KIM Laksa  金叻沙
Balik Pulau - Penang

Kim Laksa Stall at Balik Pulau, Penang

Located in a small coffee shop, this stall sells Asam Laksa & Siam Laksa on the island of Penang, located in Balik Pulau. 

Each bowl costs only RM$3.00 (Ringgit which is about SGD$1.30). Cheap, but the bowl of laksa isn't really that large, so 1 bowl of each in one meal is ok. 

We were at this stall one Saturday, last April. The Friend from Penang who brought us to this place commented that this is the best laksa found in Penang. He said that it is even better than the one at Ayer Itam market just at the foot of the Kek Lok Si temple. Penangites who want good laksa will make their way here, more than 30 mins drive from Georgetown. The jammed pack coffee shop seemed to be a testimony to what he said. It was after 1.30pm when we arrived, and the coffee shop was so pack that there was hardly any walking space between the seated customers. Waiting time for the laksa wasn't that long, but to get seated, that took a while.

The Asam Laksa's gravy has no coconut milk or suntan added to it. But the dark prawn paste (hei gor) added made it tasted very good (Hei gor is used in food like rojak, and even "chee cheong fun" in Penang). Siam Laksa, on the other hand, is the lemak version (that is with coconut milk). My guess is that this could be the Thailand's version of the laksa.

Then there is also the tasty white version char kway teow that one can get from a stall at the lane, red/white shade of this char kway teow stall is partially visible in the pic. It also sells at RM$3 a plate. 

Updated edition of post.  

Pine Garden's Cake 松园

Blk 529 Ang Mo Kio Ave 10
#01-2369/2329

On first glance, Pine Garden's Cake may just look like any typical neighbourhood bakery. Don't judge a book by its cover, because this bakery isn't any typical neighbourhood bakery. 

The bakery has 2 shop units located at the same block in Ang Mo Kio. The yummy Lychee Martini cake has a huge following by not only the folks in AMK, but also other parts of the island. A slice costs $2.50. This cake was rated as the top 12 yummiest cake by local media.  Personally, I find the martini in the cake to be not too strong but yet I can taste it on my palate. It also seems to grow on each mouth-bite. I also find their cakes not being too excessively sweet. 

They sell plenty of other cakes. The one that I also like is the Apple Vera Martini cake (at $3.10 per slice). I enjoyed the martini taste from this cake too. Cocotero cake (with coconut shreds as toppings) also seemed to be "Rated by media".

For nostalgia sake, one could also get these cakes. They have 4 varieties that I saw in the other shop.

I think there will be more opportunity in the near future to update in this blog on the other cakes from them. 

31 Sungei Road Laksa  结霜桥叻沙

Address:
Blk 31 Kelantan Lane
#01-12 Seng Chuan Eating House

A $2.50 bowl of Sungei Road Laksa at Kelantan Lane

When I started eating laksa as a kid, it was only done with a spoon. No chopsticks, period! Sungei Road Laksa at the coffee shop at Blk 31 Kelantan Lane is exactly just that.

I think there were a few stalls selling Sungei Road laksa when Sungei Road was still in its prime. One such laksa was sold at the ground floor of a small shop house in the Sungei Road area which was just a few streets behind this coffee shop some 20 plus years ago. This was before the old 2-storey houses, selling mainly military and camping gears, were demolished. What was popularly attractive to the laksa connoisseurs than was a small bowl of this delicious laksa cost only a dollar. At most time, the seats in the shop were taken up, and customers didn't mind eating the laksa standing at the roadside (yeah, & that was a can-do then, legal or not, not too sure). Now Sungei Road and the surrounding streets are packed with many street peddlars selling their wares (usually used and old) by the roadside - popularly known to us locals as the Thieves' Market and where the old houses used to stand are left only empty green grasses all fenced up for the obvious reason.

Currently, this laksa is sold at 3 prices - $2, $2.50 and $3, for S, M, L sizes. What you get in a bowl are slices of fishcake, cockles and the standard thick beehoon and bean sprouts. The chili paste and the laksa leaves are added by the customers (now you see why my bowl in the pic has a generous amount of laksa leaves).

