Remember the Shanghainese dumplings stall from the now demolished Margaret Drive Food Centre? 🥟It’s not lost and forgotten. Tong Xin Ju Special Shanghai Tim Sum has been at Maxwell Food Centre (01-92) for several years now. I’ll usually go for their fried (锅贴) and boiled dumplings (饺子).

The stall is operated by a long-time hawker and they make their dumplings by hand in the stall every day. Everything is cooked to order so your dumplings are fresh from the stove.

The skin is pretty thin relative to the generous amount of pork and chive filling, and that’s a good thing. And the dumplings are bursting with flavour when you bite into it. Delicious.

Enjoy your dumplings with some vinegar and shredded ginger. What surprises me is that the homemade chilli sauce is also served as a condiment for your dumplings.

I find these dumplings have been localised but they are still pretty comforting. They have other items on offer such as the hot and sour soup and fried Shanghai rice cake which I’ve never tried.

Remember the Shanghainese dumplings stall from the now demolished Margaret Drive Food Centre? 🥟It’s not lost and forgotten. Tong Xin Ju Special Shanghai Tim Sum has been at Maxwell Food Centre (01-92) for several years now. I’ll usually go for their fried (锅贴) and boiled dumplings (饺子).

The stall is operated by a long-time hawker and they make their dumplings by hand in the stall every day. Everything is cooked to order so your dumplings are fresh from the stove.

One would notice that the dumplings are fried till golden brown, giving it a crispy exterior throughout the dumpling. What I enjoy the most is the meaty and juicy pork and chive filling.

Enjoy your dumplings with some vinegar and shredded ginger. What surprises me is that the homemade chilli sauce is also served as a condiment for your dumplings.

I find these dumplings have been localised but they are still pretty comforting. They have other items on offer such as the hot and sour soup and fried Shanghai rice cake which I’ve never tried.

Deep fried carrot cake sticks aren’t something you usually find in hawker centres. Here, you can get 12 sticks for $2. A cheap and good breakfast.

These wonderful gems are deep fried till golden brown. Absolutely love how it’s so crispy on the outside yet the radish cake is so soft and chewy on the inside.

Never understood why the queue for coffee here was so long. But after seeing that every cup of coffee is freshly brewed to order, and uncle will tarik (pull) the coffee from one pot to another, I can understand why.

I had my default option of kopi-C siu dai (less sweet). It’s very aromatic, balanced and concentrated. No such thing as diluted coffee here.

A cup of hot kopi/ teh (tea) starts from $0.90 while the iced versions start from $1.10. The coffee is prepared in the adjacent stall that sells you tiao (dough fritters) in the morning. You can buy their coffee powder (500g for $7) to brew at home.

Also popular are his eggs and toast, but I’ll leave it for another time.

If you’re at Hainanese Village Food Centre, check out the very affordable kway chap from Chao Xiang Cooked Food (02-27). You probably won’t find much information about it online but there’s always a queue and the food sells out pretty fast.

A set meal from this stall only costs $2.80 per person, a very good deal for kway chap.

I visited around 9.30am on a Sunday morning and they already ran out of items such as large intestine and braised pork belly. So literally early bird catches the worm here.

Not all hope was lost though. We had the small intestine, large intestine head, pig skin, fish cake, hard boiled egg, tau kwa (firm tofu) and braised tau pok (beancurd puff). And of course, the kway (broad rice noodle sheets).

The basic to a good kway chap is that the innards must be washed clean and it shouldn’t have a gamey, porky taste. And it was really pleasant that the innards didn’t have that smell.

The kway itself was slightly thicker than it should be. As for the gravy itself, it had a herbal taste.

Will I be back? Yes, if I’m in the area and craving for value for money kway chap. But I wanna try the other stalls there.

It has everything that the Signature Kaisen Don has with the exception of additional slices of raw scallop. I found the scallops to be fresh and quite sweet. Taste wise, the scallops rather decent for the price you’re paying for.

It has everything that the Signature Kaisen Don has with the exception of additional slices of raw scallop. I found the scallops to be fresh and quite sweet. Taste wise, the scallops rather decent for the price you’re paying for.

