Sum Kee Food at Yeo's Building Pasir Panjang

I have passed this place often. Often intrigued, but never tried. One of our watch gatherings, we decided to try this place out. And were we impressed!

So the cat is out of the bag...innovative cze char style food, with crazy creative names. Very nice environment, great food, good service. The owner Mr. Sum came up to chat with us after our meal, when we decided to move to the outdoor seating for some cigars and finish our cognac. Interesting fellow. Corkage is nominal $1 per person, and he will gladly provide stemware.

We started with some appetizers...interestingly named Bikini Chicken

Deep fried chicken skin: crispy, and light, not greasy. The taste is very mild, but the crispy texture is wonderful.

Next, Kung Fu Pork Ribs

Quite unlike any pork ribs we have eaten. The pork is lightly battered, and deep fried. The sauce is quite interesting...slightly sweet, slightly sour, slightly salty, and lightly spicy. Very nice. The sauce comes with jullianed cucumber, carrots and bits of onion.

The star for me, was the Wallet Chicken...this item is not on the menu

A whole chicken, totally deboned, and stuffed with glutinous rice, diced chicken meat, peanuts, chestnuts and dried shitake mushroom...every part of the chicken, including the drumstick and wings are deboned and stuffed.

The stuffing is a bit like a bak chang...wondefully moist. Very delicious.

The chicken meat is deep fried till crisp, note the blisters on the skin testament to the very hot oil used for the deep fry. The meat tasted like just any other fried chicken...but for me, the speciality in this dish is the stuffing.

We also had Ultra Man Chicken

Chicken nuggets, coated with salted egg yolk, fried till golden brown. This style is commonly used for prawns, but this is the first time I have eaten this with chicken. Works well...makes me wonder why others have not tried. Nice.

We also had Wa Wa Tofu.

Typical cze char stuff...but very well done. The tofu was fragrant, and very silky smooth...wa wa means smooth in Chinese. The vegetables were fresh, lightly fried, and still crunchy. The gravy, thicken with eggs was delectable.

We needed the all important prawn dish, as one of our members is a prawn fanatic...so Sambal Prawns:

I had expected the prawns to be larger, but other than the size, everything was great. Appropriately spicy, the fresh, succulent prawns had a crunchy bite and had a light fragrance of the sea and the sweetness typical of seafood.

The Jew Her Eng Chye  - cuttlefish with kangkong.

Nice. Reminiscent of the old stall at Gurney Drive in Penang. The eng chye was fresh, young, cooked expertly such that it still full of vigour and crunchy to the bite. The cuttlefish, I suspect is not the fresh variety, but rehydrated from dried cuttlefish, had a nice bite, and a great texture. The sauce was rather special...sweet, slightly spicy. Superb. One of the best I have tasted in Singapore.

Beef with bittergourd was next

The chef did everything right with this dish. But nothing stands out. The beef was tender, cooked just so, the bittergourd was not overly bitter, just a tinge of bitterness on the tongue, and giving way quickly to a sweet and lingering after taste. 

And the requisite spinach with three types of eggs.

Masterfully done. Cooked just right, with fresh high quality ingredients. The broth was very savoury and aromatic. 

Overall, as I had let the cat out of the bag earlier, highly recommended. Plenty of free parking outside. Reservations recommended for weekend dinners and weekday lunches.

SUM KEE FOOD

No.2, TELOK BLANGAH ST 31, YEO'S BUILDING
Singapore 108942

Tel 1: 6737 3233
Tel 2: 6333 8556

Open daily

Great Cze Chars: Ga Hock Seafood

Great Cze Chars are not easy to find. Good ones are plenty. So when one finds a great one, go back often, and patronize the store, make sure they thrive.

I have been eating at Ga Hock, right across the road from Mindef for a while. And have always had great experiences there...for sure its not because of the ambience...as one sits under a shed, with full view of the kitchen.

But the food is good, and that makes up for all of it. Probably the best fish head curry in town, the nyonya styled curry is beautifully aromatic, and served with deep fried bean curd sticks:

May not look like much, but when soaked, the crispy fried beancurd sticks impart a wonderful flavour and consistency in the mouth that is absolutely marvellous. The gravy is thick, piquant, mild spiciness, and very aromatic. And the fish head itself, very fresh...I ate the soft gelatinous parts and they were wonderful, no after taste or untoward smells that a less than fresh fish head will have. Absolutely top class fish head curry, and certainly one of the best in Singapore. The style is similar to the one I tasted in Johor Bahru last year.

