Coming here to Hong Li Coffee Shop at Eunos MRT always serves as a reminder just how interesting life's turns can be.
I had not thought this coffee shop be anything more than a regular coffee shop with its chap cai png stall, its Western food stall, its bak kut teh stall, fish soup stall, Korean and Japanese food stall, its duck rice stall and its zichar stall.
But surprise of surprise it was that I would discover a stall holding a 100 year old legacy.
In the form of a bowl of noodles, wanton dumplings and minced meat swimming about in a tasty, clear soup.
There're many iterations of bak chor mee, and I don't really know what they are, some like it with a certain type of noodle, some like it with a certain type of sauce, some say that the noodles should be a certain texture, others however say that the noodles need not be this kind of texture but the soup, or the oil, or the lard, something, must be there.
I honestly don't know what's good, what's not.
What I do know, however, is that this bowl here lets me choose noodles that I like, including kuay teow (most of the time) and along with it comes a ladleful of minced meat, green leafy vegetables, and pork lard swimming somewhere at the bottom of the noodle heap.
I'm the kind who prefers my noodles dry over wet when it comes to bak chor mee.
Dry, no chili, ketchup, please, thank you.
So that's what I had this afternoon, where instead of kuay teow I chose the regular noodles (of which I don't know its name). I liked how the sauce mixed well with the texture of the noodles. I liked the pieces of crunchy lard. I didn't have to worry if the taste overwhelmed. (It didn't). I also didn't have to worry if the sauce was too salty or if the noodles were too hard and dry.
None of it happened.
But the loveliest part was, of course, the soup.
I know of places where the soup has a huge piece of salted fish in it (and they're good).
This one doesn't, still though there's a lot of little bits in it, a lot of minced meat bits inside it, even more green leafy vegetables, and, of course, the pieces of wanton that have the softest, silkiest skin ever.
This is the kind of wanton dumpling that really is a dumpling.
The skin is soft and silky, and of course, best part of all there is the meat soft and mushy and full of pork taste that leaves no after flavor and doesn't give me the gao wei gao wei kind of feel.
Will I come back and have this bak chor mee here at Hong Li?
Yes.
Hopefully I'll have the space to come back.
Hopefully too I'll have the mind to come back.
Or I'll be finding a new bak chor mee to have.