They specialise in kaisendon (seafood bowl) which means raw seafood topped on rice in Japanese. The affordable price point is a plus when you want to satisfy your Japanese cravings on a work day.

You’ll get a wide array fresh seafood that’s chopped into cubes. It’s then marinated with a mildly flavoured signature sauce with spring onions that doesn’t mask the taste of the seafood itself.

So what’s inside - salmon, tuna, meikajiki, abalone slice, scallop, amaebi (sweet prawn), octopus, ikura (salmon roe), tobiko (flying fish roe). It’s then topped with colourful chukka wakame (seasoned seaweed salad) which adds a greenish hue to the presentation. I like how they are generous with the ikura.

Thank you Kei Kaisendon for hosting!

They specialise in kaisendon (seafood bowl) which means raw seafood topped on rice in Japanese. The affordable price point is a plus when you want to satisfy your Japanese cravings on a work day.

You’ll get a wide array fresh seafood that’s chopped into cubes. It’s then marinated with a mildly flavoured signature sauce with spring onions that doesn’t mask the taste of the seafood itself.

So what’s inside - salmon, tuna, meikajiki, abalone slice, scallop, amaebi (sweet prawn), octopus, ikura (salmon roe), tobiko (flying fish roe). It’s then topped with colourful chukka wakame (seasoned seaweed salad) which adds a greenish hue to the presentation. I like how they are generous with the ikura.

Thank you Kei Kaisendon for hosting!

Hainanese curry rice or curry png may not be the most photogenic of dishes but it’s certainly delicious and comforting. If you’re at Maxwell Food Centre, be sure to check out Hainanese Curry Rice (01-68). There’s usually a short but fast moving queue, so just join the queue.

You can’t see most of the items I ordered from this photo but here’s how it goes. My usual order would be fried pork chop, sunny side up, pork ball, bean sprouts, tau kwa. Occasionally, I’d have the boiled cabbage and braised pork belly. A plate would set you back about $4.50 to $5.

I love my curry rice to be drenched with curry gravy that’s mixed with a bit of lor (braised sauce). The curry gravy here isn’t very thick and starchy unlike most Hainanese curry rice stalls, but it isn’t watery either.

The pork chop is coated in a sweet, aromatic five spice powder batter before being deep fried till crispy. The meat is tender although it can be rather inconsistent at times.

I’d still recommend trying the curry rice here if you’re at Maxwell.

Hainanese curry rice or curry png may not be the most photogenic of dishes but it’s certainly delicious and comforting. If you’re at Maxwell Food Centre, be sure to check out Hainanese Curry Rice (01-68). There’s usually a short but fast moving queue, so just join the queue.

You can’t see most of the items I ordered from this photo but here’s how it goes. My usual order would be fried pork chop, sunny side up, pork ball, bean sprouts, tau kwa. Occasionally, I’d have the boiled cabbage and braised pork belly. A plate would set you back about $4.50 to $5.

I love my curry rice to be drenched with curry gravy that’s mixed with a bit of lor (braised sauce). The curry gravy here isn’t very thick and starchy unlike most Hainanese curry rice stalls, but it isn’t watery either.

The pork chop is coated in a sweet, aromatic five spice powder batter before being deep fried till crispy. The meat its tender although it can be rather inconsistent at times.

I’d still recommend trying the curry rice here if you’re at Maxwell.

One of my personal favourites for BCM. For $6/8/10, it’s not the cheapest bak chor mee around but it I feel the price is justifiable.

Pictured here is what you get for $10 when you takeaway. The mee pok is cooked al dente and doesn’t have the reek of alkaline. And there’s a good douse of vinegar in the seasoning which isn’t something you’ll get at most places. Many would notice that it’s topped with the crispy dried sole fish. Yummy.

What I enjoy most are the handmade dumplings as the skin is of the right thickness, and they are generous with the pork filling and sole fish. Also, the pork liver here is not overcooked (so it’s soft and tender) and doesn’t have a gamey taste or powdery texture. Something that isn’t easy to achieve.

I found this to be still as good since I last had it some four years back. Some may find this to be overrated or felt that the standard has dropped. Perhaps it’s could be a matter of inconsistency more than anything else.