Chilli Padi Nonya Café at Heng Mui Keng Terrace: My fav high tea buffet in Singapore

My favorite place for a budget high tea in Singapore is the Chilli Padi Nonya Café (Heng Mui Keng Terrace). Its high tea buffet is only available on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays is only S$8.80+ per person (less than S$10 after tax).

I visited the Chilli Padi Nonya Café once when it was still in Bugis. The spread then was OK and the noodle dish was a Penang Assam laksa.

Then the café moved from the populous Bugis to the in the middle of literally nowhere Heng Mui Keng Terrace.

The first time I went to the Heng Mui Keng branch, it took me a long while of searching and a phone call to the café to find the place.

The café was huge but the place was very very empty. Compared with Bugis branch, it was practically a ghost town.

Unless you are in a large group, there’s no need to make a reservation.

Food selection at Chilli Padi Nonya Café

The Chilli Padi Nonya Café serves Peranakan food which is unique to Southeast Asia. (Don’t believe the propaganda that the Peranakan Museum tells you. Peranakan culture is not only in Singapore.)

The food selection for high tea is rather limited. But some of the dishes are so good that it’s actually worth going there just to gorge on them.

My most favorite dish is the curry laksa. You take some of the thick noodles, put it in the strainer and let it soak in the hot water a while.

Then, you put the noodles into your bowl and pour the coconut milk-filled curry gravy. DO NOT put your noodles directly into the curry gravy. (I’m looking at you middle aged man who went on Feb 17.)

The taste is divine!

My second favorite dish is the kong ba bao (which unfortunately doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry).

You need to DIY with this dish. There is a steamer of white fluffy Chinese bun skin. Take one of this.

Take a fatty slice of the kong ba which is next to the steamer. Take a slice of lettuce so your mom won’t nag you.

Once at your seat, put the meat and lettuce into the bun. Eat while warm.

The kong ba is seasoned so well that I do not mind the fatty bits at all.

My third favorite is this: Pai tee which is a a little dough cup which you fill with braised turnip. Yummy!

Pai tee translates as “top hat”. Isn’t that the cutest name?

Other yummies

Desserts

Nyonya and Malay kuih (roughly translated as cake):

Mango pudding

Tropical fruits. Yes, we consider fruits as part of desserts and is a perfect end to a meal.

Coffee and tea: The kopi (coffee) is kind of weak. The tea is stronger. Both goes well with the evaporated milk they have at the side.

How to get there?

Chilli Padi Nonya Café
29 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
#06-21 (Ground Level)
Singapore 119620
Tel: 6872 2982

How to get to Chili Padi Nyonya NUS Heng Mui Keng Terrace — Click for bigger image

Actually, the address tells you NOTHING because it’s rather difficult to get there.

I have discovered an easier way to get to Chili Padi Nyonya at NUS.

Stop at Pasir Panjang Road’s Heng Mui Keng Terrace or Opp Heng Mui Keng Terrace.
Walk into NUS, take the right at the first round about.
Walk up passing Sheares and Kent Ridge Hall and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
At the top, you will see a building. The entrance to Chili Padi Nyonya Cafe is there.
Bon appetit.

Have you tried Peranakan food? How was your experience?

Glutton at Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year! Yes, CNY does not end until the 15th day.

This week’s FoodFriday features a special Chinese New Year edition of the Glutton Series.

For this banquet, we’ll have home cooked meals prepared for reunion dinners and a special “lou sang” dish that involved violent chopstick movements.

First course is the CNY eve reunion dinner at my aunt’s place. Every year on Chinese New Year eve, the extended family gathers for a meal.

This year, the table was overflowing with food (as usual) because many brought multiple dishes. I think my family brought the least as we only had my mom’s famous salted duck and a plate of salted vegetable.

Not included in the photo is two types of soups (one without chicken as my dad is allergic to chicken) and steamed fish.

