It is hard not to notice Boon Kee when you are in Clementi central hawker centre - it is one of four stalls with the longest queues (the others are the lor mee, fried carrot cake and porridge stall).
The queue today was already long enough and the guy in front of me had to order 7 packets 🙄
My $3.50 wanton mee breakfast.
It's pretty standard - noodles, sauce, char siew, choy sum, soup, three wantons (two boiled and one fried).
Moving the noodles slightly aside, there's a greasy pool of dark sauce.
The generic noodles were done soft-tender with a slight crunch.
The sauce struck me as old school from my childhood - it tasted savoury, "ketchupy", tangy, and spicy. It's from a time long ago when we felt the taste of ketchup was magical. Somehow, ketchup lost that allure, I don't remember since when.
Today, this taste profile is less common in Singapore but still pervasive in the Johor fishing town of Pontian, famous for their wanton mee. There's a good following for Boon Kee's signature sauce, judging by the long queue everyday. I enjoyed this ketchup laced sauce too.
The rest of the dish felt unremarkable - the char siew was all lean, dry and chewy, fried wanton wasn't crisp.
The boiled wantons were meaty and the soup had nice anchovy, peppery flavour.
Written by Tony Boey on 9 Dec 2021
yes the old school ketchupy taste......i find those at Kuong's, Kok kee and Wanton Noddle house...I often ask for very little chilli so the ketchup taste stands out
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