More Zichar from 80

You know, I had not thought I would grow to like the food from this zichar stall when we first started eating here. 

I mean, eating food at hawker centers and coffee shops is sometimes a sort of gamble. You think the stall might be good, the food turns out to be otherwise. Or, you think the food from this stall is good, but it turns out that only (some) dishes are good, and the rest are mediocre. 

The latter had been my expectation when coming here to the zichar stall of Blk 80 Marine Parade Central. 

But, to my surprise, as so far as I've eaten, the food has been quite good. 

Now, I don't take pictures of every dish every time I eat there, but here be a few. 

You know what's funny?l

What's funny is that the cheapest item in particular collection is actually one of the best. 

it's not that they aren't good with the fried. 

But I think they're better with the stir fried. 

In any case, for a most pleasant price of $4.80 for (Sup Kum) Hor Fun, or Hor Fun with Gravy, I am not complaining. To being with, there aren't many places that will grant you such and such a dish at such a price. What's more, the quality is quite good. 

First time I had the dish I had worried that the sauce be too starchy, or the portion of hor fun be too small. I had also worried that the extras be either too hard or too discolored or not fresh at all.

To my surprise, it turned out otherwise. 

So there is a bit of starch inside the gravy but, really, it's not that bad. As in, I don't get the over stuffed feel after I eat the hor fun noodle with the gravy. On the other hand, it tastes just nice.

Is there wok hei?

Not alot. 

An occasional section or two, maybe, but not more. 

I don't mind. 

I mean, yes, I'd love it if there were more chewy chewy pieces stuck together but that's not something to be bargained for and, really, it isn't so high up on the criteria list anyway. 

The interesting part, I have to say, is probably the vegetables and the prawn and the meat. See, most of the time these are additional ingredients that no one really cares about, so more often than not, these are the ingredients that get hard, difficult to eat, and can literally be placed at the side. 

But the vegetable leaves are surprisingly soft (not chewy as I thought they would be), the stems are also soft, and whilst the pork slices are a wee bit ends and a wee bit small, they aren't dry nor inedible. The surprise is the prawn. Frozen, yes, but actually quite good. 

When it comes to the fried, their fried bee hoon is better than their fried hor fun. 

Why, exactly, I don't know. 

It's just that the fried bee hoon is drier and less oily as compared to the fried hor fun, and so my stomach takes it better. I've had more fun eating the bee hoon than the flat rice noodle, and I don't think it's because the hor fun has more sauce. I think it's because the nature of the noodle absorbs more sauce or oil compared to how the bee hoon does, and so the threshold is narrow.

In any case I'm glad for the bee hoon. 

It doesn't have a lot of ingredients, but they've got little tiny bits of char siew and prawn and shredded fried omelet egg and taugey. I like the way it feels in my mouth, slightly savory, but not greasy nor oily. 

Better yet I get to ask them for more limes these days which they generously do give. 

As of date, I haven't tried the rice dishes. 

I will- I've got my eye on the salted egg one- but not yet. 

The only rice dish in this collection had been chosen by my friend, and according to him, his choice of lemon chicken- a well fried fillet, a generous serving of sour-sweet sauce, was pretty satisfying too. 

The Lu Rou Fan of Fong Sheng Hao

You know, this is one of the foods that I don't mind writing about, yet at the same time, I am not sure if I want to write about it at all. 

It isn't because of the food itself but more so of the circumstances that surround the meal and the reason I'm eating it at this place at this time on this day. 

See, for the longest time the only Fong Sheng Hao I preferred to eat at was the one at PLQ's basement. Sometimes I rode a bike there. Sometimes I walked there. All through the years from Ceylon to Kembangan, it was the PLQ place that I preferred having a meal there.

But we haven't been back to PLQ in a while. 

And whilst I don't mind eating at the NEX outlet, I wish, in a way, I felt less tired, less drained, and less achy whenever I ate there. 

Coming here this evening was no different from the week before. 

It was one of those situations where I couldn't find myself really enjoying the food as much as I wished to, no less because all I wanted to do was go home, take a bath, cleanse off the work from chores, and sleep. 

