136 HK fishhead steamboat @ maxwell

I got to know of this place 4 years ago, when I was working at a job after my polytechnic diploma... Superb awesome food that I don't mind eating every week/month, and so far I've recommended a whole lot of friends there to try their awesome food... though sometimes when they are mad crowded, food takes crazily long to come like 0.5-1hour, which just makes hungry people really mad... other than that, they are quite fast when come to serving food during normal non-peak hours...

The dish that got me hooked, and bf hooked when i brought him there to try their food! Black bean sauce beef horfun, they have a fish variation of this dish if you are not beef-friendly... either way, i love the beef variation, though the sauce maybe a little salty due to the black bean sauce, but then again, without it, the taste would be so much diffrerent! you could suggest for the chef to make it less salty by putting lesser black beans... silky horfun, and tender beef meat, just the perfect match! cost $4 for a 2 person portion...

The next dish that got my bro and me hooked! Claypot mee tai mak! a dish even kids would love! minced meat, and prawns, and kailan veggies chopped finely, this dish is just so awesome... and it was my first to taste such a dish, i don't usually see claypot mee tai mak selling everywhere, cost $4 as well for a 2 person portion... when i say 2 person means 2 ladies la, guys prolly can eat whole bowl by himself...

And the highlights, what they are really famous for, other than their fish steamboat... is their salted egg pork ribs! they best ever that my family and I have eaten... soft and tender, not too salty, crisp outside, tender inside... $8 for their small portion...

Was just trying out their 3 egg spinach, as we never had this before, and it is mediocre, other places served better versions of this and cheaper, there is one store at Mei Chin Hawker centre that sells a small portion at i think $6 or $8? this was $10 i think...

Another new dish we decided to try, as we usually don't order this, usually is just horfun, mee tai mak, salted pork ribs, and a simple vegetable, or slice fish soup... this was meh... prefer the hainan tze char store near alexandra food village hawker...

My family usually not keen on fish head, so we went for the slice fish version, $20 for a small pot that can feed 4, they do refill the soup for you if you request... so its a really huge portion, lotsa yams and vegetables in this soup, and its light and fragrant... 

And if you do look for reviews, I've also personally tried their mongolian beancurd before, and its pretty awesome.. Oh and they have a fried baby crispy squid that i find it nice as well... Another must try is their deep fried oyster egg, its so fluffy I could die, oyster are relatively huge and fresh, goes so well with the sweet and sour chilli sauce they have(pardon me but i did not keep the pictures)..

They are located at;
291 South bridge road (just beside maxwell food centre, the shop house that houses tong heng egg tarts)
Singapore 058836.
Tel: (+65) 9437 8260

XOXO,
CheryL

老王砂煲小厨 Lau Wang Claypot Delights @ Serangoon

Hi all! Gonna do some changes to my blogging format, think the previous post too much words too little pictures, I think you guys also don't wanna read right? XD

So anyways, I promise to post here at least once a week on places I've been to, that I found the food yummy, cheap and worth going again and again.

So my mum went searching for new places to eat, and found this 老王砂煲小厨 on Danielfooddiary.com dated December 2013. So basically, its situated at Blk 263 Serangoon Central Drive, #01-43, Singapore 550263 and as mentioned by Daniel its about 10 minute walk from Serangoon MRT. Operating hours is 10.30am to 9.30pm everyday. So its at the corner of the block as the name of the cafe suggests 旺角aka Lucky Corner, and there's 3 stores, a noodle store open in the day before 5pm, a drink store and the claypot store. Its a fairly small and open corner cafe, and I guess during peak hours you might really have to queue and wait, but I went on a thursday night at 8.30pm, basically all the food are freshly cooked on the spot, so you' have to wait a good 15-20mins for sizzling hot claypot food.

So they offer quite a number of claypot dishes at this cafe, but I wouldn't say its a large range of food, less than 30 variants but ample. 

Slice fish with bittergourd, this dish would be good for those who can't take spicy, the fish is fresh, the sauce is flavourful with the onions. It's cheap too, $4.50.

And this is one of their signature dish, their herbal frog leg soup, one frog portion selling at just $8! The soup had numerous portions of red dates and wolfberries which made the soup pretty sweet, and lots of herbs but not the too bitter kind, quite a refreshing soup to drink I would say. The frog meat was so fresh! As if the chef killed the frog on the spot and threw them into the boiling hot soup! Damn soft and succulent, zero fishy smell!

And well, my family loves organs pretty much, so when we saw that they had pig kidney and liver herbal soup, we immediately ordered it as well, $5 only! What it taste like? Like when you drink bak kut teh with kidney and liver, just that minus the pepper spicyness and plus all the yummy herbs, and the sweetness of the numerous dates and berries. Superb soup! Wished they had those free soup re-fills like those bak kut teh stores...

So I suggested to order this dish, their sambal seafood claypot going at $7 for a portion, cause i absolutely love spicy food! This dish is superb lo! Its like eating teppan tofu at tzechar store but minus the egg and tofu, plus the sambal and chilli padi... Not for the faint-hearted, cause with the chilli padi chopped and fried into the sambal gravy, this was really quite spicy, I had running nose throughout eating this pot of yummy seafood... But the gravy so nice, I couldn't resist drinking it, though if you're on diet better not do it, cause there was quite a fair bit of chilli oil...

Supposedly, this dish on the menu has sambal with it, but we requested for them to make it non-spicy, so here I have garlic and mince meat fried kang kong at $4, cheaper than tzechar stores, and its nice and fresh.

This was a last minute order, as I saw a cup of hot barley in the nearby tables. So when I realised it was homemade, I just had to order it. I'm not sure if it was because its the last 3 cups of barley for that day, or all along the barley standard is quite there, but this was thick and silky with barley bits at the bottom of the cup, and not "jelat". Didn't regret ordering this, it was $1.20 by the way.

So here's what my family of four ordered, with 3 bowls of rice, and a drink, it only amounted to $31.20 in total. Cheap or cheap? I definitely would come here again to try their other dishes, like claypot eggplants, or even their pig trotters, or their claypot sesame chicken. Basically some of their dishes come in spicy variants, and some come in non-spicy variants, but even if it is spicy, you can request for them to make it non-spicy, they are quite flexible.

XOXO,

CheryL

I went there again last week, and tried their other superb dishes! 

This sambal minced meat brinjal was superb, i could finish the whole claypot by myself XD

The sesame chicken in this claypot was superbly juicy and tender, a yummy dish as well!

 Pardon the pretty blur picture of this sesame oil claypot of pig kidney and liver, but this dish was pretty average, still prefer the herbal soup version.

I know the looks of this salted vegetable like machiam canned food, but this store's is not bad, and it only cost us 1 buck, and it was fragrant and not too salty!