My husband LOVES wife's biscuits, and one time we bought and tried wife's biscuits from many different bakeries (I didn't know about Tong Heng then) but we found that Liang Chen Mei Dian's wife biscuits was the best.

Recently when I called, LCMD said they stopped making wife's biscuits, and so I googled "best wife's biscuits in Singapore" and Tong Heng came up.

So I went to buy.

My review:

Skin: I was disappointed with Tong Heng's when I took my first bite and most of it was flour/ skin. The flour/skin was powdery and didn't have much flavour. The filling was just a bit, not much. If they want to cut on the filling and put so much flour/skin in their biscuit, then they should make the flour/skin more flavourful or not so powdery right? I felt like I was eating talcum powder.

In contrast, LCMD's have a lot of filling so even the first bite you will already have gotten to the filling.

Yes, both LCMD and TH's skins are flaky, but due to TH's being so powdery, you don't really enjoy the skin being flaky. LCMD's skin is soooo much stronger and I would eat every crumb of it.

Filling: I was pleasantly surprised when I got to Tong Heng's filling (FINALLY, cos had to get past a couple of bites of powdery skin/flour first). It was smooth, not too sweet, and very nice. Tong Heng's winter melon filling was in fact smoother than LCMD's and had a nice fragrant after-taste to it. But filling too little.

LCMD's filling is a bit sweeter but also not too sweet (up to your own preference, but I prefer LCMD's sweeter filling). Due to LCMD having more filling, you can feel the nice texture of the filling as you are eating it (a bit like eating those soft gummies or mochi, a bit springy but soft.) If you put it in the fridge/freezer so can keep for longer time, then when you want to eat, you microwave it, LCMD's wife biscuits comes out perfect every time like they just got out of the oven..yums. TH's after microwaving is still nice, but unfortunately the powdery skin just become more powdery.

Price: TH's retail for $1.30 or 1.60 EACH if I remember correctly. Compared to Liang Chen Mei Dian's which sold for $0.80 each.

Summary: My husband is a wife's biscuit crazy fan, but he is not crazy about Tong Heng's due to the huge percentage of powdery skin over filling. He wasn't too pleased to know that LCMD doesn't make the awesome biscuits anymore.

Get TH's wife's biscuits if you're the kind who likes a bit of mildly sweet aftertaste (you don't enjoy that much while you're eating it though), the nice aftertaste hits you about 2 seconds after you swallow the last bit of the biscuit down. ;p

So now, I am going to go see if I can find LCMD's shop in Hungrygowhere and ask them to continue making their wife's biscuits!

And if LCMD doesn't do that, let me know if Tong Heng increases their filling-skin ratio. Or if they improve on their talcum-powdery skin.

My mum visited the Tong Heng shop at Chinatown this afternoon and she was disappointed with the service. We have stopped patronising the shop for two years due to a previous bad experience with the service and today proved disappointing as well.

My mum wanted to look for nian gao but there was none and when the counter staff asked her what she wanted, she decided to buy two charsiew puffs. The counter lady's face turned black immediately, even though she was serving a tourist who was buying a cake cheerfully just moments before. My mum added two egg tarts to her order and the counter lady actually said, "Are you done? Can you place your orders at one go?"

She told my mum the puffs and tarts cost $5.40 and returned my mum $4.40 change (my mum paid $10). When my mum queried her about it, she was very rude and shouted that she had said it was $5.60. I am not sure how much the items really cost but even if it was a mistake on my mum's part, she could have nicely explained to my mum.

Tong Heng is an established brand and it's a pity such bad service exists in the shops. As for the pastries, the egg tarts are good - crispy, flaky pastry and soft, sweet egg custard. The charsiew puff pales in comparison given the filling tasted burnt.

If I have a craving for the egg tarts, I would probably opt for takeaway at another outlet! Given an average cost of $1.40, I think you can also get better value elsewhere.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow.

Tong Heng has been around since the early 1900s! That’s 100 years of history in Singapore.

There are two main Chinese pastries in Chinatown, both with their own distinct taste but I prefer Tong Heng. I’ve tried almost everything there including the Chinese desserts.

Over the years, I’ve tried most of their products, even their Chinese desserts. (Bet you didn’t know they sell Chinese desserts!) The diamond-shaped egg tart is the most awesomest! Because it sells quickly, they are always baking new batches and so the tart is usually hot. It’s like M&M, melts in your mouth, not in your hands, with just the right amount of sweetness. The other specialty in the shop is the char siew su. This one is different from other places because there is a slight saltiness to it, the char siew is moist and just a little bit charred–which is the best kind of char siew. My third favorite is the egg cake (鸡蛋糕) because it’s light and fluffy.

The shop also does chinese new year goodies, mooncakes, wedding pastries andbaby’s first month.

Although there are seats in the shop, which is like the Chinese style of a cafe, people usually takeaway.