Singapore Chom Chom Melbourne

G'day from down under! I realise it's been like 4 months since I last blogged, guess its just been me being really really busy + lazy + lousy internet connection that takes forever to load pictures that caused my long absence. Anyway, although I haven't been actively blogging, I have been actively cooking so I guess if I can keep this up I will be blogging quite a bit. I have been living in Tasmania for the past two semesters, and it's almost time for me to head back to Singapore. Can't believe how fast time has flown this past year, its quite amazing when you suddenly think about it and realised you're leaving for good. I kind of have mixed emotions about this place really as there have been good memories as well as some not so pleasant ones. But overall I think this Australian journey was a good experience for me.

Surprisingly this semester I have been rather adventurous in cooking, trying my hand at some local Singapore dishes such as chicken rice, hor fun and roti prata. I will blog more about those in my future posts so stay tuned. This time round I'm going to blog about something I ate last year in December before heading home to Singapore for the christmas holidays. Yes, it's a long time ago but since I have some backlog I reckon I should clear it up first.

This restaurant is called Singapore Chom Chom, and as it's name suggests, it serves Singaporean cuisine. It's pretty popular as it is always quite packed at lunch time. I never went there for dinner before though so I'm not sure about the dinner time crowd. I guess if you miss home and crave for some char kway teow or ba chor mee, this is a place to go to. Don't expect Singapore hawker quality food or prices, but at least some of the dishes are decent. My friend Cow brought me here on my first day in Melbourne and we had chye tao kueh (carrot cake), ba chor mee and claypot rice.

The chye tao kueh was apparently a new addition to the menu or so Cow said. Pretty small portion with not much ingredients except for some egg for about $5-6. Taste wise was ok though. Would have been better if it wasn't so sweet and a bit more spicy.

Next up is the ba chor mee. Again as I mentioned earlier, you can't expect the food to be the same as our hawkers back home. You get to choose the kind of noodles you want, like meepok, mee kia, kway teow, chor bee hoon etc. It was topped off with bean sprouts, minced pork, pork slices, fish cake slices and an egg. What I did like about this dish was the noodles as it had a nice texture and bite to it. It was also a large portion as compared to the chye tao kueh for $8.80 or something like that. Only thing was the chilli which was a bit lacking in its "oomph" factor. I asked for it to be extra spicy but it was quite disappointing as it wasn't spicy at all. The "chup"(sauce) was kind of sweet in fact.

Lastly, Cow ordered the claypot rice which was quite good. Had the burnt bits of rice stuck to the claypot that I know a lot of the older generation like my parents love. It was served with pieces of chicken and some vegetables. I think that there was some lup cheong (chinese wax sausage) as well. Claypot rice was tasty and pretty nolstagic. Careful when eating though, its pretty hot!

Subsequently when my family came to Melbourne we visited this place a few more times and I did get to try some other things like their laksa, char kway teow, fish ball noodles and prawn noodles. I think of the lot the the prawn noodles was probably one of the better dishes served. A rich stock with big prawns and pork ribs and some slices of fish cake. Can't compare to my favourite Wah Kee but still good nonetheless. Enough to satisfy me till I got back to Singapore. Sometimes like in summer you can also get desserts like ice kachang and chendol I think, though I didn't try any of those.

Singapore Chom Chom
188 Bourke Street
Melbourne VIC 3000

Wah Kee Big Prawn Noodles

Singapore is small and thankfully so, seeing that people will go anywhere for food. If there's one thing that brings most people together, it is food anyway. Most of us enjoy food anyway, agreed? So it's no surprise that a popular shop like Wah Kee Big Prawn Noodles has customers from all over Singapore. This shop is so popular that they even have a group of Japanese business men that have been regularly patronizing their stall for the past 15 years!

I've been psychoing Terence to try this prawn noodles as I swore it is better than Beach Road Prawn Mee and River South Prawn Mee. Finally yesterday Terence and I went to Pek Kio market where this prawn noodle gem is located. We thought we couldn't make it as this shop closes pretty early, thankfully we made it just in time(We were one of the last few customers). And we were privileged to get to speak to the owner of the shop. A friendly man who is already hitting 70, he shared with us about the time he started out after taking over from his father, to his loyal customers and even his kids. Wah Kee is tradition, when this uncle took over his father's business it was 1968, so I wonder when his father started the business? After World War 2 maybe. So they've got over 40 years of experience in making prawn noodles!