Because the main dining table had limited space, I was assigned to the children’s table. The “youngest” person at the children’s table will be 19 years old this year.

Auntie’s place for lunch

The next day, we were invited to a friend of mom’s place for a lunch gathering. The auntie (a title we use to call an elder woman) is a great cook and she made an amazing lunch.

We had dumplings (a traditional Chinese New Year food). There was roast duck and roast pork which can be found in many Malaysian Chinese outlets.

The fish eggs dish is interesting. The auntie mixed fish eggs with chicken eggs and pan fried it in a rectangular skillet. The tiny fish eggs are snugly wrapped in a coat of eggs. Yummy.

Soup was winter melon soup with meatballs.

We ate all this accompanied with rice. My stomach was stretched almost to the maximum.

Last course: Yusheng

It’s quite alright for adults to have food war during Chinese New Year. The photo below shows Yusheng.

It’s a medley of food, put into a large plate while the server reads incantations (not really, just “auspicious wishes” ). The eaters then violently toss the ingredients with chopsticks.

I’ve never had this dish when I was in Sabah. It was until I began work that I am invited to Chinese New Year luncheons and I participate in the violent act.

After mixing, the dish is sourish with shred of turnip being the main taste.

What’s your favorite Chinese New Year dish? Share it in the comment section below.

#FoodFri The original Ya Kun Kaya Toast in Singapore

Ya Kun Kaya Toast is a famous chain for traditional toast and coffee in Singapore.

The food and drink there is alright but there are other places where you can get a cheaper deal.

One day D told me about the Ya Kun Kaya Toast branch at China Square. It’s supposed to be really retro (even more retro than the fake-retro which they have in other branches).

Another selling point for the China Square branch is that it’s run by the descendants of Ya Kun the man himself! OK, I’m sold.

The shop is rather difficult to find because China Square is in the middle of the CBD. Google Map’s not really that helpful because the buildings are too tall.

It was raining when we went in search of Ya Kun Kaya Toast. We managed to find it in the end without getting soaked.

Ya Kun Kaya Toast China Square branch deco

OK, the shop was quaint but only because we’re in Singapore.

The floors looked like they were scratched from chairs and tables.

The kitchen was sort of an open kitchen concept.

We ordered the usual Kaya Toast set which comes with two pieces of toast, coffee and two soft boiled eggs.

Mistaken for tourists

When we arrived, I was busy taking photos of the place. I even swirled on my stool to take a panorama shot of Ya Kun Kaya Toast.

When our food arrived, the lady who served us brought the soy sauce and pepper shakers to us. She ordered us to put the condiments onto the eggs and eat.

I think this is the first time I’m mistaken for a tourist in Singapore. I’ve been here 7 year already, lady!

We ate our food in peace. (Almost, we were instructed how to eat again.)

Later, I saw that the shop was selling petit cups as souvenirs. I took photos of them.

Then the lady swooped down with the TOURIST SET.

She looked at us expectantly before leaving us. I took a photo of the set before it was too late.

Have you been to the China Square branch of Ya Kun?

#FoodFri White coffee @ Ipoh

The best white coffee I ever had was in Ipoh.

The slightly burnt taste with a smooth evaporated milk finish…

Divine.

Find out more about Ipoh:

What to see: Among the ruins of Kellie’s Castle, Ipoh
Where to stay: Stay: Ipoh Tune Hotel review
What to eat: Glutton in Ipoh

Glutton in Pontian, Johor

The weekend trip to Pontian was short and sweet. My sister and I did not do much, which also meant that we did not eat much.

There’s not much formal travel information on Pontian (zero at the time of writing on Wikitravel) so we did a lot of Google searching about food and things to do.

Pontian Wanton Noodles

Since Pontian Wanton Noodles is famous in Singapore, I decided that we must eat wanton noodles in Pontian.

Unlike its name suggest, the wanton noodles is not promiscuous or cruel. Instead, it is a noodle dish served with little dumplings (wanton) which are fried or boiled.

