While we were in Singapore, my colleague had recommended Chinatown as one of the food places we should try. Apparently the area used to be rows of peddlers on the road and only quite recently, the area has been refurbished with a nice roof and proper stalls.
Before going, I did some research on recommendations and came across Satay Mee Hoon.
I know, it doesn't sound very appetizing, how does it work? Extremely absorbent meehoon with chunky, peanut-y satay sauce? Sounds like a confusing match made in Singapore. But nevertheless, skepticism aside (and I have LOTS of skepticism for Singaporean local/street food), I went for it.
I requested for mine without cockles so the lady replaced it with a single scallop. She continuously advised me while she was preparing to consume immediately, consume immediately, consume immediately! This is to of course prevent the noodles from absorbing all the sauce and leaving you with dried mee hoon.
The mee hoon was drenched in satay sauce and had slivers of cuttlefish, a few prawns, slices of chicken, kangkung and tauge. The satay sauce was a little watery with good intention so that the entire dish doesn't dry out and leave you with a mee hoon cake.
To say the least, it was interesting and not too bad. I wished there was more sauce and and that the sauce was spicy then it would have tasted better. Some smoother (and better quality) mee hoon would have improved the dish too.
LC wanted to try the Tiong Bahru Meng Kee Roast Duck Rice but there were a bunch of indecisive tourists in front of the stall taking their time to pick food items so he gave up and went for the Bugis Street Hainanese Chicken Rice instead. The stall is side by side with the satay mee hoon if I recall correctly.
A quiet stall should be some indication of the food quality. The rice was tasteless. The chicken was tough and the siew yoke was no big deal. The braised egg was alright though. Overall, quite disappointing for a famous chicken rice stall.
A lot of the stalls were closed when we were here on a Saturday afternoon (shouldn't all stalls be open at this time??) so your options are quite limited. Some stalls were just setting up in fact (oh gosh). When I passed the Meng Kee stall, the indecisive lot had finally cleared so I decided to order something.
Since we already had 2 dishes, I went with a Char Siew & Siew Yoke Wantan Mee. The wantan mee was not great but the meat was better than the famous counterpart. The siew yoke was good - lean (definitely good for me!) and well marinated.
The char siew however, was hard and not well caramelized.
I was quite disappointed by our Chinatown escapade. Perhaps it's because our Malaysian Chinatown has so much good food. Once again, the hawker/street/local food has disappointed (continued to disappoint) our Malaysian taste buds.