Cheng Mun Chee Kee Pig Organ Soup

Oodles of porky goodness is the best way to describe the pig innards soup at Cheng Mun Chee Kee. Hidden at the coffee shop just behind the famous Eminent Plaza hawker centre / food court, Cheng Mun Chee Kee serves up some yummy pork soup with a variety of innards and other small dishes (including steamed pork, stewed pork and fermented beancurd vegetables). I’ve never tried the small dishes as I’m always satisfied with my fix of pork soup. My usual order is the sliced meat (both lean and fatty) and the pork balls, although one is offered a choice of other offal, for example, kidneys, livers and stomach, just to name a few. Your choice of organs / meat is served in a light, slightly peppery broth laced with salted vegetables, and accompanied (on occasion) with tofu. On a cold day, the bowl of hot piping soup hits the spot, as does dipping the meat / organs into the piquant spicy chilli and dark black sauce. The meatballs have a nice hint of the teochew flat fish normally found in good bak chor mee, although on my last visit, they were just a tad too soft and not “bouncy” enough, if you get what I mean. Overall though, a very good bowl of Pig Organ Soup, and one that even non-offal eaters can enjoy! (On a note of caution, the Cheng Mun Chee Kee is not the same as the Pig Organ Soup in Eminent Plaza, which also goes by the name of Mun Chee Kee. The Eminent Plaza outlet is pretty decent, but not comparable to Cheng Mun Chee Kee!)

Cheng Mun Chee Kee
24 Foch Road, Singapore 209949
Tel: +65 62975068
Opening hours : 9am till 5am (another plus point, so you can head here for supper!)

Clay Abode

Roaming around Maxwell Chambers one afternoon, we decided to head to Clay Abode for lunch since there was less of a crowd at Clay Abode (this despite the fact that it is usually the crowded places that serve the better food).  For the uninitiated, Maxwell Chambers is a refurbished building housing state-of-the-art arbitration chambers, as well as a number of restaurants and interesting food joints, including a milkshake bar called Once Upon a Milkshake (to be reviewed soon!)

Clay Abode, as the name suggests, is a shop specialising in claypot dishes, and in particular, claypot rice. At Claypot Abode, the Signature Claypot Rice is an offering of chicken, chinese waxed sausage (or lup cheong) and salted fish served on rice in (you guessed it!) a claypot. There is an option of adding an egg to the dish, which I have to admit, I’ve never seen done anywhere else before. For those interested, the egg is a Japanese ramen style egg with a soft centre which you are apparently supposed to mix into the rice. (This didn’t quite hit the spot for me as the rice was already too wet to begin with (see below).)

Despite the decent reviews of the restaurant, I found the rice far too soft for my liking – it was very very wet, and certainly did not look nor taste like it had been cooked in the claypot, as is traditionally done. My guess is that they pre-cook the rice, and then ladle it into the claypots before adding the ingredients and re-heating the entire pot. Unlike other people who have reviewed this joint, my food came within 7 minutes of ordering, which indicated that the rice was certainly pre-cooked, and not cooked only on order. Another sign that the dish was ready made was the fact that there was no crispy rice crust at the bottom of the pot which one gets when the rice is cooked directly in the claypot.

In fairness, I have to say that the chicken was well marinated and very moist (despite it being chicken breast which often tends to be overcooked), and for me was the only positive aspect to an otherwise pedestrian claypot rice. The salted fish did not shine like it usually does in claypot rice dishes – while there was an ample amount of salted fish in the dish, the fish did not impart any flavour to the rice. What I was disappointed particularly with was that the sauce was mixed into the rice, unlike the traditional claypot rice stores which have the black sauce mixture on the side for the diner to add on their own.

For those who are interested, I should also add that Claypot Abode has a set lunch available on weekdays at S$9.50 per person. This comes with one claypot rice (I’m not sure if this changes weekly, but we were offered only the Chicken with Salted Black Bean Claypot Rice), a side of vegetables and a dessert (for us, it was a red bean paste). A good deal if you consider that their claypot rices range from S$9 to S$9.90 per pot (which I might add, is a tad expensive for the serving).

Overall, this wasn’t the best claypot rice I’d had in my life, and it certainly wouldn’t be a place where I would crave going back any time soon. I personally think there are much better claypot rice stalls out there, albeit in a less fancy environment and without the air-conditioning, but if you happen to be in the area and can’t find another place to eat, then the food at Claypot Abode will fill your tummy and keep you warm, but won’t do much other than that.

