blood cockles

4 of us continued on our zi char dinner quest at two chefs on 26.11.2013.

the zi char stall at a commonwealth crescent had good reviews, but honestly i was quite disappointed. while it was better than woh hup at hong lim (which was bad!), it was far, far from the very nice dishes we had at kok sen. in my opinion,it was not even comparable to the forture restaurant at the old holland road coffeeship.

we did not order their signature butter pork rib using milk powder as a few reviews & also a friend who dined there recently said it was too sweet. the only dish i really liked was the S$6 blood cockles – pickled raw cockles (腌血蚶) with lots of garlic. 🙂 but then i was about the only one eating them as my friends were not into this much & one felt that garlic was too much (though i liked). so it was not representative!

claypot fish head

to me, the worst dish was the claypot fish head, gluey & not having the sweet, fresh, tender taste of fish, though the photo may look ok. its a dish i had not taken for perhaps >10years or longer. though i think most are now served cut up & deep-fried, i still prefer the one i had 30 years ago at whampoa where they served the head whole & not deep-fried. two chefs did have assam fish head & blackbean sauce song fish head. surely those would be ok – it’s like anyone can do a song fish head, i remember 1 news report said 1 hawker centre had 15 stalls selling it!

golden mushrooms tofu

3 egg heng chye

the salted egg prawns were ok, tasty but oily, and really not my preferred preparation for prawns.

the golden mushrooms tofu was ok i guess, but quite poor in comparison with kok sen & muliangzai liang kee which were minced pork deep-fried tofu.

the 3-eggs heng chye was watery, taste ok.

overall, it was a very average meal can get at any coffeeshop (like 6th avenue coffeeshop). i guess correspondingly the price is cheap S$60nett for 4pax, but then kok sen was cheap too & very much better!

maybe still have to try the muliangzai type of zi char stalls.

c.h.e.f. andy