But it wouldn't do justice to what is a very good bowl of Lu Rou Fan, or Braised Pork Belly Rice, so here we are. 

Fong Sheng Hao serves up their rice bowl in the typical Taiwanese HSR bento box style. The Taiwanese boxes are always packed to the brim- you can detect the fragrance of them braised meats a mile away- and although I can't be sure if they're the same size as the one here in Fong Sheng Hao, the ingredients, I'm guessing, will be more or less the same. 

Fong Sheng Hao does their bowl with rice (of course), braised pork belly (of course), plus an addition of a whole hard boiled egg, and pickled cucumbers. 

I like the pickled cucumbers. 

At one time I used to keep them to the end of the meal but ever since I restarted eating here, I've been going for them first. They refresh the palate, whet the appetite and give me a gentle crunch that I have in recent days begun to appreciate. 

Better yet, I've now realized that the cucumber actually does go very well with the braised pork belly where the tart, sourish, pickled taste of the cucumber balances out the savory rich of the braised sauce. Each bite now becomes a combination of sour and savory and fresh and earthy all at the same time. 

The egg, however, I still eat on its own, except for the white, which I have slightly mushed up with the rice.

Coming here we like to order more than one dish. 

At one time we would have had the toast sandwich or the crepe pancake, but we've since found we like their popcorn chicken better and so that be what we order. It isn't really huge, the portion, but each piece is quite substantial.

What's more, they do marinate it enough- a bit of pepper spice going on there- it is well fried enough (crisp outside, soft inside) and I like how the gentle crunch of the chicken goes down well whether eaten on its own or with a spoonful of rice. 

Chin Chin's Sam Lor

I'm so glad to have the opportunity to come here.

In my mind I think that has been far too long. 

You know, there was a time in my life when coming to Chin Chin was a near everyday decision. It was one of the options that always came up whenever we were trying to make a decision about lunch, and more often than not, we always came. 

These days however the calculator works different, and I don't come downtown as often as I would like to. 

Which then, makes dinner at this place a much treasured opportunity. 

One thing about Chin Chin that I appreciate very much is their consistency. 

How they do it, I don't know- it must take some effort- but whether it be a meal that I had seven years ago or whether it be a meal that I had just last week, my plate of Sam Lor Hor Fun is still the same. 

It might be a world with this war and that war, and this economic situation and that economic situation, but they haven't reduced the portion of the hor fun, nor the quality of the fish, nor the quantity of the tau gey. 

My plate of Sam Lor still, more or less, remains the same.

And it is precisely because of that which keeps me coming back time after time for this dish, and I don't (normally) order anything else. 

I have heard of places where the chef changes, the quality drops, and the food standards fall. 

Not here.

Everything remains the same. 

What has changed, however, is the crowd. 

When I first started coming to Chin Chin, the crowd was mostly local. Office workers, a random resident coming down to buy lunch, that sort. On occasion you might have had the rare ang mo coming in for a plate of chicken rice but that was usually either because he worked close by, or he was here with a bunch of colleagues all of whom were local. 

These days however there are tourists. 

Not the groups- Chin Chin doesn't seem to cater to them- but the indie tourists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and even South Korea. It's lovely seeing them pretty ladies all dolled up for the IG or the Xiaohongshu digging heartily into plates of chicken, cereal prawns, vegetables, or appetizer bites like hae zou the prawn rolls. 

Of course there're still the office workers, but they are a more diverse bunch now. In the last few times I've been there I've noticed Indians (or maybe Sri Lankans), then Filipinos, then Indonesians, and even a couple of Thais.

The ang mos still come. 

But they're not like the shirt and tie dude working at an office housed in a beautifully restored shophouse next door. 

They're visitors. 

Digging into a plate of roast chicken rice, a huge plate of fried rice, and two bottles of ice cold Tiger Beer. 

Lunches @ Thumbs Up

In recent days we have been frequenting this place quite a bit. 

Not just at dinner, or supper time (which was how it was when we first began patronizing the place) but now at lunch as well. 

