Craving Not Satisfied

 23 August 2020

(Wowowow time really flies, can't believe it's already one month since my last post, where did all my days go?!)

It has been 6 months since I've been stuck in tiny Singapore. There are numerous others in the same situation and like dutiful Malaysians, we all crave the Malaysian taste. Although the names of certain dishes are the same in Malaysia and Singapore, they look and taste totally DIFFERENT!!!!

Case in point:

Example 1: Bak Kut Teh 肉骨茶

(pics from Sethlui-Sg one on the left and RavingPanda-Msian one on the right)

The Malaysian version looks much tastier to my Malaysian tastebuds XD

Example 2: Char Koay Teow 炒粿条

        

(pics from Bearnakedfood-Sg one on the left and Friedchillies-Msian one on the right)

Tell me why fried koay teow must have noodles mixed in?? why?? I personally don't really like yellow noodles but the stall owner told me he couldn't not put noodles in (true story of my first and last time ordering char koay teow in Singapore -____-)

Anyways, to search for that authentic Malaysian taste, I took a one hour+ bus ride all the way to Kallang to meet my friends for some Ipoh chee cheong fun, asam laksa and hor fun. 2 hours+ of travelling just to eat lunch @@ Plus it was raining heavily as well so you know how desperate we are.

Anyways the main point of my story is that the meal wasn't really satisfying. We all agreed that somehow, the taste seems to have been tweaked to match local requirements so although it tasted alright, it just wasn't the same as what we were expecting. I wonder if someone could explain to me why?

What we had between the 3 of us. Clockwise from top - dry hor fun, asam laksa, fried fu chok and turnip, curry chee cheong fun and hakka yong taufu

Since I have the authentic one in penang on an annual basis, this was frankly so-so to me. D'Laksa has a better soup I think

This was satisfying due to the weather but my usual chee cheong fun go to place - G Cheong Fun Restaurant in Tun Aminah, JB wins hands down. That restaurant is a chee cheong fun lover's dream come true as it serves various kinds of chee cheong fun and has the most amazing curried cockles and pork skin!

This was the best in terms of authenticity, but this is kind of fail proof anyway =S

Ok, we had high hopes for this (maybe too high cos we were expecting Ipoh Tuck Kee standards) and oh well... When it was served, we were like "why so dry wan huh?", "why is there mock char siew?", "eh, egg yolk broken edy!". Seriously, when you have seen and tasted the Tuck Kee one... haih....

Lesson learned, do not have too high expectations when dining in Singapore...

The funniest part of the day was that we just went straight home after lunch, so all that butt-numbing bus rides for nothing much  T___T