This laksa is really worth every bit of things served in the bowl, yes, even to the very last drop of the laksa gravy because of the amount of dried shrimps used in the making of the gravy.

Opening hours: 9am to 6pm and closed on first Wednesday of the month.

HOKKAIDO RAMEN - Santouka 山頭火 らーめん

Santouka, at the Central, Eu Tong Sen Street, (MRT Station - Clarke Quay) is part of a chain of ramen stall that comes from Hokkaido, Japan.

I wanted to intro this ramen shop to my friend last week and we found ourselves at the Santouka Ramen Shop at the 2nd level of the Central (#02-76). The shop has a great view of the Singapore River if you get the window table. 

My all-time fave ramen at this place is their signature ramen, the Tokusen Toroniku Ramen (loosely translated, it means "specially chosen meat with ramen"). All ramen at Santouka comes in 3 flavours for the soup - shio (salt), shoyu (soya sauce), and miso (fermented soybean paste).

Santouka's signature ramen - Tokusen Toroniku Ramen

What is the specially chosen meat? According to their webpage, the tokusen toroniku char-shu (チャーシュ) "is made from the cheek meat (jowl) of a pig, which is very rare meat as only 200-300 grams are available from each animal. It has a very rich flavour and it is tender like fatty tuna."

The meat and all other ingredients - a slice of kamaboko (蒲鉾), a pickled plum (小梅), a generous sprinkle of fermented bamboo shoots (麺麻 menma), negi onions (葱), and shreds of jelly ear fungus (キクラゲ- kikurage or Chinese 黑木耳) to the ramen, are served on a separate side platter. 

My friend and I ordered the shio soup ramen each. For me, to get started, first take a spoonful of the soup. As expected, it is a bit salty in taste, but the taste of the pork bones (豚骨 tonkotsu) came through really good. They take about 20 hours to prepare the soup. The final taste of the soup is a result of adding in kelps, dried fishes, and other ingredients.

Next, I placed all the ingredients into the soup of the ramen, except the cha-shu. The general rule-of-thumb to follow is to have everything that the chef serves you. As the jowl meat is very flaky and tends to melt easily, it is best not to dunk it permanently into the soup as the slice of meat will come apart. Just when I am about to eat it, I'll dip the meat slices into the soup to warm it up. The meat will immediately melt when it touches the tongue, breaking up quickly and producing a lot of juices in the mouth and leaving a smoky taste to it. Eat it together with a spoonful of noodle or with a spoon of soup. That, I find, is the best way to savour the meat.  The noodle is also just springy enough and it is best eaten with a blend of the soup or some meat. I love to slurp the ramen like the Japanese do. 

At the end of the meal, my friend also agreed that this is the best bowl of ramen that she has ever tasted. The downside is that the portion is a bit too large and the soup over-salted.

Just like any other ramen store, you can add extra ingredients to your ramen. One such ingradient you can add to the Tokusen Toroniku Ramen is their stewed egg (tamago koji) which I had on an earlier visit, but not this time round. The Tokusen Toroniku Ramen comes at $19.50 per order (this excludes GST).

There are many branches of Santouka Ramen, even in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Canada, the USA, and of course in Japan (Sendai, Sapporo, Tokyo, etc.). Their other locations on their website is found here. 

http://www.santouka.co.jp/en/index.html

Jian Kang Noodles 建康麵食

Blk 119 Commonwealth Drive

Commonwealth Crescent Food & Hawker Centre, #02-77

A sudden craving, one early afternoon, I have. To this wonton mee place I go. A very popular dish in Singapore wonton noodle 云吞麵 is . My favorite noodle dish it too is.

Back to normal "speak", Jian Kang Noodles sells the typical local Cantonese styled wonton noodle consisting of BBQ pork slices (叉烧 - char-siew) and bite-sized wontons 云吞 (pork dumplings) accompanying the noodles. This is unlike the Hong Kong wonton noodle which does not have the BBQ pork slices. BTW, Hong Kong wonton noodle seldom has the dry version that we've with chili sauce. Also, typical Cantonese wonton noodle does not include the dark sauce that many wonton noodle stalls are putting in nowadays. This a typical Malaysian Chinese influence.

