewhat outdoor table under a extension shelter. Didn't know why I signed up for that when I knew I perspire easily...
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When the bill came, I was a little surprised. We ended up paying slightly pass $10 each. Considering it was a non-air-conditioned place, the price was a little steep. I tried to calculate how it got to that price, and it seems that the small plate fried tapioca leaves was going at $10 or more... Eek. It wasn't as good as Song Fa, which is priced similarly (maybe a little lower, I think we usually pay about $9, inclusive of cold drinks) but air conditioned. Next time the craving hits, we probably will take the effort to go a little further for more dependable Bak Kut Teh. Lynn told me there's an even better one (but more expensive) at Tanjong Pagar. Wonder if I can kidnap my colleagues there some day?
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