Xi De Li (西得利), Redhill Food Centre

Xi De Li sells local fried snacks. I've been wanting to get these glutinous rice buns from them for a while. Finally got my hands on one of them at their stall at Redhill Market (#01-14, Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane). These glutinous rice buns were essentially a ham chim pang (咸煎饼) stuffed with glutinous rice. Carbs in carbs.

The fried bun was slightly salty and slightly sweet with a bit of five spice seasoning. Pretty decent tasting and if you've had them before, you'll know what to expect. What I especially liked about these were the sweet and tender glutinous rice stuffings in the bun. A subtle textural contrast in each bite from the fried bun to the gummy sweet sticky rice. I gotta get myself one of these more often!

Prosperity Burger season and other stuff from McD

Prosperity Burger is back for the CNY season. I wonder why the Hello Kitty box designs this time round.

Today's sandwich was saucy. The way I like the Prosperity Burger.

Sweet peppery saucy with the crunch of onions. The meat was....well, it's McDonald's.

Ha! Chicken Drumlets has gotta be local because it's marinated in prawn paste and I don't see this happening anywhere else in the world. The taste isn't on par to better quality prawn paste chicken from zi char stalls but credit where its due, they did a decent job with the flavouring for these drumlets.

There's pineapple pie this year. The flavour's akin to pineapple jam/candy with bits of pineapple meat - exactly what I was expecting. Two years ago, it was strawberry pie. 

Fish Noodle @ Koufu, Tanglin Halt

The name of the stall Fish Noodle in the Koufu at Tanglin Halt (#01-08 Commonwealth View, 88 Tanglin Halt Road) was misleading because they don't do fish paste noodles nor are they exactly doing fish soup noodles as most of us know it. It's a Chinese stall selling noodles that have a variety to toppings permuted across a few broths.

Got a couple of bowls - one with the sour spicy (酸辣) broth ☝🏼and the other with their original broth 👇🏽. I prefer the former which was salty, sour and had a bit of heat with Sichuan peppercorn flavour. The latter didn't taste bad, I just didn't know what to make out of the flavour after the 酸辣 excitement. Noodles were almost gummy and soft but not soggy. 

Toppings were decent. Braised pig intestines (肥肠) were tender and chewy. The fish they use have a light muddy taste and aren't batang as the pictures misled me to believe. As a whole, the noodles from this stall weren't so different from the stuff that one can find in Sichuan Alley.

More stuff from Lao Ye Teochew Porridge (老爷潮州粥)

We've been coming back to Lao Ye Teochew Porridge for a couple of more times since. I love their rice. They aren't the dry beady types that many eateries think they can get away with just because they have sauce in their food and they feel that makes up for the poor quality of rice.

Occasionally we encounter the ang go li (sea bream) tail. It's steamed and ladled over with a light soya sauce concoction. Meat's tender and it's pretty decent tasting.

The cross section slice of the fish is okay...I prefer the texture from the tail.

Steamed egg with minced pork appear to vary in how they're done. Sometimes I swear I can taste salted egg in it. Sometimes the salted egg's not there.

Sweet and sour pork's basic. Not bad tasting but it's also not fantastic nor will it be freshly done most of the time because that's just not the nature of food at Teochew porridge/cai png stalls.

Revisiting Two Guys

So we're back at the stall with just one guy. I wanted to try their lamb burger not knowing that the burger doesn't come with a lamb patty.

Looks like stir fried lamb with onions and black pepper. There's also cheese. Meat's not exactly tender and pretty lean. In a blind taste test, I would suspect it might be lamb and wouldn't be definitive on that suspicion. That's how it was. 

Buns were soft and pretty light but failed structurally because lifting the sandwich up with hands will simply result in the bottom bun flopping from the weight of the meat and everything starts spilling.

Decent tasting lamb mandi. The amount of meat on the shank would have fed 2 persons comfortably. Meat was tender but a little crumbly. Had nice fatty parts. The proprietor ladled some of the braising sauce on the rice during preparation so I'm guessing that the lamb flavour came from that sauce instead of the rice? Did not taste bad though.

Shu Heng Bi Tai Mak (數興老鼠粉), Hong Lim Food Centre

Shu Heng Bi Tai Mak has a stall at Kebun Bahru Food Centre in Ang Mo Kio. This shop (#01-51 Hong Lim Food Centre, 531A Upper Cross Street) is a branch and I hear these guys are good. What they're known for is their bee tai bak (老鼠粉). Or rat's tail noodle by any other name. I made a conservative choice of a bowl with mushroom, minced pork and fishball - which could be construed as a bak chor mee version of their offerings.

The minced pork sauce was outstanding - rich and umami that was sufficiently salty and had a light undertone of sweetness. Didn't escape my notice that their stewed mushrooms were tender; while I don't normally pay much attention them, these were delicious. Those crisp chunks of pork lard (猪油渣) which they dropped into the bowl were also good quality and aromatic. Bee tai bak's slurpy but that's how they normally are. Will come back.