Business for them starts at 5am when they start to prepare the stock. It is boiled for several hours(not sure what are the exact ingredients though, he didn't say). They start selling their prawn noodles at 7 plus and are usually done by 2pm. The uncle told us that he doesn't keep any left over soup, it is all thrown away at the end of the day and he makes a new batch the next day. He insists everything must be fresh or else it will not taste as good(what a waste of good soup though, can give me la haha)

If you're gonna take in all that cholesterol might as well go all the way right? So we ordered the $10 bowl of noodles. It arrived in 2 portions, the noodles in the bowl, and the prawns in the mini wok. Note that the soup served with the noodles and the soup served with the prawns taste different. The soup served with the prawns is much richer and fragrant. The auntie was nice and offered to top up our soup. =D

Having tried some of the better prawn noodles out there, I must say this one has a unique taste to it's soup. It is tasty in its own right, but not as salty as the others that kinda make you feel thirsty after drinking it. The uncle said that he did not believe in using MSG to flavour his food, and that he wanted his soup to taste special so that people will always come back for more. I couldn't agree more. He also joked that some people often ask him if he put something funny in the soup, like a chemical or drug, because if they go without his noodles for more than a week they will feel weird and will pop back to his stall for their regular dose.

For $10 you get 3 hugeass prawns! These prawns seriously out of this world. I didn't manage to capture it, but there's like a lot of prawn roe on these things, not to mention that the prawns are really fresh and succulent. The uncle revealed that why he can offer so many prawns for this price is because he has set up shop for so long, and is under the old rent scheme. Not to mention that he doesn't want to short change his customers.

Besides their wonderful soup and prawns, the noodles served are also very good. It is available in both soup and dry versions, and there are a few types of noodles to choose from. I will definitely be back. Ok this looks like a pretty long entry, but I just had to blog about what the uncle said la. =)

Wah Kee Big Prawn Noodles
Blk 41A Cambridge Road Hawker Centre (Pek Kio Market)
#01-15
Opening Hours: 7am - 2pm

River South (Hoe Nam) Noodles House

Once again Terence and I set out on our quest to find more supper places. We're running out of time as the date for my departure to Australia looms. Hence this explains why we've been having supper for 3-4 days straight now. Next stop is River South (Hoe Nam) Noodles House for some prawn noodles.

Before we stepped in we thought it was only a stall at a coffee shop, turns out the whole coffee shop is run by them. It's just two guys running the show at night. One to prepare the noodles, the other serves. They do have a drink stall helper though.

This is a picture of the side of the stall. Basically all around the coffee shop you can see pictures of the prawn noodles and what not. The picture below is their menu. They have all sorts of prawn noodles you can imagine. From your regular small prawn noodles, big prawn noodles, big prawn and pork rib noodles, big prawn and pigs tail noodles, pig intestine noodles etc. A whole wide range to choose from. Was stuck for awhile when I was ordering cause I didn't know which type to choose.

Ok I ended up choose the normal big prawn noodles and Terence chose the big prawn pork rib noodles. I like a beehoon mee mix and Terence went for just yellow mee.

(Big Prawn Pork Rib Noodles)

(Big Prawn Noodles)

They're pretty quick, food arrived shortly after we ordered. How's that for efficient 2 man service? I think Terence made a better choice, seeing that for $1 extra you can have pork ribs. He said the pork ribs were good. =( Anyway the noodles were topped off with fried garlic which kinda compliments the soup. Well I like this kinda stuff. Soup was sweetish due to all the prawn heads and pork bones boiled to create the soup. Definitely good but always tastes better with chilli powder and some chilli padi! Love that stuff man. With the chilli powder and padi in, that hit the spot. Should have asked for more soup but paiseh la. Haha. The noodles were decent, not the best though, a bit overcooked. Prawns on the other hand were fresh and firm, with a nice bite. Terence said the soup wasn't thick (gao) enough but I thought it was good enough. Overall a better than average bowl of prawn noodles. Don't see many prawn noodle shops open till the wee hours of the morning so this place is good when you need your prawn mee fix for supper.

As you can see from the picture above, that's their operating schedule. They're opened like almost 24 hrs everyday except monday. Place was pretty crowded when we went there, and more people were streaming in when we left. Guess the place is pretty popular huh? They seem to have many regular clients, saw quite a few people chatting up the noodle server and asking for their regular stuff. Hmmm hmmm, even middle aged men with mid life crisis driving sports cars also patronize the place.

River South (Hoe Nam) Noodles House
31 Tai Thong Cresent (Along Macpherson Road, near Potong Pasir MRT)
Operating hours: 0630 - 0430
Closed on Mondays

OH and did I mention that it's just a few doors down from my favourite turtle soup place? Too bad turtle soup closes early or I'd have that instead!