If it were only for this dish, I would come back again and again. But the other dishes were rather superb too. The sweet potato leaves in sambal was also excellent.

Deceptively simple. People used to throw away these leaves. But harvest them at the right time, I imagine when young, tender, and fried with great wok control with a wicked sambal, one gets a dish to die for. Very good vegetable dish here. 

So is the oyster omelette

The eggs were light, fluffy, tasty. The oysters were cooked just right...a few seconds more would have over cooked them, and a few seconds less would leave them bloody and raw. But this was very very good. The oysters were fat, juicy, tasty.

We also had the ginger chicken, which required a day's advance order

I guess the advance order is needed as the chicken is probably marinaded over a long time. The frying was, once again superbly done. Crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside. The slices of ginger were fried till crisp, like potato chips, and were rather nice to eat...the pungent nature of the ginger mellowed with the deep frying into a sweetish, crispy chip. Very nice, though I often preferred their har cheong kai.

And we had some prawns in black pepper

When it arrived, it was a little disappointing, as we had expected large prawns. The prawns were smallish, about an inch in diameter. But it slightly made up for the lack of size by the taste. Fresh, sweet, crunchy, with a crisp outer...it proved to be quite enjoyable.

Ga Hock is highly recommended. One of the gems of cze char cuisine in Singapore. The chefs/cooks exhibiting good taste, and excellent control of their wok and fire to achieve the beautiful consistency of the cooking. Excellent Plus Plus. 

Ga Hock Seafood

794 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678133 6314 5725

Comfort food: Cze Char by Kok Sen ...best of the traditional Cantonese eateries?

More comfort food, as I am still withdrawing from the overload of very good European food...today, the quintessential Singaporean table, with Cze Char, also variously spelled Zi Char, Tzu Chao...etc.

Kok Sen, the subject of today's review is an old stalward of the craft of the ferocious fire, and the wok. Food is typically Cantonese styled, and indeed very good...one of the best in the trade.

We begin with the less good...so to speak...yee mee with fish slices

Slightly less successful than the other dishes which I will introduce in a moment...but throughly enjoyable still. The yee mee is a bit bland. The fish was nice and fresh, and the gravy also a bit on the mild side. But this slight disappointment was completely overwhelmed by the black bean beef hor fun, which was next:

Redemption indeed. Bursting with flavours, deep dark...very tasty. The wok hei was powerful, charring parts of the hor fun and the vegetables, but yet the beef remained tender...juicy and very very nice.

The yong taufu was also superb

The gravy was rich, and very tasty, the yong taufu itself was home made, fresh, and very flavourful...superb with just plain steamed rice.

The standard cze char dishes are also done nicely, the hae cho

Nice and non greasy, great flavours. Crispy outside due to the deep frying and crispy bits of water chestnuts within which are fresh and almost raw. The prawn paste stuffing was perfectly cooked, and the flavour of the prawn was evident and very nice. Proof that the cook has great control over his fire.

As was the har cheong kai

Beautifully fried, the seasoning was nice too. Though in the case of the HCK, not the best I have eaten.

We also tried the sambal fish, which was also superb

The fresh fish slices deep fried till crispy outside but still very nice and juicy within, coated with a wonderful aromatic, piquant sambal sauce.

And the obligatory vegetables, spinach in a soup of 3 kinds of egg

Quite standard as was the sambal kangkong we ordered.

Overall, an excellent place for great tasting meal. The place is rather crowded during lunch time, but this kind of restaurant is not for lounging around to enjoy the ambience. But purely for the great tasting food. Service was swift, efficient, and polite, but not pampering. Highly recommended.

Kok Sen Restaurant
30B Keong Saik Road
62232005
Daily: 11:30 - 22:30

Great Cze Chars: Kian Seng

Cze Char with a difference! How interesting. When I was first recommended by a good friend to this place, I had wanted to go sample the offerings...but before I even had a chance, I was invited by a PR Agency to do a tasting there. A Cze Char place with a PR Consultant? Even more intriguing!!

But it was not quite as it seems. The folks who engaged Ate Consulting as the PR Agency was not the cze char stall, but Unilever Food Solutions. But why Unilever? Well, they make and produce all kinds of interesting stuff...including some quite ingenious ingredients used to create cze char and of course restaurant food...at coffee shops to restaurants in 5 star hotels.

