Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Hup Choon Eating House

Stir-fried pork with scallion and ginger - could have been more flavourful and the sauce further reduced.

够两个人吃了啦!
(The order’s enough for two already!)

We get this all the time from the wait staff or captain. Most said it with a smile while some looked suspicious, perhaps thinking that we’re just fooling around. We’re not embarrassed about ordering more than what is expected of us. The rule is to not waste, and I can proudly say that unless the food has been contaminated or belongs to another table or if I’d mistakenly ordered the durian, we'll wipe the plates clean, every time. Take our last dinner on Monday at Crystal Jade Kitchen, for example. We had the ala carte steamboat buffet and ticked close to 30 dishes on the list. Oh, PLUS an extra bowl of congee with preserved eggs for the sick one. What’s left in the pot as we asked for the bill were the boiling stocks, disintegrated bits of unidentifiable ingredients and a plate of diseased cabbage. That's all.

Sweet and sour pork - I like.

Honestly, it makes perfect sense to go overboard at tze chars. You need your meat, vegetables, egg, noodles and soup. And perhaps the stall’s specialty too. That’s more than five dishes already, right?

Fried hor fun - wok hei-deprived.

How did we end up at Hup Choon? It all started when I saw the photo of a promising plate of sweet and sour pork on LiquidShaDow's blog and alerted XLB, who would sacrifice anything (except Flor's Waguri Millefeuille and the Kyo-Machiya cake) for the perfect sweet and sour pork. What we've gotten that evening was not any offset from that photo that got us all excited. The result of sufficient heat for deep-frying was easily recognized - a lightly battered, crispy, golden skin with moisture inside the meat well-retained. We liked it but Moonstone Cafe's take still remains as her favourite. I think it was the fruity sauce there that scored the extra point for her.

Stir-fried sweet potato leaves - a CHORE to peel the fibrous outer layers of the stem at home, so have it at a tze char.

Hotplate tofu - pleasant but we should have asked for a signature instead.

As the evening went on, the turnout at Hup Choon grew to a suffocating number. Expatriates (I would assume, considering that they must have lived here long enough to learn the art of reserving a table by standing really close to one that has just settled the bill) and locals were eagerly trying to catch the attention of the wait staff to be seated. Some were seen carrying boxes of takeouts that perhaps were ordered in advance. Besides the decent dishes, we wondered what makes Hup Choon a hive. The reasonable prices must be a major attraction here. I vaguely remember receiving enough change to buy ourselves a large cup of those ice cream/yoghurt thingy at Sogurt, Coronation Plaza. The extensive menu and good service must be part of the winning formula too, I'm sure.

Hup Choon Eating House
1 Binjai Park
Singapore
Tel: (+65) 64684081

13 comments:

ling239 said...

Hotplate tofu ? o.O
i see more seafood than tofu leh...drooling ~ :p

J said...

LOL.
You glutton.
(re. the comment that you get a lot...)

Xiu Long Bao said...

够liao够liao.再order就吃不完了。

UnkaLeong said...

Hahaha...I can imagine the looks on the waiter's faces as they take down your ginormous order. Hey...starve a cold and feed a fever right. Hopefully she's feeling much better now. Will be in town from the 19th-22nd. Number still the same? Will buzz you when I'm there ;)

jason said...

The sweet sour pork looks really good there!

J2Kfm said...

I usually over-ordered too. Especially when dining in two's.
How to resist sweet and sour pork? (I would have gone for at least the Medium portion!)

gfad said...

Must be because of your slender frames that many mistake for small eaters.. :D I would love to eat with you then. I like small portions but big variety!

What's a tze char? Like our dai chow?

ciki said...

hi beautiful hairy stranger.. hehe.. you sed the magic words.. if cumi reads "Gou lou Yoke" that was done well, he'll do a cartwheel;)

HairyBerry said...

ling239, haha, i agree! somehow, tofu didn't seem like the attraction there anymore!

j, hahaha, there's no denying that, for sure! ;D

xlb, ya, those are the precise words! hahahahaha! luckily our next meal is a buffet..hehe

unkaleong, oh yes, she's much healthier than i am for sure...haha. yupe, the number's the same, bro. let's meet up for makan. it's been awhile! see ya. ;D

jason, it is. ;D sweet and sour pork is a champion, it is.

j2kfm, hi5 on over-ordering. and hi5 (again) on sweet and sour pork! hahaha. i'm sure there are lotsa good ones in ipoh!

gfad, slender? haha, tarak la. yeah, i havent had any tai chow with you before let's do it when you get back next time. yupe, you are right -> tai chow = tze char ;D

ciki, hey ya beautiful one....get cumi lotsa gou lou yoke during the exam week! it'll do him good! but no cartwheeling til the exams are over, ya. ;D

Anonymous said...

ha, I am going to test my thought, your post get me some good ideas, it's truly awesome, thanks.

- Thomas

HairyBerry said...

your's welcome, Thomas. And good luck. ;D

Kenny Mah said...

You were already famed as a perfect dinner companion for your versatile grasp of a multitude of topics under the sun - hard to imagine a better conversationalist, really.

Ah but I never knew you had another strength to add to your many-feathered cap... a mobile DBKL! :P

*DBKL = Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur. For the non-Malaysians, this means you can "clean up" food like the local municipal council cleans up the streets... :P

HairyBerry said...

kenny, aiyooohhh, you are so flattering lah! a good conversationalist? that's you, bro! ;D

jom, ber-DBKL one day. our BLR plan is wayyyy overdue!