Beef noodles for the masses really hit the big time when the air-conditioned food courts started mushrooming all over S'pore.
Almost every food-court had one and I remember religiously making a beeline for the
chor bee hoon (thick rice-noodles) soaked in goo-ey dark brown gravy served with strips of medium-rare beef and a bowl of beef-ball soup everytime I visited the old Scotts Shopping Centre Foodcourt. That was when I was in Secondary 2.
But before all this mass-produced, MSG-laden nonsense, there was Hock Lam Beef Noodles. Since 1921 to be exact.
Located at 27, Purvis Street, near the famous Raffles Hotel, this is the grand-daddy of all Beef Noodle stalls. Possibly the oldest one on the island. Now into its 3rd-generation of stall-holders, it dishes out Beef Noodles like no other.
For starters, there is the beautifully pungent
cincalok (preserved baby shrimp sauce, not for the faint-tastebudded) that you can drizzle on your noodles and put into your chilli sauce. And then there is the copious amounts of
kiam chye (pickled chinese cabbage) and beansprouts that add just that lovely crunchy-ness to balance out the slithery-textured bee hoon. Adding to the riot of flavors is a generous sprinkling of finely chopped peanuts that gives a real
sedap nutty-ness to it all.
Really, it tastes much better than it looks above =))
The slivers of beef are not over-cooked and suitably tender. As for the beef-balls, well you could bounce them off the table and they would land in the bowl of the next person 4 chairs away. Nice and..erm...bouncy =))
The only thing we still don't like about it is the price. Our 2 bowls of noodles and a bowl of beef-ball soup (about 12
bolas I think) cost us a whopping 15 bucks. But what to do? Nice wat, so this is like our 20th trip back to savour some traditional flavors since we started going about 6 years ago.
Anyway, if you haven't tried it, go. There is also this nice Thai place 2 doors away. But shall leave that to another UnkEats entry.
P.S See if you can spot our very own Swim Queen Joscelin Yeo in the picture above. I know, I know, damn blur and poor lighting =))