For this review, they wanted to highlight the professional ingredients used to produce two of the dishes offered by Kien Seng. A stall which have been offering cze char style food for almost 40 years...first in Yio Chu Kang Stadium and now tucked in the industrial Ang Mo Kio.

First off, the Tom Yam Potato Flakes Prawns.

Very interesting. The prawns are coated with a very light cereal like batter...which is actually made from Knorr mashed potato flakes. These are supplied by Unilever. The taste is excellent. Very good. The prawns were very fresh, cruchy, very sweet, and the outer coating was beautiful...very light, a wonderful aroma reminiscent of potato chips. Magnificent.

The other Unilever ingredient - the Italiana Herb Paste...used on pork ribs

I found this a bit less gorgeous as the first. The pork was quite good, but I feel the chinese wok style cooking was a bit at odds with the Italian herb sauce. It did taste good, testament to the skill of the cook and the ingredients used, but I found it a bit lacking in harmony between the pork and sauce. My lunch companions felt otherwise. One of them, a Canadian living in Singapore, thought it was marvellous. So I guess there is no accounting for taste.

We had an Indonesian style Prawns in Claypot next

Very nice. The curry was rich but with a distinct taste. This was confirmed when the Kien Seng owner told us that she did not use coconut milk, but rather Carnation evaporated milk in the curry. The spices used in the curry was very authentic Indonesian Chinese style. And the prawns were nicely fresh and sweet.

A herbal chicken in soup was next

I found this superb. The soup has a wonderful aroma, and quite a thick viscousity..not starchy viscous, but thicker consistency than watery soup. The soup was savoury, with a heavy herbal flavour which I absolutely adore. Very, very good. I did not eat the chicken meat, but a small sample I tried told me it was very tender, still moist and very tasty.

A pork collar dish next

Pork collar, in nam yu sauce, stir fried till crisp outside...but tender inside. Pork collar tend to be a bit fat...but the dish was not greasy, though the fat within the meat provided the flavours, it did not give a greasy mouthfeel. Goes well with the pickled pumpkin it was served in. One of my favourite dishes.

Next up, Sambal Sweet Potato Leaves

Another very good dish. The sweet potato leaves were very nicely done...the leaves were young and very fresh. The cooking exhibited superb control of the fire, and the sambal used was superb. Truly a great dish!

A hot plate of oysters in egg was next

Also superb! The oysters were very fresh, fat, juicy...and cooked just so. The eggs on the hot plate served well as a platform to showcase these oysters to good stead. Nice, rich dish.

We also sampled the Nyonya Style Steamed Fish Head

A rather authentic nyonya style sauce. Again sans coconut milk, but with a rather healthier evaporated milk. The fish was steamed, and was very fresh. I ate the gelatinous parts, which tend to have some unwarranted flavours if the fish was not ultra fresh. This head had no unwanted flavours...fresh, fresh. Very nice meaty head.

And finally for dessert, Ohr Nee

Magnificent. The yam paste was ground by hand...so had a wonderful, slightly gritty consistency which I so love. And the flavours were superb. The lady boss told us this was the only dish she used coconut milk...as the flavour could not be authentic otherwise. A wise choice. Bautiful.

Very nice food at this little cze char place. Very highly recommended. Also, I did not get to sample it, but I was told they are also super famous for their roast suckling pig. So, definitely a revisit to sample that is in order!

Thanks to Joachim at Ate Consulting and the fine folks at Unilever and Kien Seng for hosting.

Kian Seng Seafood Restaurant
4013 Ang Mo Kio Industrial Park 1

Cze Char: Exercising the wok

Cze Char is a staple standard in Singapore cuisine...food, cooked a la minute to order. Featuring fresh ingredients, some with great innovation. There are many around, most reasonably good.

Today, I feature one which was quite good. Situated just around the corner from my former office, this is a favourite in the area. This Cze Char is situated in the S11 Coffee Shop at Killiney Road, with a sitting area al fresco style behind the shop, under the shade of trees and tarpaulin. Rustic.

But most interesting is the food. Quite a standard menu, so I tried some staples. First off, Fried Beehoon with a spicy chilli sambal sauce by the side.

This is quite a standard dish offered by most cze char stalls. Apparently simple, but as with most simple dishes may be the most difficult to prepare well. This one is pretty good by most standards. Nice wok hei, beautifully cooked bee hoon...a bit al dente, but yet soft and rather soft. The crunchy taugeh and balance of salty and slight sour from the lime, and spicyness from the sambal is quite addictive.

