It was with a sense of nostalgia that we came back here this evening for a dinner.
We had, after all, been to their place at Amoy Street years and years before.
How the place has changed, whether or not even if the place has changed, I won't know- my memories of them back there on the outskirts of Chinatown are somewhat vague- but what with Beng Hiang being one of the (more) traditional restaurants serving up authentic Hokkien Chinese food, my guess is it wouldn't have changed much.
We were here for some of the foods which we used to have.
So on the table this evening there were two kinds of soup, a huge dish of braised duck, a dish of pork belly with buns, and hei zhor prawn rolls.
It's a little interesting but out of all these dishes- besides the sweet corn soup and the fish maw soup- it is the hei zhor that I recollect the most.
In English they call it the Spiced Sausage and Fried Prawn Ball.
Maybe because there aren't many places where they do this good, so any place that does it to their standards, well, I like.
For someone it might be the crisp of the deep fried bean curd wrap that speaks to them.
For me, it is the filling that does it for me.
Prawns, minced meat, Chinese parsley, water chestnut marinated with Five Spice Powder, everything's wrapped inside the bean curd skin, deep fried, then cut into bite sized rolls easy to pick up with chopsticks.
The faintly fresh taste of the water chestnut and its distinctive crunch, is what makes it special, and then there's the tiny little roll from the pieces of prawn mixed with the bits of minced meat.
But if it be the hei zhor that I like, it is the signature dish of
Yet, even as the deep fried hei zhor is what I remember, it is the signature dish of Braised Duck with Sea Cucumber that Beng Hiang does very well.
I wish I could tell you exactly what it is that makes this dish so unique and so good.
But other than saying that the meat's so tender it (literally) falls off the bone, I don't know what else.
Maybe it were the sea cucumbers.
Maybe it were the mushrooms.
Not merely because I take a fancy to the shiitake kind of mushroom, but also because it reminded me of other dishes that I used to have during Lunar New Year and now no more.
The star of this braised duck dish, is of course, has to be the gravy.
Rich, thick, full of flavor, almost like a thick broth that I wanted to drink, it reminded me of those specially prepared homecooked meals for those who needed a boost to their constitution.
That being said, liking this braised duck dish didn't mean that the Kong Bak Pao took second place.
Of course not.
It's not often that one gets to make a meal out of Five-Spice marinated braised pork belly chonks stuffed into steamed willowy white buns shaped like a cute puppet's mouth.
I wish I knew more of what this Five Spice is made of.
It's Chinese cooking magic, I tell you.
Because whether it be in the hei zhor or in the braised pork belly, the burst of flavors that exploded out with each bite was so good.
If it didn't bring back a sense of nostalgia, it created a new one.
This evening I decided that Kong Bak Pao was really best eaten warm.
A warm bun let the Bak melt smoothly away, let the warm heat of the Pao drift out of the bun, and let it all mush up like a comforting blend of textures and flavors in your mouth.
So addictive was it that I wish we could have had another order to bring home.
But Kong Bak Paos are one of those dishes that (whilst edible) don't taste as good once they're packed in a box and heated in a microwave.
So we decided to dabao the gravy back instead, and a wise choice it turned out to be.
There was, after all, a senior lady in a nursing home who a long time ago used to enjoy the food in this restaurant and we knew would love the taste of (carefully pureed) gravy from both the Braised Duck and the Kong Bak which my friend planned to give her.