So often in those moments of food longings, it's not those past fanciful meals that unexpectedly intrude into my consciousness but much humbler childhood delights. For me, often it's just sweets - ondeh ondeh and tapioca cakes to be precise. What about you?
Buddy rang me before daybreak to chase me out of bed to come to Maxwell Food Centre to see one of the last Singapore hawkers making Nyonya kueh by hand.
It's 7am, Heng Heng Ondeh Ondeh and Tapioca Cake stall was already opened for the day. Regulars were trickling in to buy bagfuls of cakes while the Ang couple was still busy hand making their kueh. (Some refer to Heng Heng which is Hokkien for 興興, as Xing Xing which is the Putonghua [Mandarin] transliteration.)
Mr Ang Tiong Guan moved here in 1986 when Maxwell Food Centre was established replacing Maxwell Road (Wet) Market.
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| China Street 1950s. National Archives of Singapore photo |
Heng Heng's claim to fame, their Ondeh Ondeh. SGD$2 for a pack of 5 (2019 price). They don't look pretty, coming snowed over with snowy white grated coconut but leaking brown gula Melaka here and there.
They taste nice though - layers of sweetness from the grated coconut coating the tender sweet potato flour balls to the brown palm sugar lava inside.
Heng Heng serves 2 types of Lo Mai Chi 糯米糍. Mochi type kueh filled with grated coconut and gula Melaka (palm sugar). It's basically a sweet dessert with layers of sweetness packed in a tender chewy glutinous rice ball.
Another version is the same chewy stretchy glutinous rice ball filled with crushed toasted peanut and gula Melaka, so this variety has a nuttiness in addition to layers of sweetness.
I love both versions as they have just the right soft chewiness for me and are tasty yet not overly sweet.
Heng Heng's tapioca cake is simply boiled tapioca dressed with fresh grated coconut. When I was a boy, my grandparents, father and elders (i.e. every adult) told us kids how there was shortage of rice during the Japanese occupation (1942-45) and starving people were forced to eat tapioca root (known as ubi in Malay) instead.
But hor..., as a boy I secretly wondered but never dared said out loud that tapioca root actually tastes quite nice leh..., especially when eaten with grated coconut and drizzled with gula Melaka 😛 If I said so then, I will surely be rewarded a "buah duku" or a knuckle on the head 😱 (Heng Heng's version doesn't have gula Melaka dressing.)
Heng Heng serves an excellent Kueh Kosui with soft jelly gummy like texture that doesn't stick to one's teeth. The sticky jiggly gummy made with tapioca flour and palm sugar was not overly sweet and worked well with sweetness from grated coconut when eaten together. It's my favourite item at Heng Heng.
Pulut Inti, boiled glutinous rice tinted blue with butterfly pea flower capped with grated coconut and palm sugar, and wrapped in a little fragrant banana leaf parcel. Pulut Inti rice was coloured with butterfly pea flower since time immemorial, before they put that trendy blue hue in everything today 😄
Restaurant name: Heng Heng Ondeh Ondeh & Tapioca Cake 中国街興興
Address: Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street, #01-31, Singapore 069184
GPS: 1°16'48.5"N 103°50'41.9"E 🌐 1.280129, 103.844979
Waze: Maxwell Food Centre
Tel: 9730 2833
Hours: 7:30am - 2:00pm (Sunday off)
Date visited: 5 Nov 2019
Three of my favourite food reviewers on YouTube reviewed Heng Heng. I appreciate these gentlemen for their matter of fact, authentic style.
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