The Beef House (Syed Alwi Road)

Not sure if there are people like me who enjoy an old school traditional Kopitiam experience, but if you do, this place has the vibes and food that is like that. From the seemingly rude aunty and uncle shouting to the slamming of plates and bowls in front of you, I actually dig into such vibes 😂

Wait till you try their food. Their Yong Tau Foo ($5) is up to the owner to decide which ingredients to give you, and each of them was bursting with a nostalgic taste. It's not like it's so good that you need to come from the far end to try, but each ingredient is handmade with simple meat filling. To cater for the older crowd, they were not too salty and the soup was very comforting and hearty. Not the most flavourful, but definitely perfect for a rainy day.

Now their ingredients come with a plate of dry noodles that were just simply seasoned with minced meat with some kind of flavoured oil. It has an al dente texture and is much better with their homemade chilli. It was not particularly spicy but flavourful.

I feel like it is an experience to dine here, as it reminds you of the olden days where people probably ate the same bowl to get by their day. Such sentimental feelings were probably intensified by the look and feel of the shophouses nearby!

Very chewy skin. The filling is very very bland, esp compared to their intensely savoury abacus seeds sauce

I don't like

Everyone tells you this place's food is top notch but everything else is as bad as the food is good. And they'd be right. There's a constant din despite not much happening, queue moves incredibly slowly because the order taker is the same person as the chef who is also the cashier. There's a lot of queue cutting from regulars presumably(while in the queue someone from behind literally received a plate of soon Kueh as he was in the queue, when even I haven't ordered, much less him). Need to fight for seats, things are so inefficient, and a lot of takeaways, not to mention they aren't understanding the orders very clearly and there's a lot of clarification. Are they the best beef balls and best abacus seeds place in Singapore? Probably. Is it good enough to stand 30mins in queue in a constant chaotic and uncomfortable environment? Not to me, I hated it

Food:
This is really good. It's soft and very chewy, which may not be everyone's thing but I liked it. The sauce is strong to pair w the texture, incredibly savoury from the lovely small shrimps

Their beef balls are really unique. It's kind of how you expect perfection to be, for handmade beef balls. Very tightly bound, very meaty, and the beef muscles can be clearly seen. The bite is strong, and actl abit less bouncy than you would expect but not tough by any means. Solid stuff, pun intended

So they have beef ball and beef tendon ball. The difference is that the beef tendon ball has tiny bits of tendon inside, which has a strong bite on its own, so overall it is more springy and less meaty than the beef balls.

The beef slices are quite decent, the marinate is somewhat unique and despite the rather thick cut it's not unacceptably chewy

Their soup is very clear and very good. Yes it's somewhat mild so not everyone can appreciate it, but it really is good

Do not judge the book by its cover. The beef balls in the soup make look plain and plain with stingy amount of broth but this simple looking bowl of soup still remain as tasty as before. The flavour tasted full-bodied and was filled with natural sweetness from beef bone broth.

The beef balls are still undeniably chewy and bouncy with beefy flavor in every bite. These are very addictive.
Every piece of YTF tasted fresh and appetizing. As you reach the bottom of the soup with the spoon, you will realize that there are a handful amount of soya beans.
The Hakka Noodle is similar to Mee Pok just that they are narrower in size. The execution of Hakka Noodles usually topped with a handful amount of minced meat.

The special part of the Soon Kueh as compared to the usual ones we had was that the skin was made with yam.

Soon Kueh was plump and had chewy skin. Ingredients were filled to the brim with turnip, mushrooms, shrimp, black fungus etc.