We headed to Kedai Mee Heng Heng, a 15-minute walk away from the hotel. I was so hungry that I brought us into the coffeeshop next door.

I was rather puzzled why there was no wanton noodle. We were told that the dish was served next door. We thanked the people and sheepishly left the place.

Our noodles came really really slowly. We found out later that serving food at a slow pace is typical of Pontian town.

We ordered the black sauce noodles (instead of the sweet red sauce–ketchup–which feels urgh). The noodles were alright and the wantons too but nothing to shout about.

Football Field Restaurant seafood

Another highly-raved about place was the Football Field Restaurant which seemed like a long distance from our hotel on Google Maps. In reality, the route was quite quick.

We didn’t order crabs because they were priced at a crazy RM70 per kilo. I could have RM18/kg crabs in Sabah so I refused to order crabs.

We did have grilled flounder which was amazing, as usual. The chilli paste that came along didn’t spoil the sweet taste of its flesh. (I sound like a cannibal.)

yucky noodles

Mediocre noodle at mediocre Pontian noodle stall

We wanted to try food at the Market. However, we found outthat the market only opens in the evening and at nights. In the end, we headed to a row of shophouses and tried our luck at one of the coffeeshops.

We stood in the shop waiting for tables to clear. No one was leaving and food was served at the usual snail pace.

We switched to a roadside eatery instead. The food was very bland.

Tropical fruits

Not counting the fish, this was probably the highlight of Glutton in Pontian.

Our taxi driver stopped at a roadside fruitstall where we bought a bag of mangosteens and two humongous guavas. I finished my guava only on the second day, biting through it like a beaver with my front teeth.

As for the mangosteens, they were sweet and delicious. I had fun making a video about how to peel a mangosteen, check it out if you haven’t seen it.

Have you been to Pontian? What did you eat there?

#FoodFri Devonshire cream tea set in Singapore

My favorite place for afternoon tea in Singapore is Fosters, an English Rose Café at Holland Village.

Even though the scones are the leading characters in the set, the Devonshire cream steals the limelight EVERY SINGLE TIME! The rest of the spread is so so.

The white cream comes in a small tub, the top in a cute swirl. It doesn’t taste of cream but of coconut. Can you imagine? Coconut bread spread that doesn’t taste like fake coconut.

My history with Fosters

Setting of Fosters, an English Rose Café. Menu opens like a paper

When I was in university, one of the bus I take always passed the restaurant. It looked posh. With my university allowance, I didn’t think that I could afford going there.

So, one of the first things I did when I got my first pay was to visit the restaurant.

I was curious about its Devonshire Cream Tea Set. Back then, the set had two scones, four finger sandwiches (2 cucumer–eek–and 2 ham), 2 fruit cakes.

Today, there is only 2 sandwiches and 1 dried store-bought fruitcake. At least, the one coffee or tea remains the same. The breadspread is the same: strawberry jam, butter and Devonshire cream.

It’s only available from 3 to 6pm which is a tricky timing since lunchtime passed not so long ago.

The restaurant is decorated quaintly and makes a good place to chat with friends. If there’s only two of you, you can sit at the two sofas near the door where a suit of armor guards.

How to get to Fosters, an English Rose Café

The nearest MRT stop is Holland Village.

[And look! This post fits WP’s Daily Post writing challenge]

Have you been to Fosters? Do you like Devonshire cream?

Glutton in Sabah

I was home for the holidays and ate many yummy things (and some less yummy food). This post is divided by the locations I ate the dishes.

Bon appetit!

Durian. My family loves durians but I’m a little meh about it. However, this time when I was back, I have kind of fallen in love with its creamy custard texture.

Lamb chop. On the second day when I reached home, I had a craving for lamb chop so I requested my parents to bring me to our regular steak place.

