Hua Kee 和记 at Pasir Panjang. A Seafood Plus Stall

Last evening, I had dinner with buddy Ong at Hua Kee 和记 at Pasir Panjang hawker centre in Singapore.



Pasir Panjang hawker centre is a popular hangout with locals. The hawker centre is conveniently located right at the doorstep of Pasir Panjang MRT station on the Circle Line.



There are seven seafood stalls here - Hua Kee is one of them (sort of).

Happy chef means good food. Jovial Uncle Khu at work 😄 40 passionate years of delicious food.

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Hua Kee feels a little different from typical seafood stalls ubiquitous in Singapore - it has a heavy stamp of Chef Uncle Khu's persona.



You know, that quiet pride of fastidious, veteran Teochew chefs. In his 70s now, Uncle Khu followed his dad at the stall when he was a child. Uncle Khu's son David too followed in his footsteps since he was 8 years old - so Hua Kee is firmly in the third generation now. 

From the dishes, we can get a glimpse of Uncle Khu's 40 year culinary career - his life's delicious work.



Hua Kee has a huge menu but this was all the two of us could manage 😂 (Means that we must come back for more lah 😄 )



The first thing that struck me about Hua Kee's chili crab was the sauce - uniquely, it has no tomatoes. It resembles a peanut sauce - the type we eat with satay.



You see, Hua Kee started life decades ago serving Penang rojak and Teochew style cuttlefish kangkong 鱿鱼蕹菜. Hua Kee's peanuty chili crab sauce is derived from Hua Kee's cuttlefish kangkong roots. 

The sauce thickened by crushed nuts is savoury, spicy and peanuty - you can taste and feel the soft crunchy bits. Crab gut which we call "crab paste" 蟹膏 added crustacean savouriness to the pastey sauce.



The crab meat encased in hard shell was tender and moist with natural sweet juices. The crab's natural flavour was complemented by the peanuty savoury spicy sauce.



The Philippines and Sri Lankan crabs were kept alive under a heavy wet gunny sack.

Every self respecting Teochew chef has a cold crab dish. Wow! These molting crabs by Uncle Khu were huge.

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Hua Kee have several more crab dishes and one of their signatures is their Teochew style cold crab. (They have moulting crabs but it is best to call ahead to confirm availability 📞 6474 9142.)



Not very photogenic Slipper Lobster 虾婆 in black pepper sauce.



The black pepper sauce was quite robustly peppery spicy savoury. We can still taste a bit of rather delicate sweetness in the Slipper Lobster's soft flesh, provided we do not eat it with too much peppery sauce in the same mouthful 😄



The Slipper Lobster though not live were kept well chilled.



Ikan Bakar or BBQ Sambal Stingray is one of my favourite dishes at street side or hawker centre seafood hangouts. It comes laid on a banana leaf and smothered with a thick blanket of intimidating fiery looking sambal chili. But, it was just nice for my hot spice tolerance.



Woh.... the soft and wet white flesh is sooo.... good - just slightly sweet.

I didn't eat the stingray's flesh with the sambal - the flesh's flavour is too delicate for that. I ate the delicious sambal chili with plain white rice. Yum yum. Perfect.



If you must have sourish spicy savoury sweet chinchalok with your Ikan Bakar, you gotta try this. I haven't had such a good chinchalok for a very long time.

If I have any complaint hor..., it's the use of Styrofoam utensils and plastic cutlery - but, I am nitpicking. Labour saving solutions are a fact of life in labour starved Singapore hawker centres.



Grilled cuttlefish - one of the dishes carried over from Hua Kee's early cuttlefish kangkong years, decades ago.



A large cuttlefish marinated in a savoury sweet sauce, grilled to a slight char at the edges. The flesh is tender and spongy. The slight char added a bit of toasty taste to the savoury sweet sauce and the underlying natural cuttlefish sweetness.

Comes with a dish of fiery looking chili sauce but I won't eat such nicely balanced and natural flavours with strong tasting sauce one 😛



I also tried Hua Kee's rojak.

The savoury sweet prawn paste sauce was soo.... good! I also like the thin strips of crispy fried fish topping. There's cut cucumber, pineapple etc hidden under that heap. But, I didn't really like the spongy soft you char kway as I prefer them to be toasted to a crisp.



Sambal Kangkong.

Humble greens masterly executed with skills from Uncle Khu's 40 year love affair with the wok.



👉 I am grateful to buddy Ong for introducing me to such an interesting seafood stall in Singapore. Hua Kee's seafood is delicious and Uncle Khu's infectious enthusiasm for his craft after 40 years is so humbling and inspiring at the same time. I would definitely be back with more kakis to enjoy Uncle Khu's numerous other dishes like La La clams, Gong Gong shellfish, Siput shellfish (zoot zoot) etc.



Oh.... of course, that huge Teochew cold moulting crab... 😋 which ought to be made illegal.. 😂

Thank you Uncle Khu for your hospitality.



Restaurant name: Hua Kee 和记 
Address: Pasir Panjang Food Centre, 121 Pasir Panjang Road, Singapore (right beside Pasir Panjang MRT station)
GPS: 1°16'34.0"N 103°47'29.8"E | 1.276120, 103.791623
Tel: 6474 9142
Hours: 5:00pm to 10:00pm (Tues off)

No pork, no lard, no Halal cert

Date: 14 Aug 2017

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