Clay Abode
32 Maxwell Road
#01-05 Maxwell Chambers
Tel: +65 6227 6137

Cho Kee Wanton Noodles

Maxwell market has long been a favourite haunt of mine – there’s a great variety of food to be had – from fishball noodles, curry pork cutlet noodles, fish porridge, teochew muey, wu xiang, fried rice, roast meats rice, sweet potato balls, ham chin peng, fruit stalls,oyster cake, homemade noodle, chicken rice, carrot cake, char kway teow. Hell, there’s even a biscuits shop. You can find all sorts of meals- snacks, desserts, main courses, different dialect foods. The other fantastic thing about it is that if you know which stall to go to, you will generally get above average hawker food. For instance, there are two wu xiang stalls in the market- one’s in the centre section, and the another faces Fairfield Methodist Church. I’ve tried both- and while they have similar items(eg. liver roll, fried egg slices), the quality of it is different. The stall facing the church doesn’t drain the oil off the fritters so much, and often pre-cooks the fried items, leaving it above the pan. The stall inside, however, fries the pieces you’ve chosen on the spot. That is an important difference. The ingredients are also somewhat different- the stall facing the church doesn’t chop up the ingredients so finely, such that it is more coarse. I prefer the stall inside the market, with the number 84 illuminated by lights.

One of the new stalls(or not so new) is Cho Kee Wanton Noodles, from Old Airport Road. I decided to try this after noticing a long queue for the noodles, and the good writeups. Wanton noodles come in two kinds: the old fashioned powdery noodles and the new, more synthetic brighter yellow sort. I prefer the former – the noodles tend to be more crunchy, and come off easily with a bite. They are also noticeably thicker and tastier. The latter, which can often be found at food courts, is frankly quite inedible.

So hungry I took a snapshot far too late

Cho Kee uses the old fashioned sort of noodles, doused in a very spicy chilli – so go easy if you’re not a chilli fiend. The char siew used in wanton noodles, can also be of various sorts- some stalls use a more roasted, honey glazed char siew while others uses the red dyed char siew, commonly found in the markets. I prefer the former but Cho Kee uses the latter. Their version is not terribly sweet(I would prefer it sweeter) accompanied by vegetables. The wonton was quite delicious- while the fillings of these wantons are not the main focal point of the dish(ironically, for a dish called wonton noodles – that’s a story for another day, since HK wonton noodles really do mean ACTUAL WONTONS), the skin of these wontons was thicker and dense. The fillings made up of fatty minced pork and pepper, was actually quite tasty.

A decent bowl of wonton noodles($3/$4) if you’re in the area – I was told that the guy managing the stall has a standoffish attitude. If you can stand that, do try the noodles but remember to go easy on the chilli though. It’s fiery enough to bring a tear.

Oyster Cake Delight

The Foochow Oyster Cake is something I’ve noticed many people have never heard of. Well, whether you’re Foochow, Cantonese, Hokkien or Teochew, however, this is something that I’m sure that many will devour. At the famous Maxwell Market Food Centre, where people are often found queuing for porridge, ondeh-ondeh, pork chop rice and chicken rice, Stall No. 5 serves up a rare and delicious snack known as the Foochow Oyster Cake.

On the glass panel separating you from the hot oil, a picture of Anthony Bourdain (celebrity chef and of A Cook’s Tour fame) is pasted up, to let you know that even he has tried the oyster cake. Well if he’s tried the oyster cake, then so should you. The oyster cake comes in 2 versions: Normal (without the oyster) at S$1.50 and the Normal with Oyster at S$2. I swear by the version with the oyster, because really, what’s an oyster cake without oysters? The batter is made up of rice flour mixed in water, and stuffed inside this batter, is a mixture of minced pork, minced prawns, chinese celery and oysters (if you choose the oyster version of course). The batter is then topped with peanuts and deep fried to perfection. Each bite is filled chock full of ingredients, and the juiciness of the ingredients just oozes out with each bite.

The oyster cake is best devoured hot, and the elderly Mdm Hong (or usually, her daughters) sits at the wok patiently frying these oyster cakes on demand so there is usually no shortage of piping hot oyster cakes. If you’re in the area and have the stomach for a small snack, please do stop by and have a taste of these oyster cakes. Perfect comfort food, they will send you to foodie nirvana. For me at least, they never fail to provide a warm fuzzy sensation when I savour the juicy mouthfuls of the oyster cake.

Maxwell Fuzhou Oyster Cake
Maxwell Road
#01-05 Maxwell Food Center
+65 9344 1296