Another standard for cze char is fried rice

Yet another deceptively simple dish. This one with beautiful wok hei, crunchy bits of deep fried salted fish, fresh prawns, and taugeh. Very nice.

Yet another standard...the har cheong kai...or prawn paste deep fried chicken

The cook/chef demonstrated excellent control of his wok and fire skills. Magnificently cooked...crispy, but yet not greasy outside. Even though this is a deep fried dish. And wonderfully moist and juicy within. Beautiful flavours.

Sambal kangkong

Rather de rigeur, but nicely cooked. Nice, young kangkong, cooked just right, crunchy. With a beautiful paste, with bits of dried shrimps. Very nice.

And an innovative dish

Pork chop slices with a sauce of salted egg yolk. Salted egg yolk is often used as a sauce ingredient for crabs and the ever popular prawns. But this is the first time I have seen it with pork. Creamy, almost milky, the flavours of the salted egg yolk blend beautifully with the tender pork slices. With a bit of chopped chilli padi...quite magnificent.

Quite a nice cze char stall, in the middle of the city. Great cooking.

Cze Char Stall, S11 Coffee Shop
117 Killiney Road

Siang Hee in new location

I waxed lyrical about Siang Hee before...They recently moved to Serangoon Gardens, and Ah Yoke started cooking up a storm again. I went back to resample the dishes with a few friends.

We arrived at about 11:20am...it was not yet opened...I popped by the back, and saw Ah Yoke, who was rather glad to see me...was told they would open 11:30...though I guess noon was more accurate. At 12, they opened.

I ordered the same dishes that I am familiar with, to see if there were changes...I am happy to say, they remain just as good.

Pumpkin prawns

Large succulent prawns, in a crispy, crunchy batter, smothered with a gorgeous pumpkin sauce. Excellent.

Mongolian pork ribs

Still very nice. A bit salty, this time round, but beautiful ribs...tender, yet with a bit of bite.

One of our buddies eating with us wanted to try the beef hor fun...

Looked and smelled very fragrant. I didn't taste it.

From the looks of it, Ah Yoke is back in good form...albeit in a smaller kitchen and a smaller staff. Just one other person...(her husband?) helping with the preparation.

I still give the stall a hearty recommendation.

Serangoon Gardens Food Centre,

Stall 20. 49A Serangoon Garden Way.

Outstanding Cze Chars: Hui Wei

Discovering new Cze Char places is an interesting pasttime...not only often the food is superb and satisfying, but also the cost is managable and often inexpensive.

Hui Wei was one such discovery. I first came across it while googling cze chars...and I came across the SG on Foot site. So off with my former IATA colleagues we went...



Indescript, and I was told, just opened...they have a full menu...in English and Chinese no less...and the chap who came to take our order spoke English. Impressive.

We ordered away, as is typical of this group...

First, the amazingly good steamed Signature fish head:



Superb! Truly magnificent. The fish head was truly fresh, so no fishy odours...was cooked perfectly...like I like it. Just shy of fully cooked through...if we adapt the terminology used for steaks, I would call it medium rare...just a tinge of pink at the core, by the bone. And the green Thai sauce...superb. Truly superb. Did I say magnificent? Brings back memories of many of the meals I had with Acharn Thanet in Bangkok where the steamed fish is served with a green spicy, piquant, sour, sweet, salty sauce. Marvellous. This dish is enough to bring me back many times.

But there is more! The Thai Style Chicken is also very, very good...



Looks are certainly deceiving. The dish looked pedestrian. But taste wise, it was outstanding. Tender chunks of chicken, each coated with a beautiful sweet, sour and spicy sauce. Lovely.

Another outstanding dish is their mixed vegetables with lotus roots



The lotus roots are deep fried till it is like a cracker, then stir fried with the vegetables in a gravy like sauce. Excellent.

And the Thai Chilli Prawns



Another winner. The sauce was a bit like the one we typically eat with our chilli crab. With an egg stirred in during the last moments of preparation to make what the Cantonese call "wat tan". The fragrance is beautiful...the prawns, fresh, succulent and tasty.

Best of all, none of us suffered from MSG-ism after the lunch...since we were in the area, we headed for some coffee at Loysel's Toy.

I spied on their menu that they have KL Yuang Yang and KL Hor Fun...will definitely want to try that next time...Will be back soon...



