881 Hong Kong Street Chun Tat Kee (Telok Kurau)

cptslowyeo

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Zi Char is the type of food that can unite a family or group of friends. It warms my heart everytime I sit down in a fan-cooled, open air coffee shop. I grab the menu, even though I know in my heart that I'm going to order the same fried prawn paste chicken, hot plate beacurd, a vegetable, a soup and a fish item.

Every Singaporean family has a to-go place for Zi Char for special family occasions. Unlike your typical fine dining restaurants where excellent customer service is given much emphasis, Zi Char eating house is not the place for frills and luxury. The quality of cooking style has a higher importance. Each Zi Char place usualy has a signature dish to stand out from the rest. Zi Char is great for a satisfying meal with a bunch of friends you haven't seen in a while.

1. Hot Plate Beancurd $10

Hotplate tofu is one of my most favourite dishes at the Zi Char. It actually works very well as a sauce dish as it really goes well with rice. I kept digging my spoon in for the sauce to pour it over my rice!
They were very generous with the ingredients. On top of beancurd, there were minced pork, mushrooms, baby corn and the sauce for the hot plate egg wasn't too salty. The egg was perfectly cooked on the hot plate. It was slightly burnt to give it the crispy exterior.

2. Fried Prawn Paste Chicken $10 (8 wings) *highly recommended*

Fried Prawn Paste Chicken

Their chicken wings are pretty big and they were all stanard sized. They each had a crispy texture and juicy and yet tasty tasty meat. They were piping hot when served and I had to wait quite a while before I could dig my fork in.

Fried Prawn Paste Chicken

Check out the crispy exterior! This fried prawn paste was good! $10 for 8 pieces is pretty reasonable too. I was so tempted to order another serving of this!

3. Shrimp Omelette $8

Beneath this omelette is a whole family of shrimps! There was a shrimp in every spoonful of omelette. The shrimp were fresh and crunchy with every bite. The omelette tasted good despite being slightly on the oily side. You can only see how oily it was, when you're almost half way through the dish and you eyeball the glossy and shiny oiled plate.

4. Sweet & Sour Sliced Fish $10

Sweet & Sour Sliced Fish

The fish slices were fried till they were crispy and then cooked in a sweet & sour sauce. They way they were fried, left the fish slices crispy despite being mixed into the sweet & sour sauce. They didn't turn soggy. While deep fried, the inside remains very smooth and silky, poured over by a flavourful sweet and sour sauce with super-power wok-hei.

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The sweet and sour sauce wasn't overly sweet either. The sliced fish was perched atop a bed of mixed canned pineapple and cucumber salad. The sweet & sour sliced fish is seriously worth every penny.

5. Oyster Sauce Kai Lan $7

Another dish which I didn't fancy that much was their Oyster Sauce Kai Lan. It was too oily and also very salty. I had couple of leaves and I was done with this dish.

6. Ginger Spring Onion Pork $10

Ginger Spring Onion Pork

The pork was tender and not too chewy. The sauce was very flavourful and yet not too overly salty. My tip is to share this in a group of 4 or more as it can be quite alot of meat for a couple.

My favourite dish was easily the Fried Prawn Paste Chicken or the Hotplate Beancurd.

Overall : 1) Quick food service (we got all our food within 15 minutes or ordering), 2) Really good Fried Prawn Paste Chicken 3) 5 out of 6 dishes met my zi char craving satisfaction 4) All items were reasonably priced at < $10/pax

(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)

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DETAILED RATING

Taste

Decor

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Date of Visit

2015-12-26

Dining Method

Dine In

Spending Per Head

$10

Recommended Dishes

Hazelleo

Level4

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I simply can't resist to share my findings during my lunch break. My colleague recommended this nice place little hawker centre located at the junction of Joo Chiat Place and Still Road. I will never found this hidden gem if not my colleague who drove us over for lunch. The stall is famous with it's XO Crab Bee Hoon but we do not have time to have it. So, we ordered their second speciality, XO Fish Bee Hoon Soup @ S$7.00 per serving.Price has been increased to $1. It was $6.00per serving last year.

We waited for 20minutes just to get a bowl of it. I ordered the fried fish and the sliced fish is thick and the meat is tasty when it goes with the XO sauce. The portion was generous with the fried slice fish and I can't finish it all.

I was impressed with the taste of the XO soup base. It's worth trying it but i will not wait for so long unless i have extra time. We had a rush lunch as the waiting time is way too long. There are many people ordered this when we had our lunch there. Definitely a good place to recommend though.

(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)

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DETAILED RATING

Taste

Decor

Service

Hygiene

Value

Date of Visit

2013-08-28

Spending Per Head

$7 (Lunch)

Recommended Dishes

881 Hong Kong Street Chun Tat Kee (Closed)