✍ 28 Feb 2026. Returned to HWA Seafood after nearly 3 years. This time, we tried more dishes, including live seafood.
Externally nothing changed. HWA Seafood still commands the far left end of the large 好食間 food court, which is itself tucked away in a corner of Tagore Lane (off Upper Thomson Road).
(Anyway, I heard the name Tagore when I was a child. He was a Bengali poet and playwright, the first Asian awarded the Nobel literature prize in 1913. In the old days, school taught us such things which were imprinted into our young impressionable minds.)
Getting back to the serious business of lunch, HWA is one of buddy Aaron's favourite places for family meals.
Convenient for drivers as there are some free parking spaces available steps from HWA Seafood / 好食間 food court.
Anyway, 好食間 is a clever play on words. 好食間 means "a good eating place" which also sounds like "a good time 好时间". So, poetic it would make the great Tagore proud.
I digressed again 🤭
Let's jump straight into the dishes we had.
熏焗甘榜鸡 Tea Smoked Chicken, one of HWA's signatures.
Second time tasting this. Nice tender moist meat. I heard murmurs of delight around the table though I got to admit, I still haven't quite got the tea fragrance I was expecting.
干烧苏东 Grilled Squid, another of HWA's signatures.
It's a large mollusk. Meaty, well coated with a savoury salty marinate which flavours got seared onto the skin and inner surfaces. Savoury salty with subtle sweet squid taste. Perfect excuse for beer, and wine.
My favourite part is the tentacles as the flavours are more concentrated and the soft crunchiness, firmer more pronounced, more Q 弹.
I also like the tail but shan't go further into food fetishes here 😅
The thing I like about squid, in general is, every part has a different texture and mouth feel.
蜜汁烤香排 Honey BBQ Pork Rib.
It's a lot of fall-off-the-bone tender meat with subtle porcine sweetness overlaid with savoury sweet sauce plus a bit of toastiness from baking.
HWA has live seafood. That day, they had live Soon Hock or Marble Goby.
The white meat was soft tender with a subtle squeaky chewiness to the bite. Neither mushy soft nor chewy fibrous - a testament of the chef's skill. Naturally sweet with the savoury aromatic sauce providing balance and ginger, chili pepper for a trace of spicy heat.
三黄苋菜 Spinach with Three Types of Eggs.
Century egg, salted egg, raw egg drop in spinach soup. It's like an egg soup cheat code - an assembly of umami savoury and natural sweet flavours.
飘香荷叶饭 Lotus Leaf Rice.
Good quality fragrant sweet Jasmine rice infused with savoury sauce and aroma from lotus leaf wrap. Lard croutons and chopped scallion added flavours and aromas.
福建面 Fried Hokkien Noodle.
This quirky rendition is buddy Aaron's special request but HWA Seafood will do this for any customer who orders it.
It's regular fried noodle with pork, prawn, and greens in dark soy sauce ala Hokkien Mee but with not one, but three different types of noodles - bee hoon, yellow noodle and kway teow. Indeed, the three different textures and flavours of the noodles did make the dish more tasty.
It's "Everything you want to have in noodle but were afraid to ask". Go ahead, Aaron has made it possible.
It was a good time 好时间 with well lubricated company. HWA Seafood can provide stemware at a nominal fee.
We didn't have their signature La La Bee Hoon this time. You can read my views on that dish by scrolling down to the archived article.
Stall name: HWA Seafood
Address: 9 Tagore Lane, #01-02, Singapore 787472
Nearest MRT: Lentor station but at least 30 minutes walk
Tel: 6452 0918
Hours: 11:30am - 10pm
Written by Tony Boey on 28 Feb 2026
Who is Tony Johor Kaki?
✍ 26 Feb 2023. Eight of us gathered at HWA Seafood off Upper Thomson Road. We had a nice reasonably priced lunch of familiar kopitiam type zhi char 煮炒 (cook & fry) dishes.
Stall name: HWA Seafood
Address: 9 Tagore Lane, #01-02, Singapore 787472
Tel: 6452 0918
Hours: 11:30am - 10:00pm
HWA Seafood is located in a food court at the ground level of a large office building. Parking is ample, beside the building and around it.
HWA Seafood is a large stall at the left far end of the food court. The food court is popular with many food stalls. It is full during lunch and the three busiest stalls were HWA Seafood, the chicken rice and chup chai png (economic rice) stalls. The usual suspects.
The menu is thick. Dishes range from higher end steamed fishes and seafood to affordable comfort dishes. Our first time here, we just picked a sampling of familiar zhi char type dishes.
The curry fish head was alright. The snapper fish was sufficiently fresh, clean tasting. The curry was mild, flavours well balanced and the coconut milk was at just the right thickness i.e. not cloyingly thick. Apparently, none of the group like thick coconut milk curry - you can guess our age group already 😬
The tea smoked chicken was a little below expectation.
The meat was tender, juicy and smooth but infusion of tea and smokiness was hardly discernible. It came doused in a gooey savoury sauce with a bit of smokiness but it's a funky taste profile that needed some time to learn to appreciate.
Grilled large squid.
The squid was quite robustly salty from the seasoning. There was also a bit of smoky flavour from grilling. The squid meat was done slightly dry and chewy. Not much moisture and natural squid taste left.
Fried chai poh tofu. Fried slab of tofu smothered under a mound of fried chai poh.
The tofu was tender firm, not that smooth, savoury with added sweet savouriness from the fried chai poh.
Stir fried green dragon vegetable. Came with bean sprout and enoki mushroom fillers but at least they cleaned the heads and roots off the taugeh.
The salty savoury sauce and the searing from frying drove away and masked the green taste of the still juicy crunchy vegetables.
La La clams fried bee hoon. Vermicelli, vegetables, egg and la la clams in a pool of soupy umami savoury sauce. Provided part of the carbs for the meal in a delicious way. Well liked and I think makes a tasty complete singleton meal.
We paid $21 per person which is reasonable in today's Singapore.
Great spot! I am so guttered that Chu Ban Kitchen off Casuarina closed. :(
ReplyDelete的确很好吃！
ReplyDeleteLaksa Ayam
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