Spring Court (詠春园), Upper Cross Street

I recall reading somewhere that Spring Court (52-56 Upper Cross Street, tel : +65 6449 5030) is the oldest Chinese restaurant in Singapore. We must have passed by this area a few hundred times while being none the wiser that that the establishment held such accolade. To be fair, there wasn't any indication that it was so as they had been set up in another location back in 1929; that location doesn't exist anymore. Moved a few times before settling in the current premise in the 21st century.

The restaurant charges for stuff like wet napkins and pickles. Personally, I'd pay for those because I like their pickles which are made with sliced radishes and lotus roots. I suppose those agree with me because there's quite a bit of sugar that's gone into them to ease up on all the sour from the vinegar. Their particular balance works for me. Not forgetting, they do a pretty good fermented bean chilli sauce too. Note to self, chrysanthemum tea here is kinda thin.

Their roasted chicken stuffed with minced prawns is one of the dishes that I thought was rather nicely done. The chook looked fried rather than roasted. Minced prawn is layered under the crispy skin and meat.

Spring Court is known for their poh piah. These were expensive and huge. Are these supposed to be filled with prawns and minced crab meat inside? Because I don't think I got any. Each slice of the roll were two large mouthfuls for me, packed with stuffings. The stewed radish/vegetable stuffings were pretty tasty and I'm quite sure it's a unique recipe of their own since it doesn't quite taste like the regular ones. Our spring rolls were also pretty wet today so I guess they didn't drain the stuffings properly.

Along with their poh piah and prawny chicken, this cabbage with dried scallops is also part of what's listed as their signature dishes. I caught a hint of ginger in those soft cabbages but this was otherwise pretty good. Those dried scallops were so tender.

We got a serving of their lala beehoon. That reads as braised rice vermicelli with clams. I believe those are Manila clams. The noodles as one might have guessed have soaked up all the flavour from the stock that was used to braise them. Didn't taste so much of those clams in that stock but it was packed with flavour the same. This item is something that's not listed on the menu but can be requested for.

There's a whole bunch of other items that looked good, but we only had so much room. Will likely be back.