I've been hearing some feedback that my
reviews are too long, so I'll try to keep them shorter for the people who'd rather hear
about food than listen to the adventurous exploits of the fearless four food freaks.
This outing was a trip to savour the Char Kway Teow at Zion Road, one of
the nominees at the Great Char Kway Teow Challenge, now
ongoing...
When we arrived at about 6pm, we were faced with the immediate problem
that most people face when being recommended food: 2 stalls selling the exact, same thing
(yes, that's grammatically redundant, but I'm trying to make a point here and this is MY
webpage...). So what happens? We go by Yeen Kiat's rule in choosing doctors
and food stalls alike: "If he isn't a specialist, he can't be good". The
other stall sold BOTH char kway teow and hokkien mee... I guess the choice from there was
pretty obvious. This middle-aged chinese chef had like 200 eggs stacked high outside
his stall and a wok full of pork lard. He obviously wasn't ready to roll, so we
headed over to Great World City for a spot of shopping.
When we returned at about 6:35pm, the action had already started, and this
was apparent even from outside the food centre from the smell of frying garlic that wafted
out. We eagerly placed our orders and waited the ten long minutes for the prized
kway teow. In the short time that we waited, he served up a whole bunch of people,
sitting all over the food centre and packed numerous take-away orders as well...
They must have seen our hungry wolf-like stares at every plate that passed by and finally
decided to serve us a couple.
First impression: this was worth the wait. Even just looking at the
plate of noodles was enough to tell you that this stall served a mean plate of kway teow.
The noodles were moist, not dry, there were no bits of charred wok-gunk sticking to
the noodles and the tow-gay and cockles were not unrecognizably charred. For us, it
was love at first bite. The kway teow was well cooked, cockles were not overcooked
and tow-gay were still crisp and crunchy, not soft and oily. The portions are
another thing worth mentioning... although they did not give portions as large as the
Outram Park stall gives, it was still very adequate and highly satisfying.
Probably the most distinctive feature about the kway teow was the strong
aroma of fried garlic, which really does it for me. Yeen Kiat liked it over the
Outram Park kway teow because it was less sweet, and more tasty.
All this for $2. I've paid a lot more for a lot less. If you
want to try this out for yourself, head on over to Zion Road, opposite Great World City.
The hawker centre behind the bushes by the canal.
To sum it all up, I'd like to quote Yeen Kiat again for the three things
which he said tonight:
"Heavenly"
"We should ask all the other slackers (Other Char Kway Teow
Stallholders) to come here to take lessons"
and
"I'm gonna wake up tomorrow thinking about this stall
again"
- Yeen Kiat and Yuen Ho
