Hong Kong Street Chun Kee (Bukit Merah) 香港街珍記

Orignal post with pictures @ http://triathlonchef.blogspot.com/2011/03/hong-kong-street-chun-kee-bukit-merah.html

The only reason i would visit this place over and over again it probably because of one dish. The shrimp paste chicken. However there are other dish worth noting too.

The famous "San Lou Hor Fun". From its name the 3 main ingredient are hor fun, bean sprout and fish slice. Simple dish but to have a good wok hei for the hor fun, cooked but still retains some crunch for the bean sprouts and fish that is just nicely cooked with a nice and smooth texture is not that simple. Over here i'm not sure how they perform when they are busy but during non peak hours they are good at it.

XO fish beehoon. Certainly nice broth that is not fishy, nice portion of fried fish and good amount of thick beehoon, nothing is wrong here. But prehaps i had better one at the Holland Village XO fish head beehoon, this just felt so-so. 

This dish is such a disappointment, don't bother ordering. The main attraction to this dish is the yam basket that doesn't really have strong yam taste and the ingredients are just simply stir fried. The yam basket just doesn't taste right.

"Hei Zhou" Big fat and juicy, homemade, but not well seasoned. The taste is ok but doesn't pack any punch.

Stir fried Bok Choy with garlic. Simple and delicious, a good alternative to my favourite Kai lan.

The STAR of the show, Har Chiong Gai! The shrimp paste chicken here is well marinaded with shrimp paste that makes it so flavourful and well basically anything that is fermented will give youthe umami feeling. This is the only dish here i think will never go wrong. Superbe! 

I've been eating at this store since 2005 till about 2 weeks back..and i've decided to call it a day..

Reason being the quality of their dishes has turned from good to bad and service from bad to worse...

I've frequently ordered their PAI GUAT WONG and Shrimp Paste Chicken together with their Yu Gai Mai Fan or Sum Lo Ho Fun and standard was pretty good then...

But on a not so crowded day that i went, i had the worst Pai Guat Wong i've ever eaten.. the meat was looking half fried and it was so tasteless on the inside.. and the Yu Gai Mai Fun was cooked with Mee Hoon that was not thaw properly before it was cooked and it became bit and pieces in the bland soup.

What makes matter worst was the reason why the Pai Guat Wong was looking like that. The waitress and the lady Boss came over and said, we have been cooking like that since we started..(i've eaten at least 10 times at that place and it wasn't what i ate on that fateful day) that was the last straw for me and my wife and i decided to strike this Coffeeshop away from our list of GOOD FOOD.

another thing, the prices has gone up on BAD TASTE too...

I am a huge fan of sum lo hor fun (sliced fish hor fun), and this, being the supposed birthplace of the dish, has been on my list of places to visit for a long time. The Wife and I finally paid this place a visit recently.

This place is located in a clean and brightly lit coffee shop next to the AIA building along Alexandra Road.

The food turned out to be a disappointment. The hor fun was quite bland and had a strange smell. There was also no wok hei to speak of.

I have eaten at quite a few places serving sum lo hor fun, and this is, frankly speaking, one of the worst. Maybe the chef was having a bad day, but I don't foresee myself going back.

There are so many restaurants in Singapore that have the keyword ‘Hong Kong Street’ but which is the real one? And I mean the really really real one who started a Cze Char stall before everyone else? If you are looking for the really really genuine answer, unfortunately I don’t have it but the Hong Kong Street Chun Kee at Bukit Merah is believed by many to be the original stall and they even proudly printed the timeline of their locations history on their namecard. Well if no other stalls started their business before 1983, then Hong Kong Street Chun Kee should be the first to operate from an outlet in Amoy Hawker Centre in 1983.

For those who don’t know(or haven’t heard of), here is where the famous San Lou Hor Fun was invented sometime back when a customer requested just for beansprouts, hor fun and sliced fish to be seared lightly in the wok.

Hong Kong Street Chun Kee (Bukit Merah) $6 Opeh Leaf Hor Fun

For just $6, you can have an opeh leaf hor fun here but this is a seafood version. You can also get a ‘San Lou’ version for $10 which will have generous amount of sliced fish.

For $6, I thought the portion was quite generous but that was about it. Seriously. It was quite disappointing to see the kind of ingredients used were nothing more than what you can find in a $3 pack which you can buy from any kopitiam. Ok maybe it’s a good thing that there were several pieces of sliced fish which was quite delicious but the prawns and sotongs were really something that didn’t quite justify it being called an opeh leaf version. So that effectively put the responsibility of the ‘excitement’ in the gravy and the wok hei in the hor fun.

SADLY, both the gravy and the hor fun were equally disastrous. I think it’s not too difficult to make this gravy from home. You just need some soy sauce, some pepper, starch and eggs, well it really does taste like nothing more than that. The hor fun didn’t tasted charred but doused with dark soya sauce.

As traditional as how a $3 hor fun can get, this costed $6 just because it’s been put on an opeh leaf. Ok to be fair, the quantity is bigger than your usual $3 pack.

For $6, if this were to be sold as a normal hor fun, it doesn’t have enough oomph to impress. As a $6 opeh leaf version however, you eat this at your own peril because the taste, whether you judge it from the gravy, the ingredients or the hor fun, is absolutely characterless. It looks quite good on the opeh leaf no doubt but characterless nonetheless.

As an opeh leaf version, this is not remediable, but as a kopitiam $3 version, you can eat this at any Cze Char stall – literally.

Photos at http://alfredeats.com/the-opeh-leaf-hor-fun-challenge-part-4-hong-kong-street-chun-kee-at-bukit-merah/

I would never have known this place existed until colleagues brought me. It's just next to the AIA building along Alexandra Road. About a 10 minute walk from IKEA.

The fish bee hoon is fabulous. I always order the yew bee hoon and add loads of red chilli. Best. Yesterday my husband and I had:

1 fish bee hoon - fabulous as always but a bit stingy with the fish ($5)

1 sam lo (fried fish hor fun) - nice but I felt the taste wasn't event throughout the dish. Some parts more salty than others. More generous with fish slices here ($6)

1 ha cheong gai (prawn paste chicken) - Very shiok. Only wing and drumlets. 6 pieces. ($8)

Service is really fast. All food comes within 5-10 minutes. The food was more than enough for the 2 of us. I'm sure they have other dishes too but the above 3 (plus some fried fish head thing) are the most popular.

For what it's worth, the otak/satay from a neighbouring stall is also really good.

Open during lunch time too. Two thumbs up! They have other branches too but I'm not sure how they are