Return to Hawker’s Cuisine
On Friday night, we had dinner with my sister Juji and her boyfriend Jay. We went to Hawker’s Cuisine in Northbridge. My family had a dinner there in February (click here to read that post), and I’d been keen to return ever since.
L to R: Jay’s iced lemon tea, Juji’s honey and lemon drink.
We started with crispy pork belly. This dish consisted of thin slices of pork belly fried till crispy, served with a cold sweet and sour sauce with slivered capsicum, carrot, spring onion and chunks of pineapple. The crispy pork belly was great. Initially I was taken aback by the cold sauce with warm pork, but the sauce was delicious with the pork and eaten with hot steamed rice.
We had 5 sticks of chicken satay and 5 sticks of beef satay. The satay sauce wasn’t as nice as it was the previously – this time it was more sweet than savoury and sort of bland. The satay meats were nice though.
Our token vegetable dish was kai lan cooked in XO sauce. Jac has now decided she isn’t a fan of XO sauce – I think she isn’t keen on the strong dried shrimp (har mai) component. I really enjoyed this dish – the kai lan stems were crunchy and the leaves were tender – and once you got chewing it was not stringy at all, as green chinese vegetables can be.
We just had to order marmite chicken again. This was my favourite dish of the evening. I could’ve eaten this just with steamed rice and been completely satisfied. The chicken pieces were tender and juicy and coated all over with the marmite sauce. I know every time we eat here I’ll have to order this dish.
Juj and Jay’s favourite of all the dishes was the hot plate tofu – fried cubes of tofu with soft egg custard-like centres, served on a hot plate in a bubbling savoury meat and egg sauce.
This was Jac’s favourite dish of the night – salt and pepper squid. The squid was unbelievably tender and smooth. I also loved eating the little bits of fried onion, garlic and chilli.
The food at Hawker’s Cuisine is fantastic. We really enjoyed our dinner. The menu is extensive and features many unusual dishes. If the food wasn’t good there’s no way this restaurant would be as popular as it is (you definitely need a booking to get a table for dinner), as the service is poor- each time we’ve been there we’ve had to go up to the waiters and tell them we wished to order drinks – and it took much too long to get someone’s attention so we could order the food. They didn’t wipe the table down after clearing the plates, and didn’t come back to see if we wanted anything else. Oh yeah, and although they have fried banana fritters served with ice cream on the dessert menu, they never have any bananas. Damn it, where can I go to get fried banana fritters?