Kola Seafood, Sin Ming Drive

No, this wasn't ephiphanic and I'll try to cut down on the verbosity.

In many ways, a cze char joint like Kola Seafood (36 Sin Ming Drive) epitomizes a true face of local food. The stuff that you eat pretty often. It's not always all good or bad about what they serve. It's often a range in between. There are always degrees. A place where we experience the good, the bad and the ugly in the lock, stock and barrel of local dining. Where one may not be so incentivised to wax lyrical like what mainstream media loves doing, glaze over the eye in an explosive orgasm of flavors and c....ompliment the chef for a job well done.

It is a place run by locals, visited by locals and will probably not be visited by anyone but mostly locals by virtue of location. As of this point, this location is not yet even registered in OpenRice.

Okay, to their signature fried rice. It contained what many people like about a wok stir fried rice over a burning flame. Something that can be translated into the wok's breath or as many locals (or oldies) will call it wok hei. Or simply carbon. Quite a bit of it there but that's generally where most of the good ended. As with many signature items, it's an unimaginative mash up of bits that they threw in. Too damned greasy if I you asked me. Greasy fried rice are also pretty much everywhere, agree?

This was sliced fish with hor fun and bean sprouts. It's pretty okay if one doesn't compare. Fish slices were decent and for a small portion, it was actually pretty large.

The obligatory greens came in the form of stir fried nai bai with garlic and some crispy silverfish. It was pretty much what it looked like.

This was the most interesting item we ordered. Crayfish tails in salted egg yolk sauce. What I liked about this was that the crayfish were de-shelled. What I didn't like about it was that I've had frozen crayfish purchased in bulk and cooked at home that had better texture. Maybe they need to sear this more. Or drop the coating of flour on the meat.

I would credit the gravy for being pretty good. It was spiked with a hit of chilli padi, some curry leaves and black pepper. I guess a bit more generosity with the salted egg would have made it rip roaring good and a larger threat to the cholesterol which we're trying to keep lowered. In fact, I thought this was probably better than Uncle Leong. It's a pity that the crayfish meat was mediocre.