Hoe Nam Vintage, Tiong Bahru Plaza

Hoe Nam Vintage opened up at the lot vacated by Lee Lai Jiak. The last time I've had prawn noodles from Hoe Nam was ages ago. Have a vague recollection of finding them okay-ish. I have mixed feelings about these guys here (#02-105/106 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road).

The impression I had gotten was that the crew were taught how to prepare the food they were serving and might not have much real exposure to how some these dishes were actually like.

And the kitchen was apparently dealing with some order issues that resulted in long waiting time.

This bowl featured small prawns and thin sliced pork belly. The latter was pretty good by the way. Saucing was...I don't know. Not bad but not what I expected from dry pork noodles. Then again, I haven't had Hoe Nam's prawn noodles for ages so maybe it's always been this way. The soup was pretty good, refillable and left an aftertaste like monosodium glutamate does.

What happened was we wanted to try their claypot dry bak kut teh. It never arrived and after about an hour, they informed us that we'd have to wait quite some time if we still wanted it. At this point, we didn't.

Tau kee's nice. The pickled mustard greens were the first sign that maybe, these guys weren't acquainted with what they were doing. There weren't very salted and were also fibrous and crunchy. 😮‍💨

One week later......

Prawn kuey teow soup's pretty decent. Portions were kinda small for a large bowl. These featured their "regular" prawns which were larger than the tiny shrimps from last week.

Okay-ish pig's stomach soup. Didn't taste exactly like what I imagined of it because the flavour was just a little different. Why is there 芹菜 in it?!

At $3.10, the pork liver rolls looked sad. Not nice. Not very livery. A knee jerk reached out to the memories of those superior ones from China Street Fritters and He Ji Wu Xiang Guan Chang. These ones here weren't close. Wouldn't get them again.

Their fried pork lard were freshly prepared but was oddly lacking in flavour. Hmmm......🤔

Managed to get the claypot dry bak kut teh this time round. I don't remember if I've ever had these so I have no frame of reference. This rendition was pretty good. I had expected the flavour to be more akin to dark soya sauce but these didn't quite taste like that. Still enjoyed it though. Pork ribs were tender with meat easily pulled off the bone. Love the thin sliced lady's finger. Would have been great if they sliced the chilli into smaller bits.

Re-revisiting Jeong's Jjajang

I've been wanting to come back for this stir fried jjampong from Jeong's Jjajang. It surprisingly packed little heat compared to their regular jjampong and was also less smoky. Wasn't bad tasting but I was imagining/anticipating/looking forward to more smokiness and burn from it. Squids were pretty chewy.

Yuen Kee Dumpling (袁记云饺), Funan

Finally got to try Yuen Kee Dumpling (#02-3 Funan, 107 North Bridge Road, tel : +65 8931 9588). I must have walked past their shops at least a couple of times in my last trip to Hong Kong and Taiwan. There's barely anyone in there. The ones here are on the other hand, often packed. 🤔

Tried their shrimp and crab roe wanton with the viral sauce. Maybe viral in the context of the sauce means common or ubiquitous. It's a little spicy but not special or great and surfeit crept in pretty fast from the peanut sauce. Thankfully, there's vinegar and chopped garlic from their condiment section which made inhaling this enjoyable. Not bad wantons.

The other dumpling they had were 饺子. This one was stuffed with vegetable, shrimp and pork. Skin's hardier and less smooth than the wanton. The amount of garlic from the garlic sauce was pathetic.

I don't mind coming back only if I don't have to wait more than a few minutes in line for it.

Labobo with extra patty in sesame bagel from Two Men Bagel House

Labobo's the recent flavour of the month at Two Men Bagel House ( 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六, 十七, 十八, 十九, 二十, 二十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四, 二十五, 二十六, 二十七, 二十八, 二十九, 三十) featuring beef patties from BurgerLabo.

Love how the dill pickled onions and apple mostarda help cut though the hefty patties with the tangy sweetness.

Hunan grilled chilli pidan chicken burger from Shiok Burger

I was intrigued by the grilled chilli pidan chicken burger from Shiok Burger. Sadly, it turned out that the burger looked little like the picture they used. I expected better so now I know better than to expect better from them. 🙄 *cues rumination on the need for law against deliberate false advertising*

The century egg had texture like fish cake. Odd. 🤔 They were also tinier than what the pictures suggested. Not nearly enough to go round as well.

The product shot featured some intense green looking sauce. What we got was something that had a bit of green chilli in mostly mayo. Kinda disappointing.

Revisiting Alice Boulangerie & Restaurant @ Raffles City

More food from Alice Boulangerie & Restaurant.

