This coffee shop next to Sheng Siong Supermarket has become, in recent months, one of my favorite places to eat whenever I'm in Bedok Central.
I don't know how I came to find out about it.
Neither do I know when it was that I began to want to dine there.
A lot of it, I suppose, had to do with the proximity of the coffee shop, and of course, the chap cai png stall.
People tend to underestimate the strength of a chap cai png stall- it's every day food, they say, nobody cares, let's just do whatever needs to be done- but then, that is the whole point.
It is every day food.
And because it is every day food, it is the stall that diners generally look out for first before they look at anything else.
It used to be the case that people decided on a coffee shop based on, say, the quality of their kopi.
Maybe it still is.
But these days people also cast judgment based on the variety, and amount of food at the coffee shop's chap cai png stall.
It doesn't matter whether they will choose it or not.
But it will help them decide whether they buy from the other stalls in the same coffee shop or not.
It's like, if a coffee shop can't do their chap cai png well- if the food doesn't have variety, if the food doesn't have quantity, or if the food isn't enticing- it's assumed (sometimes wrongly) the wanton mee stall, the fishball noodle stall, the chicken rice stall and the roast meat stall all won't be doing well either.
This Kim San Leng, fortunately, has what I feel is a fairly good chap cai png stall.
Never mind what time I come- 11am, 3pm, 530pm, 830pm- the stall is always brightly lit, and there's always sufficient variety, and amount, of food in the dishes at the stall.
It isn't always that I have the chap cai png though- in all this while, maybe a couple of times, all of which I dabaoed and brought back to the void decks nearer home to eat.
But because this be such a decisive stall, I know the others be just as good and I order more from the other stalls as well.
Like this afternoon where we looked about and around and decided we'd have two plates of cheong fun from the cheong fun stall, a bowl of wanton soup, and a selection of dim sum from the dim sum stall.
I was so glad for all this, I tell you.
Sometimes some of the nicest foods are those that you can have at unexpected places, like the cheong fun at this coffee shop that is, if I'm not wrong, pretty famous, with the chef having hailed from a five-star restaurant (I forget which one) before opening up this stall here at Kim San Leng.
What I love about the cheong fun is its smooth, silky texture that, surprisingly, gives you a bit of chew. The chew's not in the thickness of the rice roll sheet. It is in the number of rolls the sheet has been spun, and because one eats the cheong fun as a piece, what you get is a smooth texture of rice roll that has that chew because there're at least four spins in each piece.
Not just that, there's also the sauce, and the filling, which is substantial when it comes to the prawn, and the char siew. We take a special liking for the prawn- it's small but not tiny- and there's chunks of chonky char siew cut the right size nestled within the pillowy rice roll.
I like the fact that the sauce isn't too salty.
Same too can be said of the dim sum.
Yes, it does look a wee bit ordinary in the pictures, but the salted egg lava buns are filling- you have a fair bit of chew in the bun- and you know you have to be careful with the filling when you accidentally take too large a bite and it comes flowing out.
Salted egg lava buns are one of my favorite paus to have, and here they do it pretty well. There's a hint of sweetness to the filling, and you don't get jerlak even if you eat two.
I liked the char siew fan cai too.
Perhaps the magic of it lies in how long they take to steam.
I have had fan cais where the rice, although soft and tasty, was soft to such a degree where the grains all stuck together and had the same texture as would the lor mai kai, except that it somehow doesn't feel as right when it comes to fan cai.
Then I have had fan cais where the rice was cold, the char siew was cold, everything was cold, and it was so unappetizing that it became a chore to eat it all up.
Thankfully there was none of that here.
Not with the siew mais, which were firm and full of meat even after we'd left them alone for a while.
I can't say which of which these dishes I like best- looking at them now they're all very appetizing to me- but let's just say I'm glad we ordered the wanton soup.
Yes, it was a bit of a surprise, but I do have a love for the soup, and the wantons from this particular (brand) stall, and I always like ordering a bowl when I'm here.
It isn't just the soup which is clear and flavorful and has the balance of (warm-feeling) meat, but also the wantons which have smooth, thick, yet silky skin, are of the perfect bite-size easy to pick up with chopsticks and easy to bite, and are stuffed so full of soft, perfectly boiled minced meat that every bite simply mushes inside your mouth, filling it with taste, texture and homecooked Asian warmth all at the same time.
