We gathered at the spanking new Margaret Drive Hawker Centre. I came early to survey the food stalls. Stalwarts from the demolished Tanglin Halt hawker centre like Thunder Tea Rice and Tong Kee Chicken Rice have moved here together with many others into the double storey hawker centre.
Circling the hawker centre, stalking the stalls, the divine aroma of lard and sesame oil from Tiang Xiang wanton noodle stopped me in my tracks.
Buddy chef Eric Chua queued up and bought for all of us 🙏
The mound of egg noodles got the good old school look and feel. Set in a shallow pool of aromatic blended sauce, sesame oil and lard with a dollop of sambal at the side. Topped with thin slices of char siew scattered like autumn leaves and stalks of leafy choy sum. (I say choy sum because wanton noodle is a Cantonese dish 😬 Chye sim is the Hokkien name of this vegetable.)
After a good toss of the noodles in the sauce, lard and sambal, the strands were enveloped in aromatic grease. The soft crunchy egg noodles were slurpy, greased by the wet slick. It tasted lardy, savoury and laced with spritely but mild spiciness. It's how I remember noodles at the best wanton mee stalls of the 60s to 80s tasted.
The thin chewy char siew was okay though less memorable, just like how I forgot how char siew of the old days tasted.
Actually, after tasting Kuala Lumpur style char siew wanton mee, I lost memory of other char siew 😛 But, that's another story and I still prefer this old school Singapore heavenly fragrance sauce.
The wanton skin was quite thick and the minced pork dumpling felt lumpy overall. Savoury sweet flavour was alright.
Written by Tony Boey on 19 Aug 2022
Leslie wasn't in during our visit
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