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Song Yue Taiwan Cuisine is bringing back the taste of 17th-century banquet traditions with a selection of nostalgic dishes! Highlights include the Celebratory Lobster Combination Platter and the comforting Traditional Chicken with Pig’s Stomach & Abalone Soup. Don’t miss the Golden Phoenix-Tail Tiger Prawn, stuffed with seafood and coated in a duo of salted egg yolk and century egg.
My personal favorite? The Braised Pork Knuckle with Homemade Mustard Greens—a perfect pairing with rice! The Handmade Crispy Duck with Taro is bound to be a family favorite, while the Steamed Live Lobster Rice Cake is the ultimate finale, packed with fresh seafood flavors.
Got the Spicy Chicken Cheolpan ($8.50) and Spicy Chicken Japchae ($9.50), adding on Curly Fries + Drink for a grand total of $22.80. We liked the Pepper Lunch-esque cheolpan, especially the marinated chicken and the pops of sweetness from the corn. On the other hand, the japchae was just decent, just sweet potato noodles in gochujang-based broth with spicy chicken topping. Overall, nothing outstanding and I didn't think it was worth the price.
Dear Mum,
Can we please get these her giao for our CNY steamboat please.
Love,
The Hungry Fatty
P. S. Definitely better than Song Kee and comparable to LiXin's!
Another feature of One Pot is that their fish balls and fish dumplings are freshly made in-house.
I have a soft spot for these handmade fishballs because each fishball is uniquely (mis)shaped and the texture tends to be more bouncy and qq compared to commercially available fishball.
One Pot does sell them for retail. You can also order their steamboat to go and have it in the air conditioned comfort of your home (but you will have to do all the washing up then). I do advise calling ahead for a reservation. They open at 6 pm and when we did a walk-in on a whim at 6.45 pm, they were pretty much sold out with items such as their prawn roe balls all gone!
The key to a good steamboat is a good broth base which is good enough to drink on its own and yet continues to build depth in terms of flavours when more and more ingredients get added into it.
One Pot's premium Japanese pork bone broth base checks all these boxes. It is clear, light and yet savoury without being too salty. The flavour profile changes as the night goes on but it never gets too heavy on the palate. You can easily drink it all night long!
One Pot's service is basically self-service. They will set up the steamboat and ingredients for you but you will have to get your own cutleries (good luck finding a matched self of utensils), top up your soup broth using big metal kettles and get your own drinks and ice. That said, this are little frills which I am willing to forgo when I am getting restaurant style food at more affordable prices!
Whilst waiting for the kway chap, I couldn't help but be intrigued by the stall next door, One Pot, and returned at night to check them out.
At night, the food centre is kinda transformed. Everyone is here for one thing only - One Pot's hotpot and it kinda reminds me of the steamboat restaurants in the pre-developed Marina Bay area where you sit in the open in the sweltering heat enjoying the piping hot steamboat.
One Pot serves restaurant-style hot pot in a hawker setting. You start by ordering a base set based on the number of pax. There is also a wide variety of other ingredients to add on (which can add up rather quickly).
The ingredients are then beautifully served in a Japanese-style wooden box and you can see that much care has been taken to choose the freshest ingredients - no yellowing vegetables etc. They also have an in-house meat slicer to ensure that you get the freshest slices of meat.
The base set is about $15-20 per pax and the add-ons can be a little pricey. That said, we felt that the quality of the ingredients do justify the price and it would cost more in a restaurant. But theres something idyllic and romantic about having steamboat in this old school food centre where time seem to have come to a complete standstill.
I cannot feature this stall without mentioning their kway.
Unlike other stalls, their kway comes in larger sheets but is super thin, making it super easily to slurp up with the light, herbalicious broth.
The kway is usually secondary to me but I never fail to order a 2nd bowl whenever I am here. And here's a tip, you can actually order a large bowl of kway for $1. If you think it's just a few more slices of kway in the same bowl, you will be in for a surprise as the large bowl is the bak chor mee sized bowl topped the brim with kway and broth.
Their kway chap is tasty, delicious and affordable - the epitome of a hearty excellent meal.
Make kway chap the reason for the trek to this ulu food centre and you definitely will not regret it.
Runned an elderly couple, they serve economic beehoon in the early morning and their kway chap is only available from around 10 am. You can choose specific ingredients or combo sets based on the number of pax.
For approx $20, you get a kway chap set for 3 with an extra portion of big intestines and bowls of kway. Be prepared to wait though as the auntie takes some time to nicely cut up and plate the innards. Each combo set comes with generous servings of big intestine, pork belly, tongue, skin, egg, tau pok and fish cake.
The soy sauce based braising sauce is savoury, hearty and comforting with a nice hint of spices such as star anise. I was actually surprised by how clean and light it was as most stalls would use a saltier and heavier chap to cover the gamey aftertaste of the pork.
Tbh there is no need for a heavy chap here because the innards were really well cleaned, allowing you to focus on the different textures of the various cuts. The big intestines were one of the best I have ever heard - it was clean tasting with a nice chewy bite and a soft fatty inner lining. The pork belly was tender with a good mix of fatty and lean meats. The tongue is a criminally underrated - it has slightly coarse texture but is chewy and kinda bouncy.
The star of the show for me though is their pig skin. It is glistening, gelatinous and chewy all in one. I suspect this is in part due to how they score the pig skin before cooking. This is without a doubt the best pig skin I have ever had!
Jalan Benaan Kapal Food Centre is a relic lost in time. Located somewhere around the Kallang Sports Hub (it ain't easy to find tbh), it initially catered to the workers in the shipyard nearby which subsequently relocated. It is now located in a gated compound surrounded by futsal and floorball pitches.
It is probably the smallest hawker centre in Singapore and apparently the only one which is not run (but still regulated) by the NEA. The hawker centre has approx 10 stalls and is bookend by two kopi stalls which serve some of the cheapest kopi in Singapore.
We were there in the morning to check out the much raved kway chap but ended up spending the entire day checking out most of the stalls there. The tea and kaya toast pictured here is from Stall 1, the left most stall in the FC which purportedly serves the cheapest cup of kopi in town.
For 70 cents a cup (if memory serves me right), you can 3 cups of decent tea from here for the price of one from any of the big chains in town. The tea is simple, no fuss, old school and a little on the milky side. I'm not a big fan of the kaya toast as the spread is a little thin and bland. That said, I ain't complaining at this price point!
($3.00) I finally tried bakery cuisine waffles but express edition :") But I didn't expected that it was much better than triplets. Cheese Cream got strong milky taste and texture when I eat warm but need to eat while serving but oreo filling was spread evenly.
From Joe & Doe
Tried the Gula Melaka Pandan Bar ($5.20) from Joe & Doe, and it was love at first bite!
The combination of rich gula melaka (palm coconut sugar) and fragrant pandan was absolute perfection.
Paired it with a cup of freshly brewed robust coffee ($6.30), which complemented the sweetness of the cake beautifully.
The coffee was bold, yet smooth, with a hint of bitterness that cut through the richness of the gula melaka.
Our favourite dish was undoubtedly the fresh steam bamboo clams. The clams come with a nice heap of glass noodles and are topped with soy sauce, sesame oil and fried garlic.
There is only one right way to do eat this - simply slurp it all up!