After hearing buddies Sean and Jem raved many times about the giant shrimp dumplings at Beauty World Food Centre's Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Noodle stall, I long wanted to give it a try myself. Today, I finally had the chance to taste the famous shrimp dumpling and got a guided tour of one of Sean's favourite food haunts. I also got blown away by this stall's beef brisket noodles. Thank you Sean ๐
I arrived ahead of Sean. When he asked me what was the queue situation at the stall, I replied "no queue".
Oh.. how wrong I was ๐
Here's the ordering protocol.
When you place your orders at the stall, the lady boss will give you a queue number and estimated waiting time. Come back to the stall to collect your food when your time is nearly up. (So, you won't see a queue at the stall.)
We waited 30 minutes for our food ๐
Sean came back with two large plates of beef brisket noodles (instead of their famous soya sauce chicken ๐ค ). But, I trust Sean - he grew up around here and is an avid foodie with wide dining experience around the world from street food to fine dining.
The legendary shrimp dumplings in soup.
The soup was old school Cantonese. My late grandmother made soup this way. It was full bodied and rich with depth of savoury flavours. The taste of dried cuttlefish was prominent with underlying chicken flavour - I like... very much. It was rich like restaurant "superior" soup.
The soup spoon wasn't big enough for the shrimp dumpling ๐ฎ
The dumpling was all shrimp with a bit of black fungus for crunch. The good size prawns were fresh, meaty, tender-crunchy, and sweet.
Everything I heard about this shrimp dumpling is absolutely true.
This marvellous shrimp dumpling is sold at $1.20 each.
The shrimp dumplings are reason enough to come to Beauty World Food Centre. Their beef brisket noodles make it triply worth it - yes, 1 + 1 is more than 2 with this beef brisket noodle and shrimp dumpling combo.
The wanton noodles come smothered in a thick brown sauce then topped with ropes of beef brisket, tendon, stewed daikon, and stalks of choy sum greens. Sean added a dab of sambal at the side - we are Singaporeans mah... .
I tossed and thoroughly coated the noodles with the thick heavy sauce. The sauce was rich with beefiness and had layers of savoury flavours from fermented bean curd. Delicious (though the style and taste profile are different from beef brisket at Noodle Place, Fatty Ox, the late Master Tang, etc).
The relatively thick noodles were soft-tender outside and had a stiffer crunchy core. Very nice!
The springy noodles and beefy savoury sauce were perfect together.
The strips of beef brisket were soft, juicy, beefy and saturated with savoury flavours.
The tendons were soft and smooth like floppy slippery jelly and tasted nicely savoury from the sauce enveloping it.
The chunks of daikon (radish) were soft, saturated with juice and savoury sweet flavour. The taste reminded me of those street side stewed daikon stands everywhere in Guangzhou.
Paiseh (pardon me), this chili was half eaten before I took this picture because I wasn't expecting much.
Turned out that even in the chili department, Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Noodle stall stood out. The pickled chili slightly tender from soaking in vinegar was sweet and tangy with subtle heat. I can enjoy it on its own.
Forgot to take my customary picture of the aftermath but I assure you that we cleaned up our plates to the last strand of noodle and last drop of sauce.
I was pretty mind blown by this beef brisket noodle and giant shrimp dumpling.
(Note: Beef brisket noodle available only on Sat & Sun. Shrimp dumpling available daily except Weds.)
Written by Tony Boey on 13 Nov 2021
Sky Lee said on Johor Kaki Facebook:
ReplyDelete"Annie learned her craft, through sheer interest, from HK master many years ago, when she's just a housewife.
She first started selling her delicious HK soya chicken at China Square Food Centre in the 90s.
This is probably the 3rd or 4th location she shifted to, due to rent increases in other places.
The young woman helping at her stall, I saw her revising her homework at China Square in her primary school uniform.
One of the very authentic HK style soya chicken.
Try it before she retires."