There are about half a dozen fishball noodle / bak chor mee stalls at Maxwell Food Centre. The one with the longest queue ironically has the lowest social media visibility 🤔
Tanjong Pagar Teo Chew Fishball Noodle stall sports the longest queue, longer than the social media "stars".
It took a quite a while before I got my food. They have $4 or $5 sets - I ordered the latter. Truth be told, I felt my patience a little tested even though I wasn't in a hurry to go anywhere. I concluded that the friendly hawker has a lot of pride in his food and used slightly more time to ensure that we get only the best.
The bowl of mee pok looks unusually plain - just a blanket of blanched minced pork and a couple of stalks of cilantro over the mound of flat yellow noodles.
The sauce was drippy wet and generous so it coated the noodles well and easily. The taste was just robust enough but no more. Dominant flavours were tangy spicy with a bit of sweetness and savouriness. Presence of lard or ketchup weren't felt. (Next time I shall ask for more lard and even some lard croutons 😄 ) The sauce was zesty spicy but doesn't bite nor leave much impression. Umami is missing.
The noodles were minimalist but the bowl of fish balls, fish dumplings and fish cake looks impressive.
The soup was clear and watery. The dominant savoury salty flavour came from tong chai (fermented vegetables).
The fishballs look like mochi balls and equally as big. The skin was thin and popped to the bite to release gentle savoury salty flavours.
The same fishball except for additional texture and flavours from embedded bits of vegetables. A quintessentially Teochew way of doing fishballs.
The fish dumplings were small with a tiny knob of minced pork wrapped in fish meat skin.
After I am done, people were still queuing for Tanjong Pagar Fishball Noodles. It's one of the simplest renditions of fishball bak chor mee I've come across and it seems to work judging by the queue.
I mean people could have just gone over to the bak chor mee stalls that don't have queue, so there must be something they like here. For me, it's the simplicity and sometimes that's all I need want.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments submitted with genuine identities are published