Their grilled beef tongue skewers were tender. The flavour of whatever it had been braised/stewed in had throughly infused the meat and it tasted kinda like Chinese dark soy sauce. Or lor bak. What I didn't like was the sauce on top which had ginger. Don't recall seeing ginger mentioned in the menu.

Lobster bisque orzo was not bad. I was expected more intensity to the bisque but maybe I was expecting a bit too much from them. There's minced crab meat in it.

Mac & cheese was bad. Menu mentioned mozzarella, parmesan and blue cheese. I'm not sure I tasted any blue cheese. I tried. It's mostly mozzarella and cream with little salt to fight the surfeit that came after a couple of mouthful.

I did what I had to in a bad situation and fell back to a reliable remedy.

Corn tart's not bad. The sweetness with the whole pastry was largely moderated except for something inside the tart which was noticeably more intense. Couldn't tell what it was.

Carrot cake's nice. Love the spices in the cake and that cream cheese frosting wasn't overly sweet.

Song Gye Ok (송계옥), Centrepoint

Song Gye Ok has a branch at Centrepoint (#02-53 The Centrepoint, 176 Orchard Road, tel : +65 8088 2035). Menu looks similar to the shop at Telok Ayer.

We were here for their cheongguk doenjang jjigae and more grilled chicken parts.

But first some sikhye. Today's tasted toasty.

I just noticed that they sprinkle parmesan cheese on their baek kimchi. It works.

Got ourselves some chicken hearts and garlic fried rice.

And chicken neck which was fatty with crisp skin.

Nice.

Love the Uiseong garlic fried rice. It has cheese melted in and there was a nice natural sweetness which seemed to come from the garlic. This tasted much better than it looked.

What I was looking forward to was their SGO Cheongguk Doenjang Stew which I couldn't help but compare to the impressive cheonggukjang jjigae from Ko Ryo Jeong. This one was less stinky but delicious in its own fermented bean-y way.

La Zi Ji Crunch from KFC

I haven't had the local KFC in a while and was surprised at the quality of the chicken. It's actually decent. 😬 This was their limited time la zi ji (辣子鸡) styled fried chicken with dried chilli, a bit of Sichuan peppercorn and I noticed sesame seeds. The mala-esque flavour was there albeit moderated for the mass market. It's not a bad rendition. It's just not so spicy. Jollibee's spicy chicken and the McSpicy packs more heat. 

Revisiting Suukee Coffee

Let's start this entry with a date and a rant. We were here 24 Jan 2026 in the morning grabbing breakfast.

Not a fortnight back, there were social media posts about Suukee Coffee's CNY limit time items. Like their orh nee bak kua toast and orange kopi o which I was kinda looking forward to. And the sambal carbonara chee cheong fun. They were out of the orh nee bak kua toast today and CNY is still 24 days away.

The CNY promo started more than a month from the actual event and they ran out of bak kua in two weeks? 🤔 Laughably, I even see the unimaginatively over-abused word 'viral' used on them. 

From my lens...

• they suffer conflicting information on their opening hours
• depend on "crowdsourcing" to share their menu online instead of providing their own
• aren't exact responsive when you message them
• it would be nice if they'd indicated somewhere that some things are lunch only instead of needing us to find out from the ordering kiosk

Some priorities just aren't there.

End of rant.

That orange kopi o, didn't expect them to serve them hot. Nice.

Love the matcha orh nee toast. Nice green tea flavour with the creaminess from the yam puree.

OG orh nee toast also not bad. It's the one you can taste the yam the most.

Decent spam omelette toast...spam's kinda small here.

What's great about eggs here (at least for me) was that they crack them for you. Just like Ya Kun. But the eggs we got today were watery. So unlike Ya Kun, they don't discard the poorly done ones.

One week later......

Managed to get their orh nee bak kua toast this time round. I like the sweet smoky flavour from the bak kua that came through even though that meant that the orh nee was mostly relegated to just a creamy texture in the background.

Matcha butter toast was not bad. Wished the butter was bigger/more distributed.

Finally got to try this sambal carbonara chee cheong fun. First thought that came to mind was the lao gan ma chee cheong fun from Surrey Hills. That one was better. This didn't taste as nuanced and packed less heat though I wouldn't mind coming back for them. No it didn't taste anything like carbonara.

Got a curry chicken kolo mee. The curry needed salt. From this, one could surmise that Suukee either i) had no idea what they were serving ii) are poor judges of whether food was delicious. Or perhaps both.

There was just about enough for the noodles to soak them up. Those tau pok in the curry might have been thrown in at the last minute because they were dry-ish inside and did not absorb the curry at all. The rendition of curry chicken kolo mee from Traditional Sarawak Kolo Mee beats this hands down.

Orange kopi o ice's not bad.