Review of Teochew Beef Kway Teow Noodle ● Under Rated Heritage Stall @ Amoy Street Food Centre

Looking for brunch before the office crowd descend on Amoy Street Food Centre, I noticed a quiet Teochew beef noodle stall at a corner run by an elderly couple. Picked this for today's food "adventure" because I haven't had a beef noodle I like for a while.

Stall name: Teochew Beef Kway Teow

Address: 7 Maxwell Road, stall #01-23, Singapore 069111 (stall in Amoy Street Food Centre)

Nearest MRT: 10 minute walk from Maxwell & Telok Ayer stations

Hours: 9:00am - 2:00pm

The couple running Teochew Beef Kway Teow was very kind and friendly to this inquisitive stranger 😁

Lady boss was busy hand slicing a block of beef, getting ready for the day.

The pink beef slices made me hungry and decide to get a bowl of beef noodle to try. It's my second meal this morning at Amoy Street Food Centre 😄

I got the smallest serving of $6 beef kway teow soup. It's a generous portion with lots of toppings of beef slices, tripe, tendon and a beef ball. There's also crunchy savoury tangy preserved vegetables, fresh cilantro, some fermented black beans. So, this is a quintessentially Teochew bowl.

The soup was savoury tangy and seemed to get most of its flavours from the savoury tangy preserved vegetables. The beefiness was hardly discernible.

I like it that the kway teow noodles were thick and broad, so it picked up the soup's flavours well.

The beef, slices and chunks of it were simply blanched. The tender, slightly chewy beef tasted fresh and had very slight beefy flavour. 

Springy tendon and spongy tripe were nice - not much flavour but I enjoyed the texture.

The beef ball was firm and chewy to the bite. Mostly savoury with a bit of sweet beefiness.

Lady boss popped in a few fermented black beans into my bowl. They do heighten the savouriness level and enhanced the mild tasting bowl.

After I shared about Teochew Beef Kway Teow stall on my Facebook page, many of their fans chimed in about their feelings about their favourite beef noodle stall. Many had eaten at this stall for decades, even during their teens.

Boat Quay Food Centre 1983. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore

Tengcc and Serene Tan had been eating this since the stall was at the now demolished Boat Quay Food Centre. It was run by two brothers. One moved to Upper Boon Keng food centre but had retired. This stall at Amoy Street is the only one still running.

Rayner and Karen remember eating this when they first started out working around Amoy Street.

Chef Niven said this was his late dad's favourite beef noodle stall. Niven said his dad would also ask for fermented ginger powder for his noodles. I shall do that too next time 😄

Seah Kim Ping said this is her favourite beef noodle stall precisely because of its mild flavours. She also recommends the dry version which I must try next time.

Alex Kee said that in Teochew cuisine the emphasis is on the ingredients' natural flavours hence less seasoning is used.

Written by Tony Boey on 3 Apr 2023