What's funny is that we had not thought we would be coming this oft to Thumbs Up during lunch, but that's life, where your wallet brings you new discoveries and you get to mix and match menu items until you find the combination you- and your wallet- like. 

See, not every mainland place offers plates of food for just $6. 

This one does. 

It's worked perfectly for us. 

Not only are the dishes suitable for a lunchtime appetite, they give us a bit of room to work our tummy around. 

Here there are a couple of dishes that appeal much to my (lighter) lunchtime appetite. 

One's a stir-fried tomato egg dish that, whilst I have heard of it being usually homecooked and very, very easy to prepare, have never- not once- in my life- ever eaten it before. 

The other- I don't know its name- has stir-fried meat slices, several kinds of chopped chilis, one big fried egg, plus a mountain of rice ladled with chili oil with little black beans scattered all over. 

The thing about this dish is that it's fun to eat. 

And whilst different people have different definitions of fun, what appeals to me is that I find myself working through this plate in a neater, slower, more disciplined kind of way.

It's not possible to gobble down this dish.

Not only do I pick out the chilies one by one- I place them all along the edge of the plate- I find myself picking out the little black beans, the chopped onions, the chopped tomatoes, and eating them on their own separate from the meat and rice. 

It is the mix of flavors in this one plate that I really like. 

The meat is savory, the tomatoes are savory, the onions too are savory. The beans tend to be a little salty but I like putting a single bean on top a spoonful of rice and eating it together. This is not a sweet dish, so to speak, but no matter. The chili oil (is it Lao Gan Ma) makes it a fantastic meal altogether.

The most unusual part about this plate is how it has changed the way I eat. Me being me I sometimes tend to work through my meal at speed. 

With this plate, however, I've found myself eating in a far slower, more patient way than I do with other foods.

Might be the influence of C-drama (they taught me to work through a plate of rice using chopsticks).

Might also be how the dish is arranged that I find myself trying to appreciate the dish better and take more time. 

It has been a couple of times since we started doing our lunchtime meals here. 

Safe to say we have since found our sweet spot, and no doubt, it is an arrangement ideal and good. One plate of rice, four skewers, which, between my friend and I, we happily split. 

There's nothing more pleasant than to have a plate that has meal, vegetables, egg, chili oil, beans, and an addition of skewered fried chicken skin, plus skewered chunks of cumin-marinated grilled lamb.

A Kind of Fish Hotpot

It has been a couple of months since we last had a meal at this place in SOTA. 

I wish I could remember what the name of the place was, or when it was we had this meal. 

But I don't.

The only thing I do remember is the size of the fish, the meats, the hotpot, and the little bites that the place also provided. 

Grilled hotpot-style fish done China style has in recent years gained a cult following amongst the millennials and Gen Zs. It is one of those dishes best eaten when shared, and best eaten when everyone at the table has a similar liking for fish, and the soup base that comes along with it. 

There are a couple of popular soup bases- tomato, mala, suan cai, pork bone. Today we took the suan cai, which is a pickled vegetable kind of broth that has lots of other vegetables, and herbs inside. 

It's funny, I don't have a picture of the fish here. 

But I can tell you that the fish was not small. 

It also looked like it had been pre-fried. 

Actually I had thought that the fish be already chopped up by the time it came to the table, but it was a full piece of fish complete with head, tail, and bone. Seeing the eye of the fish frightened me, so my friend dunked the head inside the soup. 

What you don't see won't scare you. 

Our meal was, shall I say, a fairly balanced one. 

The star of the meal was the fish, but there was meat, there were vegetables, and there were cooked food, all of which we could either order from the cashier, or take from the chilled counter. 

I can't recall just what kind of meats there were- they had so many- but there were a few, amongst which was sliced pork belly, and this sliced meat, which I think was probably beef.

I had a very delicious time with the pork belly. 

Easy to cook, easy to eat, full of flavor once cooked inside the soup, it is one of my favorite meats when it comes to hotpot, and I can eat plenty of it. 

Same way too I can go for plenty of vegetables. 

Not that I choose everything though.

Sometimes I choose the fungus. 