Our seats were right next to the covered drain but we got wafts of drain smell floating around us. :<

The lamb chop was rather disappointing. The portion was large but the meat was so tough I felt like I was a grazing cow. My jaw hurt in the end.

Kota Belud kopitiam

Before my mom and I headed to Kudat, we stopped by a kopitiam in Kota Belud. We lunched with my dad and my parents’ friends and ordered things to share.

Fried bee hoon. A typical fried noodle dish, garnished with roast pork bits.

Pig blood curd yong tau foo. If you’ve not had blood curd (like bean curd but with animal blood), you might feel a bit queasy about it.

It’s actually really tasty. It doesn’t taste of blood. I can’t really describe the taste but it’s firmer than jelly.

Kudat seafood

Mom and I couldn’t find a nice place for seafood while we were in Kudat. In our car, we went about town.

Finally, we settled at one of the wooden houses at the sea. We happened to sit at the less popular restaurant. Oh well, food is food is food.

Crab. I’ve never had this sort of crab before. The usual crab I eat has a uniform color but this was patterned. Mom said it was a “flower crab”.

The meat wasn’t as firm as the usual crab I eat. But the good thing is that the shell is less tough and I can break off the shell easily to the crab meat.

(This crab was not eaten in Kudat.) Just to show you what the regular crab I eat looks like. I had this at restaurant near my home.

Steamed fish. Oh, how much I love fish steamed with soy sauce and ginger. The sauce goes well with rice.

Roadside fruit stall

On the way to and from Kudat, fruit stalls are scattered by the roadside.

They all sell the same seasonal fruits: BBQ corn, bananas, jackfruit, honey, rambutan.

BBQ corn. It’s interesting how they cook the corn. I usually eat steamed or boiled corn, never one roasted by fire.

However, our cobs of corn weren’t cooked enough.

Honey. Mom bought a bottle of dark honey (“Darker means older honey,” said the seller.) I haven’t tried it but the bottles look so pretty.

Bukit Padang stalls

Cha kway teow. Stir fried flat board noodles. The half-cooked cockles are known to cause mild food poisoning.

Cendol. Shaved ice, coconut milk, gula melaka (palm sugar) syrup, and green cendol. Enough said. It gave me brain freeze when I tried to eat it really fast.

Others

Hokkien noodle. I love this dark sauce thick noodles. And the fried pork fat. Mmmm.

Pearl milk tea. Or also known as “bubble tea” in Singapore. Black chewy tapioca drowned in milk tea.

YOYO’s the best pearl milk tea branch in Southeast Asia, according to me.

Cooling water, or what we call “rhino horn water”. I do not think the drink has actual bits of rhino calcium. But it was selling like hot cakes (if they were liquid and cool) at my parents’ store.

I learned from a customer that they use it to cool down after eating heaty durians.

Swiss roll. I bought this cake because I mistook it for another bakery’s milk cake. There’s custard in between.

Fish soup bee hoon. Sluuuuurp. (OK, I’m not that big a fan of pale fish.)

Pot luck! My mom and her friends had a pot luck on new year eve night. It was dinner after mahjong. Later we went to the beach for our ritual feet washing.

Which is your favorite dish?

What I do when I am back home in Sabah

I just came back from an 11-day trip home (which is about 9 days long if you take away the travelling days). It was a good recharging of my batteries.

Since some people–okay, maybe only my uncle–are curious about why I go home so often. (I only went back home 3 times in 2012.) I’ll share what I do when I am home.

See the parents

The main reason I head back to Sabah is to see my parents. Or maybe for my parents to see me. I’m not sure which way it goes.

I also bicker (good humoredly, I hope) with the parents.

Eat seafood

A good reason to head home is for the cheap yummy seafood. A meal for two which includes a kilogram of cooked crabs, steamed fish, a stirfried vegetable and rice costs only RM63 (US$21).

Steal Wi-Fi at restaurants

My parents cancelled the fixed broadband line because it doesn’t work 95 percent of the time. In the end, I had to surf on my mobile phone.

