Food Picks: Meaty delights at Cantonese Roasted, thunder tea rice at Hakka Fun Hamcha & Yong Tou Fu

Cantonese Roasted 

Enticing charcoal-roasted meats

The caramelised char siew, roast pork with golden crackling and glistening roasted duck hanging in the glass display of hawker stall Cantonese Roasted at Sembawang Hills Food Centre are every bit as tasty as they look.

Owner Kong Fook Cheong is a master of charcoal-roasted meats. The 64-year-old is a stickler for details, right down to installing artfully placed spotlights to accentuate the shine of the roasted meats he labours for hours to prepare.

He does not use food colouring in his char siew or roast duck. 

The glossy char siew is a dark crimson instead of the annoying, bright red versions sold at some other stalls.  It draws its colour from red sweet sauce, the type used in yong tau foo.

Mr Kong also eschews tenderising agents, relying instead on slow-roasting the meats for maximum tenderness.

Prices are low, considering the amount of work required to put out the hefty portions of Char Siew Rice ($3.50), Roasted Pork Rice ($3.50) and Roasted Duck Rice ($4).

The meats are a tad on the saltier side as they are meant to go with rice. The fluffy grains exude a floral aroma distinctive of premium-quality Thai jasmine rice – a luxury in a time of increasing ingredient cost.  

Doused in a sticky sauce, the char siew is flavoursome. The caramelised edges can be a little tough and chewy, but most of the slices you get on the plate are tender.

Mr Kong’s skill is evident in the roasted pork, which he does not marinate with any monosodium glutamate. Salt is the main ingredient. The crackling is delicately crispy, which you can enjoy without hurting the roof of your mouth or teeth. 

Instead of the standard gravy, I suggest you ask for dark soya sauce to go with the roasted pork rice, and have it just over the rice, so you do not ruin the crackling.

The roasted duck here is the old-school type, marinated simply with salt and five spice powder. For the skin, a combination of red, black and white vinegar, dark soya sauce and maltose contributes to its natural colour.

I admire the way Mr Kong sticks to his guns and ignores how artificially coloured ducks may be more commercially appealing to most diners. 

Mr Kong, who has 20 years of experience in roasted meats, has put in gruelling 14-hour work days since opening his one-man show at the hawker centre in 2021.

He is generous to a fault. His rice dishes are cheap, yet he provides a complimentary soup of the day, while stocks last. It is no plain-tasting stock cooked with leftover meat either. Mr Kong simmers juicy cubes of flavoursome pork collar, combined with other ingredients such as lotus root or winter melon, depending on what is available when he visits the wet market every morning.

Even more surprising, his key soup ingredient is pricey dried baby scallops – not an everyday ingredient for most budget-conscious home cooks, much less hawkers.

Noodle lovers must try the Chicken Feet Noodle ($4.50). Mr Kong laments how he has been chided by a few customers for daring to sell the dish at such a high price. 

However, I find it unreasonably cheap, offering too much value at his expense.

The noodles come with two large braised chicken feet and two large, meaty black mushrooms, which are restaurant quality and the real stars of the dish. A plentiful portion of crisp, emerald green xiao bai cai brightens up the dish.

The thick noodles are skilfully blanched, without any alkaline taste. They remain springy and do not clump together even if you take your time taking photos before digging in.

The noodle gravy is a sorcery of four types of sauces, of which two are prepared from scratch, including with the use of premium-grade pumpkin sauce.

Where: Cantonese Roasted, 01-03 Sembawang Hills Food Centre, 590 Upper Thomson Road
MRT: Yio Chu Kang
Open: 10am to 2pm, Thursdays to Tuesdays. Closed on Wednesdays

Hakka Fun Hamcha & Yong Tou Fu

Herbaceous thunder tea rice

Most people are familiar with Hakka thunder tea rice or leicha fan. At hawker stall Hakka Fun Hamcha & Yong Tou Fu at Chinatown Complex, Ms Michelle Yee, 38, and Mr Alan Kok, 42 – the Hakka husband-and-wife team who runs it – refer to the dish as hamcha, which means salty tea in the Hakka dialect. 

The couple’s two signature dishes are inspired by the homemade food they grew up with, with recipes passed down from their mothers.

The tea is a blend of sawtooth coriander, fresh coriander, mugwort, Thai basil, mint, Chinese celery, Chinese green tea, sesame seeds and roasted peanuts. Lightly seasoned with salt, the brew is deeply herbaceous with toasty, nutty flavours.

It is served with a bowl of rice and vegetables. Pour the hamcha into the rice or sip it separately, depending on how you like it. 

The stall offers three options of rice for the Hakka Hamcha – white rice ($4.50), mixed rice (a combination of white and brown rice, $4.80), and brown rice ($5).  

Although the menu says brown rice, what you get is red cargo rice, which is long-grained and chewy. It tastes better than white rice and I suggest going for the $5 option. 

The rice comes topped with a variety of vegetables that are stir-fried with garlic. They include sweet and salty preserved radish, garlic chives and leek, French beans, cabbage and carrot, and lightly fried and tender tau kwa cubes.

Roasted sesame seeds and oven-roasted peanuts add nuttiness, while fried dried prawn lends an aromatic seafood flavour.

The resulting bowl has plenty of crunch, texture and natural savoury sweetness.

For customers who want a meat-free version, the stall omits the dried prawn, replacing it with vegetable toppings.

The stall, which opened in July 2018, also serves a selection of handmade yong tau foo, available from 11.30am. Expect to wait as Mr Yee makes and fries them to order.

There is no minimum number if you order it on its own. But if you want it with rice, there is a minimum order of five pieces. You can choose between white rice (60 cents) and red cargo rice ($1).

There are eight choices of Yong Tou Fu (80 cents a piece). 

Tau pok, tau kee, tau kwa, bittergourd, brinjal, red finger chilli, lady finger and mushroom are stuffed with a tasty paste of minced pork, fish paste, garlic and plenty of spring onions, which give the filling a greenish hue. 

Do not ask for sweet sauce as the stall does not provide it, though it has a housemade garlic chilli for customers who cannot do without a dipping sauce. 

The stall is usually closed for one or two days a week. Call ahead to check if it is open before heading down. The official operating hours are from 11am to 6pm, but it closes as early as 4pm when the food is sold out. 

Where: Hakka Fun Hamcha & Yong Tou Fu, 02-123 Chinatown Complex, 335 Smith Street
MRT: Chinatown
Open: 11am to 6pm daily; no fixed rest day. The stall is closed on June 15.
Tel: 9092-2123