Lunch today at Singapore's Chinatown Complex hawker centre. For one meal together, we ordered our food from 3 different stalls - MR FISH, 80 Huat Huat and Shi Xiang Satay, getting the best dishes from each. That's the thing about eating at Singapore hawker centres - you can order food from different stalls to eat together and no one bats an eyelid.
We got the fried fish hor fun, fried fish collar with bitter gourd and fish soup from MR FISH for $40. Fried sweet potato leaf and fried beef for $27 from 80 Huat Huat. Satay (not in picture) from Shi Xiang for $12.
Everything was nice, seriously. My favourite of the day was the fried fish hor fun. The toman fish or snakehead fish cut in long thick tender pieces with skin on was just subtly sweet with a bit of savoury taste on the lightly seared outside.
The soft hor fun noodles were savoury toasty sweet from the sauce, a bit of wok sear and taste of rice. The best thing in the dish was the thick sauce of soy sauce, black bean paste, starch and other ingredients. The sauce had a deep stack of savoury flavours in many layers and it infused the whole dish with its tastiness. I was scooping up the remaining sauce with a spoon, after all the noodles were gone. I love it.
Braised bitter gourd with fish collar. Nice, though the black bean paste sauce was a shade too salty for me and I felt it overpowered the toman fish's gentle natural sweet flavours somewhat.
The fish soup is like a vegetable soup with fish. The watery soup is clean tasting, mildly savoury with a bit of fresh green vegetable taste. The fish lightly wok seared before cooking in the soup was tender and moist with slight fish sweetness.
As MR FISH only has fish dishes, we ordered this stir fried beef with onions from 80 Huat Huat. It was another favourite of the day for me. The beefy slices were tender but slightly chewy and well infused with savoury black sauce flavour.
Nice stir fried potato leaf with sambal balacan and chili. I like it that the savoury spicy sambal balacan chili was robust yet gentle enough for me to taste the leafy green's natural sweetness. There wasn't much grease in the dish, which I like. (Averagely done versions tend to be too salty and too oily.)
We rounded up our lunch with satay from Shi Xiang. They serve both chicken and pork satay. Five of us, we unanimously opted for pork satay only 🐖
The small pieces of lean meat and fat are marinated in spices, skewered with a thin stick and charcoal grilled before serving. The satay is eaten with a peanut and spice sauce spiked with a bit of pineapple puree. This is old school Hainanese style.
In the mouth, it's a blend of savoury sweet with mild spicy heat, nutty taste and a bit of sweetish citrusy pineapple zest.
If you want to try what we had, all three stalls are in the Green zone at stalls #02-073, #02-079, #02-080.
MR Fish opens 11am - 3pm (Sunday off).
Shi Xiang Satay opens 1pm - 8pm (Monday closed).
80 Huat Huat opens 11am - 3pm | 5pm - 8pm (Weds closed).
Chinatown Complex Food Centre
Address: 335 Smith St, Singapore 050335
GPS: 1°16'58.5"N 103°50'35.0"E 🌐 1.282922, 103.843042
Nearest MRT station: Chinatown
Date visited: 27 Feb 2020
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