For long blog posts, I had to bring my laptop to restaurants and use their Wi-Fi while I wait for the food to arrive.

Meet friends

I usually multitask by stealing Wi-Fi and meeting my long-time-no-see friends.

Help a little at the shop and house chores

My parents own a grocery store in the neighborhood where I grew up. I didn’t really like tending to the shop because it’s mindnumbingly dull to sit at the cashier, key in prices and bag groceries.

But then, this was the place which provided my university tuition.

Play mahjong

I played plenty of mahjong with my mom and her friends when they lacked another player.

I’m not very good at it but I did win some (a minority) rounds.

Travel

When my holidays are too short, I don’t move around much. This time, I had 11-days so my mom drove us to Kudat for a one-night trip. We saw the “tip of Borneo” and ate some seafood.

Visit the temple

I’m still rather confused about which religion I am partial to. I grew up believing I was Buddhist when I was praying to Taoist gods). I do like Greek gods now but I don’t think that’s considered a religion now.

Despite my confusion, I still visit temples. There’s a Taiwanese saying “有拜有保佑” which means “you will be protected if you pray”. The saying means that it doesn’t hurt to pray to as many gods so you won’t be left out on Judgement Day.

Welcome the new year

My mom and her friends have a tradition of going to the beach around 11pm on new year eve. Before the clock strikes 12, we head into the sea to wash away the bad from the current year and welcome the good luck from the coming year.

Where is home?

Last time, I wrote a post about how I am homeless because I cannot tell which is home. When I was back in Sabah this time, I realized that it’s possible to have many places you call home.

It all depends on how much you feel that you belong in a place.

Do you live away from home? What do you do when you are back?

#FoodFri 10 yummy things I ate while travelling in 2012

It’s the last #FoodFri of 2012. Here at YQtravelling, I want to take a trip down memory lane and bring back memories of the best food I’ve eaten this year.

Seafood in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

I’m starting the list with a staple dish when I am back home for the holidays–seafood. In my case, seafood usually means crabs because they are cheaper than prawns and much fleshier than clams.

As for seasoning, I do not have a favorite and will eat crabs anyway it is cooked.

Do you have a special dish for the year 2012? Share it in the comments below.

#FoodFri Traditional Taiwanese breakfast

My parents and I stopped by a Taiwanese breakfast place when we were in Taipei in 2010.

Salty soy milk, pan fried buns and fried dough 烧饼油条豆浆水煎包 — Traditional Taiwanese breakfast

The shop was divided into two sections. In front, the shopowners cooked while the back was reserved for customers to sit. The customer sector was warm from the cooking in front which was good because we were caught in a drizzle before that.

I requested for shuijianbao (水煎包) which were pan fried small meat buns. I had loved meat too much to forgo it even for breakfast.

Here’s a breakdown of the meal:

Savory soy milk

Instead of the sweet warm soy milk that I had been used to, I was served salty warm soy milk. It even tasted slightly burnt which didn’t help a lot with the taste.

水煎包 Shuijianbao

Even though eating something as oil as mini pan fried meat buns wasn’t good for the stomach early in the morning, I had to have some of them before I start the day.

The buns were tasty and had vegetable filling. Compared to xiaolongbao, shuijiabbao is less soupy and has a thicker flour skin.

烧饼油条 Shaobing Youtiao

烧饼油条 Fried dough wrapped in fried dough — Fried dough wrapped in fried dough

Before that meal, I had never seen the shaobing youtiao combo in real life. I was used to eating the two twin fried doughsticks called youtiao but I’ve not tried it as a pair.

It was rather unusual, eating fried dough wrapped in fried dough. I think I left most of the shaobing youtiao for the parents.

After the meal, I concluded that I was more used to the traditional breakfast found in Singapore and Malaysia.

Other Chinese food featured on #FoodFri:

Biángbiáng noodles in Xi’an
Da pan ji in Luoyang