On Sunday while our house guest was catching up on some much needed sleep, Jac and I went out to the shops. We ended up at Belmont Forum and had lunch in the recently done up food hall there. We had Chinese. Jac had char siu wantan mee soup. She was offered egg noodles, bee hoon (thin rice noodles) or kway teow (flat rice noodles), and she chose kway teow. The broth was lovely – not too salty, and the sliced deep-fried shallots floating on top were very tasty. Not enough Chinese places include the deep-fried shallots, which I reckon add so much delicious flavour to a dish. The char siu was very good and had infused the soup with some of its distinct flavour… mmmmm. The wantan though, were strange. We’re not even sure what meat they were filled with – it was pale, almost white and it had a strange texture, like a very hard rubber. You know how pencil erasers tend to be softer than pen/ink erasers? It was more like a pen/ink eraser than a pencil eraser. I mean, the meat in the wantan was disconcertingly hard when you bit into it. To add to its textural weirdness, it was so bland, almost tasteless. What a shame, seeing as the soup was so nice. I didn’t finish the wantan I took a bite out of.

My char kway teow was fried with a lot of egg, which I love… I really love eggy char kway teow! They ask you when you order what meat you would like your kway teow fried with – chicken, beef or seafood. I asked if I could have a combination of seafood and chicken, which they said was no problem. The seafood consisted of lots of yee peng (fish cake), halved fish balls, seafood extender (which I really don’t like, but luckily Jac does), squid and two ginormous prawns. I love yee peng and fish balls, so I enjoyed those very much. Unfortunately the prawns had been pre-cooked and were kind of stringy. And the big vein on the top that you usually remove when cleaning prawns was still intact. You might be able to see in the photo that there was a big orange thing hanging out of the top of one of the prawns – when I pulled it out it turned out to be a big loooong orange thing. Whether or not it is meant to be eaten, it kind of grossed me out. The other prawn had veiny mushy stuff in it too. The chicken pieces were tasty, but I was so disappointed (and grossed out) by those prawns. This was ok char kway teow, but I’ve eaten way way better.