Tiong Bahru Market & Food Centre is always a very special place for me - its hawker stalls offer typical Singapore eats - those we grew up eating, and which reminded us of all those family eating excursions of decades gone by.
I was back there a week ago - my first time ever since the COVID pandemic lockdowns in Mar 2020. The food centre looked pretty much unchanged, with all the popular stalls doing brisk business.
- My fave item at Tiong Bahru Market & Food Centre: chwee kway - Teochew steamed rice cakes topped with chopped preserved radish - from Jian Bo Shui Kueh.
Also bought some Teochew “p’ng kway” - pink-tinted rice cakes filled with glutinous rice, peanuts and dried shrimps from the stall. But they didn’t have the pan-fried version which I liked.
I can’t get “p’ng kway” in Penang, or anywhere in Malaysia, for that matter. In Singapore, it’s found in every other food centre, and is as common as sliced bread.
So, I usually buy boxes of “p’ng kway” to bring back to Penang where I live now - enough to last me for a few months, before my next trip back to Singapore.
“P’ng kway” keeps well when frozen. You thaw them in the fridge overnight, then pan-fry them for breakfast the next morning:
- The other must-have when I am at Tiong Bahru Market & Food Centre are the steamed “baos” (Cantonese stuffed buns) from Tiong Bahru Pau. The best buys are their “char siew baos” - filled with Cantonese-style caramelised, BBQ pork.
Their “dai bao” (“Big Chicken Bun”) didn’t seem to taste anywhere as good as I remembered. Or, maybe, my tastebuds have been spoilt by the amazing ones I get in Penang, or Ioh and Kuala Lumpur.
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Other items ordered included pan-fried chai tow kway" (radish cake), which was pretty average-tasting.
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A “new-ish” stall which I’d not noticed before was the curry noodles one, offering the same type of dish one usually gets in Hong Lim Food Centre from Heng Kee or Ah Heng: yellow Hokkien wheat noodles, rice vermicelli, poached chicken, curried potatoes, sliced fish-cakes and tofu puffs, steeped in a spicy curry soup.
The version here was pretty spicy, but lacked the aroma and flavours of the ones in Hong Lim.
- Another must-have when I’m back in Singapore is “tau suan”, the simple sweet dessert porridge made from mung beans. It’s served with pieces of crisp-fried “yu tiao” (Chinese crullers), which provided the taste and textural contrast to the sticky, unctuous porridge.
Again, something one finds in virtually every food court in Singapore, but doesn’t exist anywhere in Malaysia.
