Teochew Restaurant Huat Kee, RELC Building

We read about this Teochew restaurant (30 Orange Grove Road, #02-01 RELC Building, tel : +65 6423 4747) that previously hailed from Amoy Street from Makansutra which mentioned a young second generation taking over of the family business from the parents and it sounded like it could be pretty good. While I don’t eat these Teochew dishes so very often, I’ve had them numerous times over the years and I have an idea of what I like or not about some of their commonly known dishes.

This one was not as good as I had been hoping for. Hence I'm constantly reminded to take reviews with more than a pinch of salt. Take this with a pinch as well.

We had cold crabs, one of those things we liked and is unfortunately rather pricey these days. These ones from Huat Kee were a little smaller than the usual small crabs that we had been expecting. The process of molting had probably been going on into the later stages so the softer inner shell was starting to get....not so soft. No roe in there as well so I guess it's just not the right season. The meat was chilled and sweet, but didn't seem quite match up with expectations from the last eating we had.

The pork aspic was quite nice. Those jelly were quite packed with flavours from the stock and were also nicely chilled.

I liked the liver rolls too. The stuffing was like pate - wrapped in a crispy fried bean curd skin.

Their orh luak was unfortunately a bore. It was a little too greasy and too much flour and eggs with too little oysters. There's definitely much better around. 

I forgot what this was but it was braised chopped spinach. The flavours were light and unexpectedly quite enjoyable.

Those are sea cucumber stuffed with with pork and prawn paste. Didn't find those very enjoyable. And I generally like sea cucumber.

The other item that turned out to be quite good was their braised goose web. The flavours of the braising liquid was absorbed into the goose webs and the texture was enjoyable. Something akin to a chewier tau kee (dried bean curd sheet).

Olive fried rice. Would have been passable if not for the fact that it was too greasy. Certainly didn't expect them to screw up fried rice.

These were the Teochew kuey teow, also known as cai por kuey teow for the preserved radish that is used in the stir fry of the rice noodles. Nothing exceptional and their wok fry it seems at this point, always does poorly with the grease control.

An average orh nee. Nothing to write home about nor did it suck.

RELC isn't the most convenient of locations unless you have a vehicle. To add on to that, the food here was a little expensive as well. And then there was this odd server that recommended us against ordering their chive noodles citing that it is not done well by the cooks when they have a lot of customers. Oh yes - hot sugar cane drink that was in the colour of diluted chrysanthemum tea and tasted nothing like sugar cane. Something definitely went wrong with that with no admission from the staff.

Fat chance we'll come back and I think we'll enjoy ourselves more trying our luck at the Boon Keng area.