Hui Wei Chinese-Thai Cuisine
Blk 802 French Road #01-69
Website: http://www.huiwei.com.sg

Daily: 1045am - 215pm (Lunch)
430pm - 1030pm (Dinner)

Le Chasseur: Talk of the town

Le Chasseur. What an interesting name for a Chinese Cze Char style restaurant in Singapore. The word is French for The Hunter. And it came about because the owner and chef Andy Lim used to run a restaurant of the same name in Mauritius.

This restaurant...I am tempted to call it small, as the atmosphere is congenial and Andy comes out to talk and give running commentaries on his food...but it is hardly small. It occupies 2 whole shophouses just across the road from The Central.

We asked Andy to make his recommendation, and this was the menu...first up, though it takes a full 20 minutes or so to prepare is te claypot chicken rice.



Andy insists on starting from scratch, with the rice cooked in the pot with the ingredients, so as to achieve full infusion of flavours. And also to char a nice, thick, burnt layer at the bottom of the pot...giving a beautiful smoky flavour. The chicken was very tender..and de-boned. This is a pet peeve...many times for me, a claypot of chicken rice is spoilt by having to weed out the chicken bones. And the home made, tangy, tart, pungent, hot chilli sauce complements it very well. A real winner. And for this dish alone Le Chasseur is worth the visit.



Andy uses Pakistani Basmati rice to make the claypot rice. This is very fragrant, long grained basmati. And very fluffy when cooked, and much more able to absorb flavours than regular Thai jasmine rice. This is the first commercial establishment I have come across which elects to use this much more expensive rice in its claypot. We do use basmati at home for claypots, chicken rice, nasi lemak and when we cook curries. Nice touch.

We also tried the deep fried ter ka...pork knuckles, or what Andy describes in his menu as deep fried pata.



The style of deep frying the knuckle and the sauce is described by Andy as Filipino style. But this is a much more elegant dish than the lechon baboy in Manila. Though deep fried, the knuckle remains remarkably dry and un-greasy...both in appearance and in the mouth. The skin is a dry crispy crunch. The meat is also fried till almost crispy. The dark brooding sauce provides a bit of acid to heighten the meat and diffuse the richness. Very good. My lunch colleagues proclaim this as superb, and better than the one done by Siang Hee. For me, I feel the taste of the Siang Hee deep fried pork knuckle is better, but also more greasy. Too close to call which I prefer.

Another signature of Le Chasseur is the prawns



The prawns are a live prawns...from a supplier who delivers only 1kg a day to Le Chasseur. Interesting...why such small quantities for a restaurant, especially for its signature dish? I am not sure as Andy did not really answer directly, but hinted that the prawns is very special. The prawns are live, and boiled in sea water till medium-rare. Then brushed with oil and grilled. The grilling produces a charred bits of the shell, and legs, and the wonderful smokey aroma which permeates. The prawns itself are very fresh...afterall they were live. And the method of eating, as Andy explains is to open the head like so...



Suck out the fat under the head. Deshell and proceed to eat the flesh. No sauce is provided for the prawns, the taste is superb. Sweet, crunchy, with a hint of the sea and smokey aromas.

We did have two vegetable dishes...the eggplant and the sambal long beans...but I felt they were good, but not specatacular.

Focussing on the spectacular, we also tried a small portion of the vinegar pork leg...ter ka chor.



A favourite of many...though not of mine. I prefer the richly braised pork knuckle. But a mandatory dish for ladies who have just given birth during the confinement month, this is a traditional dish. For me, its good, but I find the tart-ness of the acid in the vinegar to be a tad overpowing. But for Ray and Janet who are fans of this style of pork knuckle, this was a great dish. Ray rated this 9.5/10, and Janet rated it 9/10. High praise indeed.

For desserts, we tried the house special black fungus:



I found this to be quite good. The fungus was thick, and crunchy. And the soup was nicely balanced sweetness.

But the tau suan was excellent:



The peas used were beautiful. Nice, halfs. The peas are cooked just right...the consistency is not too hard, not too soft. The thick sweet sauce smothered the peas. One of the best tau suans I have had in a very long time.

The restaurant was getting quite busy on a Friday lunchtime, when were almost finished with our meal at about 1pm...we arrived at 12 noon, and it was nice and quiet. Andy recommends reservations for weekends, when it can get rather crowded.

Excellent food, reasonable prices. Definitely worthy of multiple re-visits.


Le Chasseur
31, New Bridge Road (opp Central)
Singapore 059393
11am to 11pm daily
63377677
91440322