Sometimes I choose the mushrooms.

Here I decided to be selective.

First up was the lettuce. 

This particular lettuce is one of my favorites when it comes to hotpot. 

Its name I don't know- I forget- I think of the leaves like a huge, canopied tree that when cooked in soup becomes one of the largest, juiciest vegetables that is delicious, and easy, on the bite. 

After that there were quail eggs, noodles, and what I call beancurd strips. 

If you're wondering why I took something as normal as quail eggs (instead of all the other foods) it's because quail eggs are one of my favorites whether they be with dessert or savory as a meal. 

It's fun seeing them bop about in the soup. 

It's fun popping them inside my mouth. 

Better yet, of course, when I can have as much as I like. 

One thing though, they fill up easily. 

Then there are the noodles. 

If you know me and my hotpots, I love noodles that have been simmered long in soup, so no way was I going to have a hotpot without having any of them fresh ramen for the taking. 

And I didn't want to miss out on the beancurd strips which in Chinese we call fu pi, or beancurd skin. 

This is an interesting food.

On its own it doesn't have as much taste, but dunk it into the hotpot soup base, and suddenly the taste of, and texture of the skin is enhanced. 

Surprised me very much the first time I ate it, and have always tried to go for it whenever I see it at the counters. I only ever see it at the Mainland-type of hotpots, though. 

Maybe it's not a popular ingredient with the local crowd. 

But I like it. 

I like the way the bean absorbs the taste of the soup and how the soup softens the texture to a degree that it gets all mushy and soft and warm when you bite into it. 

By right, three plates of noodles, two servings of beancurd skin, one serving of noodles, and six quall eggs would have been more than enough for me.

But I didn't want to miss out on the cooked. 

Would've been a waste to. 

She might be small, this place here at SOTA, and with more of a homecooked aesthetic than a restaurant one, but the owner didn't dial down on the offerings. 

There was fried chicken done Korean style, and steamed dumplings which we could order from the cashier. 

There were spring rolls, fried eggs, more fried stuff, then a couple of braised vegetables and braised meat for the taking. 

My friend wanted to have the chicken, so we got ourselves two baskets. The boneless chicken pieces came well-fried with a generous squeeze of yellow mustard, and sweet, spicy yangnyeom sauce. 

Then the dumplings were warm, tasty, and slightly chewy (like how Northern dumplings should be) on the palate as well. 

From the counter I took for myself one fried egg and a couple of spring rolls.

It doesn't look very appetizing, but I actually liked the spring rolls. 

So they were not very fresh, nor very crisp, even a little hard, but they added a little bit of crunch, and taste, to the rest of the food.

Maybe it does take a bit of stirring and mixing to truly enjoy all the food here. 

Like the fried eggs.

Eat them alone and you might find them cold and hard.

Eat them as a complement with the warmed boiled fish, the sliced meat, the noodles, or the vegetables, and the cold, hard egg- together with the other food- takes on a different flavor altogether. 

It was the same way I had the tteokbokki, which, to my chagrin, I only discovered so late in the course of the meal. 

By then I had already finished one whole serving of noodles, worked through two plates of sliced meat, and chomped through three spring rolls. 

I was feeling kind of full to take any. 

But I am someone who cannot resist tteokbokki whenever I see some, so a couple of them rice cake tubes went into my bowl. 

What's funny is that I don't really remember what I had it with.

Maybe I dipped them with the yangnyeom sauce. 

Maybe I dipped it with the soup. 

Or the vinegar that came with the dumplings. 

I might even have had the tteokbokki plain. 

I don't remember now. 

But I'll pay better attention to such details when I go back to this place next time. 

Same way to I'll pay better attention to the dessert- if they still have it.

This afternoon the dessert came complimentary in exchange for a (reasonable) Google review. 

At first sight, the bowl might look complicated with a lot of different ingredients. After a while we figured that you were supposed to mix the whole lot together, so we did just that, and realized all the sweets and textures worked together really well. 

Just don't ask me what they are- I have no idea. 

The only ones I know are the grass jelly base at the bottom, and the popping boba above. 

