For the past weeks, I had been lurking around the sprawling Bedok Interchange Hawker Centre. I think the hawkers have alerted the neighbourhood watch about this inquisitive uncle... . Anyway, as usual I turned to my Facebook friends for help on where to eat. Brent Tay said I must try Hai Fa 海发粿汁 - "The best kway chap" he said. "To me the best in Singapore" he further stressed.
And that's the thing. It would have taken me much longer to ferret out the best in the hawker centre without a little help from friends.
Indeed, Hai Fa serves a very good kway chap as Brent pointed out - the best to many people's taste buds. Thanks Brent for the recommendation.
One pax serving for $4.50 - a set of pork intestines, belly and a bowl of rice sheets in "soup". (I omitted the fish cake, tau pok, and egg to focus on the porky uncle stuff.)
I said "soup" in quotation marks because it was water used to boil the rice sheets (kway) splashed with a ladle of braising stock used to braise the pork and offal.
It worked really well as the sweetish water now has a savoury herbal layer of flavour - mild well balanced savoury sweet always works for me 😋
The kway was generic but still good as it was thin, soft and slurpy smooth. Subtly sweet with savoury sweet herbal flavours from the "soup" clinging on the paper thin rice sheet.
I like it that Hai Fa fries their own shallot instead of resorting to factory fried, tasteless, "smell less" "wood chips" or whatever chips. A little sprinkling of real fried shallot perfumes the sloshy bowl of kway.
I was delighted with the braised pork intestines. They were tender and had a light springy squeaky chew i.e. QQ. (I prefer my braised intestine to be QQ than soft mushy.)
Hai Fa's braised intestines were well cleaned and clean tasting. I like it that I can taste the underlying natural pork sweetness together with the mild savoury sweet herbal braising stock.
The pork belly slices were also tender with a bit of QQness especially the skin at the top. Next time, I shall order a bit more of skin. The same mild savoury sweet herbal flavour worked well with the subtle natural sweetness of the pork belly.
A word about the chili sauce - it was vinegary sour, spicy hot and salty (many people find this robust sauce nice). I don't use dips much these days, preferring to savour my food's natural flavours.
Recommended for you 👍 Humble little hawker centre stall that does the humble traditional Teochew dish very well. One of the highlights of Bedok Interchange Hawker Centre. If your idea of tasty kway chap is a light springy bite in the meat (not soft mushy) and mild well balanced flavours (not flat, one dimension salty), then Hai Fai might be the kway chap for you too.
Restaurant name: Hai Fa Kway Chap 海发粿汁
Address: Stall #01-31, Bedok Interchange Hawker Centre, 208 New Upper Changi Road, Singapore 460209 (steps from Bedok Mall and Bedok MRT station)
GPS: 1°19'28.0"N 103°55'48.9"E 🌐 1.324448, 103.930251
Nearest MRT: Bedok (East West Line)
Tel: 9191 8853
Hours: 07:30am - 2:30pm
Non Halal
Date visited: 10 Mar 2019
Chris kway chup lurking nearby is definitely better than this by alot
ReplyDeleteThanks. I shall try that once I have done exploring Bedok Interchange H C.
DeleteThey are not very costly and incredibly inexpensive.
ReplyDelete