Discovered that a relative just moved just a street away from Ban Leong so it was a natural gravitation to dinner at Ban Leong during a recent house-warming!

My cousin, a fellow foodie beat me to it and tried to make reservation a month prior but was told by the staff that only the boss can take reservation but was too busy to come to the phone. So my cousin, pissed and all refuse to call back. We thought we'll just head down and try our luck anyways...not without my cousin giving them a piece of her mind first and thankfully, the boss obliged although the only available table was at the back of the restaurant. It was indeed rather packed when we were there so I had no complains so long as we get to eat.

There was no need for the menu this time as I knew exactly what we needed to have.

- Chill Crab
Its on the sweet side thus not quite that spicy but I still like it. Aand the fried mantou they have are the palm sized ones, not the mini poppers that some other place serves.

- Pepper Crab
Verdict from my family - Thumbs up! Better than the others they've tried.

- Fried Mee Sua
Funnily when we ordered it, the staff had to throw in the remark that its their "Zao Bai Cai" (dish they're most known for). That pushed my expectations up a notch. When it finally came, it looked suspiciously a lot like fried bee hoon...it tasted like fried bee hoon except the texture has a bite more bite to it. Let's just say, the plate was empty in 5 mins flat!

- Prawn Paste chicken
Tasty, tender and shiok! My only complain is...I'm a drumlets girl but they only serve the middle portion of the wing.

- Steamed Sock Hock
Again, a winner!

- Garlic broccoli
The kids like this and its hard enough getting kids to have their green

- Sweet potato leaves
Stir fried with sambal and goes extremely well with white rice

One thing about eating here is that I go through at least 3 drinks through the meal and I noticed so does everyone around the table! I don't know if its something in the food...hmm..

My friends have been going on about the Steamed "see yao" Soon Hock fish here for the longest time and they finally took me there today for it.

It was fresh, sweet and I could have the whole fish to myself! Albeit rather pricey at $42..but I'm not familiar with what the market rate for fish is so this could be reasonable? I must add that, I have no idea what Soon Hock fish looks like ...alive. So when we had a peep into the tank...man the fish looks better steamed than swimming :P

Also tried the Black Pepper Crab. Am more a chilli crab person but I'll say I actually enjoyed the black pepper crab here. The sauce is slightly more pasty than the others I'm tried , so you don't get dry black pepper bits stuck between your teeth. And with the remnants of the sauce, my friends and I thought it'll be yummy to make black pepper fried rice with it! And despite me nursing a bad flu with my taste buds compromised, the heat of the pepper worked better than my clarinase in clearing my nasal congestion! And yes I'm soooo gonna suffer the consequence of this tomorrow morning.

And while waiting for our food, my two greedy peeps had full view of the kitchen where the cook was deftly dishing out an incessant flow of yummy dishes. They (embarrassingly) couldn't take their eyes off the endless orders of Prawn Paste chicken. I guess I'll be back to try that the next time.

My family is the ultimate kiasu, we decided to have a super early Mother's Day feast(which was earlier on).
Since we had tired of our usual crab-fare at the infamous Toa Payoh kopi-tiam, we decided to try something new and ventured into the more northern area for Ban Leong Wah Hoe.(quite a mouthful, eh..)
Our reservations were at 6.30pm (a tad too early but the lady boss claimed they were fully booked for later reservations)
Upon reaching the place, we were ushered into the back lane, which turned out to be facing the main road.. (welcome to dust city..)
Ordered whatever was recommended on HGW, prawn paste chicken, chilli n black pepper crab and also, pork ribs, yam ring, butter prawns and a kai lan.
Oh well... I guess things took a downturn after ordering. They missed my drink, I had to wait 10min for my lime juice. Food came but I feel they were a little cold.

Prawn paste chicken - Warm, crispy but where's the prawn paste?????

Yam ring - The "xian" within the ring was pathetic, mere pieces of carrots, corn and chicken cubes. Think the cook had poured too much gravy over the dish, making it very soggy.

Butter prawns - If yam ring is soggy, then the prawns were pratically swimming in oil! NOT crunchy, no butter taste and totally "fat-free". Eat the prawns and get fat for free. Geeze...

Chilli crab with mantou - The hardest mantou I ever had, were they rock buns?! Gravy is aok but nothing to shout about..

Black pepper crab - It came, black as soot, saltish as hell.. Yikes..

Kai lan, hor fun and sheng mian - typical fare, that's it.

Total let down, despite hearsay that it's good. Maybe the place has been surviving coz of its renowned fame but will it retain old customers and bring in more(new) ones?!

was quite an uneventful day to begin with, not feeling the best as i was still a lil down thanks to the flu bug. not wanting to late the final few hrs of my special day go to waste, decided to have supper with some frens...

recalling that we used to hang out at this joint for some hor fun after our boozing in our younger days, we re-visited this place with 'forever young' still ringing in our heads. (the time taken to sit us at the table was a lil slow, despite it being a quiet night - the horde of foreign workers were busy stuffing their faces with the fried rice at their own table)

my frens ordered the usual wah-dan ngao yok hor fun & the all familiar har-jiong gai, for a change, since i wasnt feeling too good, decided to check out the san-lau hor fun (and to my surprise it was dry & different from most other joints).

all in all, it was quite a disappointment as the food wasnt quite up to the standard, as how we remember it used to be. the har-jiong gai to be honest was quite horrendous - it tasted a bit charred in our opinion.

5 October 2007 : I came here for dinner with YSL & SC. I have not seen YSL for 1 year. The place was crowded but we managed to get a big table.

We ordered :
Thai Style Dried Beancurd ($8)
Sambal Kang Kong ($6)
Prawn Paste Chicken ($8)
Yam Pie ($12)
Mixed Vegetable Soup ($6)
3 glasses of Lime Juice ($1.50 each)
TOTAL : $48.69

The food was all good. But the mixed vegetable soup was lousy. It was rather bland and there wasn't anything special about it. I will return again one day =o)