Hock Heng Fish Soup @ Upper Boon Keng Hawker Centre Residents' Favourite 福興鱼汤

Hock_Heng_Fish Soup_Upper_Boon-Keng_Hawker_Centre_福興鱼汤

Suddenly stranded at Upper Boon Heng Hawker Centre today, I quickly scouted for lunch before the office crowd descended 😬 Hock Heng fish soup had the longest queue of residents, so yeah... I quickly got in line.

Then, I realised that I had blogged about Hock Heng's main outlet at Sims Vista hawker centre before. There too, Hock Heng had the longest queue in the hawker centre. But, I was ambivalent about the fish soup I had there.

So okay... now's a good chance to try out Hock Heng's fish soup again though at a different outlet.

I struggled with what to order as I worked my way up the queue. Fish slice, fish head, seafood i.e., mixed, dry, soup, rice, noodle, etc.

I got my food after about 20 minutes. The time it took to prepare each order partly accounted for the long wait at Hock Heng.

I tried my luck with an off menu order. Fish slice soup and mee pok dry kosong. Unker taking orders said "oi sai" i.e. can!

Swee.

At first sight, the bowl of fish soup doesn't reveal much. Most of the stash of ikan batang fish slices were hidden under the soup, and covered by cubes of tofu. There were some ten pieces of good size fish slices. At $6, this was good value in today's market.

The soup was relatively clear, watery, savoury, sugary sweetish. When I stirred in the fried shallot and white pepper, it added a mild balancing savoury bitter taste. It's better with the fried shallot even though it was the factory supplied kind. The green taste of chai sim wasn't pronounced here (unlike at Sims Vista).

The white fish slices were good. The thick sliced fish was tender not soft, with a subtle natural fresh fish sweetness. Came with skin on, which I prefer. There were about or nearly ten slices which surprised me for the price of $6.

The mee pok noodles (add SGD1) were done soft al dente. The sauce was quite robustly savoury tangy spicy sweet. Doesn't delight but still more interesting than plain boiled average quality grains for fish soup.