Hillstreet Char Kway Teow

Char Kway Teow (SGD $4) @ Hill Street Fried Kway Teow (Bedok). . Founded by Ng Chang Siang in 1961 and now helmed by son Ng Yeow Kiat, this is one of 2 stalls bearing the name 'Hill Street Fried Kway Teow'; no relation aside from hailing from the same defunct hawker centre - the Ng's stall was on the 1st floor, while their competitor was on the 2nd floor. . Anthony Bourdain once commented on their rendition, saying "How can anything this ugly be this good!", with queues for their "ugly noodles" stretching up to 30 minutes during peak periods. . They use a unique 2-stage frying process; with the first stage consisting of frying the wide flat rice noodles and long cyclindrical yellow wheat noodles with pork lard and light soy sauce, to cook it evenly. . The second stage has the noodles flash fried with lashings of dark sweet soy sauce, crisp bean sprouts, fresh garlic chives, chewy lup cheong / dried cured pork sausage, tender fish cake, wispy egg, and juicy blood cockles. . Tending towards the dry sweet version, this carries robust sweet savoury salty eggy flavour throughout, with a medium smoky wok hei / breath of the wok layered over. Delicious.

First of all, I have to say that I am reviewing this based on takeaway. Any food that is eaten takeaway definitely will lose some of its flavour and texture. Each plate of Fried Kway Teow is fried individually so I will say that that is a plus. Unfortunately after tar pao and a 35 minutes journey, the noodles is overcook and lost some of the texture. The kway teow also cool down and lost some of its flavour. I regretted not having my own portion there... So my only advice is that don't tar pao!!

The waiting time you hear about this char kway teow is not a myth. I reached at around 11.15am, got my order taken and paid at around 11.20am and only got my plate of char kway teow at 11.50. That's a 45 min wait for 1 plate of char kway teow!! However, I have to say, it is worth it. This is one of the better plates of char kway teow that I have had and it is tied for first place with Hai Kee at telok blangah. A pity I did not hear about them earlier in order to try the ones made by the previous owner. For those who complained about the drop in standard, I can only say, enjoy the current hawker food while the hawkers are still cooking.. the landscape will look very different in 10 years.