A plate of Jian Kang's wonton noodle costs $2.50. However, I ordered the $3.00 plate for more noodles, and a generous serving of char-siew covering the plate of noodles and plenty of green vegetables, Cai Xin (菜心). However, there was only a serving of 3 wontons that came in the bowl of soup.

Jian Kang's noodle is just springy enough, and all the rest of the accompanying meat and wontons made by the owner, Mr. Chen and his people, were tasty. I find the wontons the best of them, alas I've only 3. Must remember to up the wonton supply on the next visit. I ordered the dry version but I requested for a bigger bowl of soup. I am a "soup" person and the soup tasted just great. I reckon the soup version will also be very tasty, if one feels like up to it. We all like good chili sauce don't we?

The stall's opening hours are from 7.30am to 4.30pm daily (except Wednesday) with the lunch hour peaking in sales. This stall has received many good reviews and accolades in the past.

Other than wonton noodles, they also sell shredded chicken noodle 

(鸡絲麵), pork ribs noodle (排骨麵) , wonton soup and shrimp dumplings (水餃).

The noodle goes at $2.50 a plate minimum.

Hong Heng Beef Noodle Soup & Laksa 
宏兴  牛肉粉 叻沙

Kebun Baru Food Centre, Stall no. 01-16,
Blk 266H Ang Mo Kio St 22

My favourite at this stall is the mixed beef noodles and usually I’ll ask for the thick beehoon (the laksa type).

Priced at $4, the bowl comes in the dry or soup version. It has lean beef slices (牛肉), beef brisket (牛腩), slices of tendon (牛肉筋), stomach (牛肚), tripe (牛柏叶) and a meatball (牛肉圆). The dry version has a scooping of thick gravy and generous toppings of preserved vegetable (咸菜) and chopped green spring onions.

Prior to eating, a dash of juice from 1 or 2 fresh limes into the bowl will greatly enhance the taste. Even then, every spoon of noodle and meat will go much better with their chili sauce mixed with "cencaluk" (a paste of fermented dried shrimps from Malacca). I always ask for another $1 of addition tendons. 

Their beef tendons are one of the smoothest and softest tendons around. Some other folks also like their beef tripe. So don't be surprised if you hear an order for a bowl of only tendon and tripe. 

Since their relocation from a coffeshop at Blk 223, the long queue has shortened, or at times, non-visible at the current location. This could be possibly due to a bigger sitting area at the food centre as compared to the smaller coffeeshop. Although some other folks may attribute it to the passing away of the previous owner who has a reputation of being the "Beef Noodle King" Mr. Lim prior to their relocation in 2011. 

The current stall is operated by Mrs. Lim, the wife who does the cooking, even during the times of Mr. Lim's presence. I still like this bowl of beef noodle now and then. 

As to the laksa, I have to be upfront here. If you really want laksa, there are better places. The only Laksa bowl that could be unique here is their Beef Laksa, where all the ordinary Laksa accompaniments are replaced with beef offerings, something that you don't easily get elsewhere as far as I know.

You could also order rice with beef soup or single, double selection of the beef offal that they are selling. If you don't mind cencaluk, remember to add more of them to the chili.

Hello world of Singapore

I have recommended numerous food places in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taipei, to my friends, colleagues, etc. But some of them asked me why is my blog on food empty ... for so long a time?

Well, basically there are plenty of good and generous folks in Singapore blogging about food and there are a humongous supply of photos out there too. So to have another food blog is just another source to lengthen those queues at the "makan" places. 

But however, what really push me to start this sharing blog is basically a craving that I have had for a few days for this bowl of beef noodle from Ang Mo Kio and eventually I had it for lunch today. So the whole idea of a blog to update all my friends about what is not only excellent food by the profession's standard, another added dimension to a post here is that the food is something that I will definitely want to go back for again... and again.

So I am only helping to create long queues and "ka-ching" for the cash registers for not any places (especially in Singapore), but those that have a special place in my heart, oops, more like the digestive system and my taste buds.

Well, go look for the queue ... 


Cheers 
GEORGE YAM