I came to know of this stall (#02-85 Chinatown Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) by the way of Greg's Big Eats. Had to google for the English name of the stall since the Chinese words on the signage don't exactly translate to the name. Something about 'fragrance', 'soya sauce chicken noodle rice' and 'nam yu pork trotters' were what the larger words said. What had me were the nam yu (bean curd fermented in red yeast rice) pork trotters and the char siew.
Nam yu as a fermented bean curd has a pungent and cheesy flavour profile. That's the best I can manage to describe it. Like many of such flavours, it can be an acquired taste. Got a plate of the nam yu pork trotter noodles. I've heard that there is an alkaline taste to the noodles but I didn't taste it. Better for me anyway. I found that the nam yu flavour was more concentrated on the skin of the trotters where the marinade had permeated well. The noodles with the sauce tasted weak.
Because we liked the stewed trotters better than the noodles and the portion of that in the noodles were relatively small, we ordered another plate. The sauce here was more intense. Meat was pretty tender but not the kind that disintegrated in your mouth.
The stall has char siew which is available in limited quantities daily. This was an unusual char siew - I detected five spice in the meat and it was char-less. So would that make it just a siew? Kidding. The meat was tender. Left side slices were fattier than the ones on the right side. This was the second char-less char siew after the one (largely) at Lao Ren Jia Roasted. Not bad tasting but I'm still undecided as to how I feel about them. I liked the moist tender rice though.
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