Zha Jiang Mian & Chili Dumplings

Over the course of last few months we have had meals from this stall about, shall I say, five or six times.  

Discovery of this stall came as quite a surprise. 

We had not known how the food of this stall here at Marine Parade Central was, if it be tasty, if it be good, if it be worth our dollar, so, imagine, how, to our surprise, the first time we tried the food, we found it to be incredibly tasty, appetizing, worth the palate, worth the dollar.

These days there aren't many places where one can have a sufficiently shiok meal at a reasonable single-digit price. 

Thankfully here at this stall, I can. 

When we first started coming here we ordered just the chili mala dumplings. 

Afterwards I realized that they had some dishes that I'd always been wanting to try, so I tried. 

One of the very first bowls I ordered for myself was the Black Bean Noodle, or the Zha Jiang Mian. It was something I had learnt from the Korean side a very long time ago but somehow had never had the opportunity to try. 

First time I had the noodle I didn't take the picture nice. 

So the second (or third or fourth) time I had the noodle, I made sure to sweep all them shredded cucumbers to the side, lay aside the noodles, and then shovel out the minced meat and sauce until it were all on the top. 

Much better. 

Actually it didn't matter how it looked. 

The taste all were as delicious the same. 

I'm not sure how to describe the taste. There's not much of the individual black beans, honestly, but the taste of it rests entirely in the sauce, and which, given the way they do it, gets mixed thoroughly with the minced meats. 

I got more of the sauce taste when eating the little balls of meat compared to when I was eating the noodles, but that being said, it didn't take me long to discover that the best way was really to mix everything up with chopsticks- cucumber, noodles, meat, all- and have them one mouthful together. 

That way you got the fermented taste of the sauce, the rough grainy texture of the meat, the fresh green of the shredded cucumber and the smooth of the noodle all at once same time.

You know, it has been a while since we've gone back there. 

Perhaps next time I decide to eat at this stall, I'll order the tomato egg noodles, and try, see if this time I can get the uncle to give me the flat noodles instead of them typical round ones. 

Thumbs Up Salted Egg Chicken

I may have written about this before- I can't remember- but this be one of my new favorite dishes from Mainland Chinese diner Thumbs Up on East Coast Road just downstairs.  

If there are two things that at Thumbs Up I can (quietly) say gave us new impressions, the first one be Lao Gan Ma, and then there's this- Chicken in Salted Egg Sauce.

Okay, I don't know the actual name of this dish but it probably will have a more elegant name than this blatant, bland description. 

Whatever it might be doesn't matter. 

What's important is that the dish alone makes for one of my favorites when I am at this place, and when dining here- despite the portion being pretty large for even two people- I find myself wishing that the plate had more.

The unique part about this dish is its simplicity.

I'm not sure if the preparation is simple, but from the looks of it, it doesn't look too difficult, not when the plate is reminiscent of crowd favorite spicy mala La Zi Ji- only the children's version. 

The one thing I like about this dish is how fun it is to eat. 

You know how life is like. 

A day ends, a week ends, and you're kinda pooped. A part of you wants to have something solid for the meal. A part of you also feels too tired to have one of those big solid meals. You want something fun, light, easy to eat. Same time too you want a meal that isn't fast food or instant noodles. 

That's where this dish comes in. 

If you're familiar with the mala version, well, the way you eat it is the same, piece by piece, picked up by the chopsticks. 

The only difference is that you don't have to hunt about for the pieces as you would for the mala version because here there's no chopped dried chili. There's just chicken all perfectly cut and perfectly fried, with no pieces of chili that you gotta sieve through to get to your chicken. 

Perhaps that be the very thing that make it fun.

No doubt there might be a bit of a mindless eating especially if it be after a long week, but that's not to say that it won't be enjoyable, especially since there is a good deal of taste. 

They do theirs rounded, by the way. 

At no time has it been that the chicken is salty on one side, tasteless on the other. At no time too has it been that some pieces have more seasoning than the others. 

It's rounded, and equal, with the right taste and the right crisp, on all sides. 

Got to say, that's something I absolutely appreciate (for $15) and love.