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2013-06-07
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Singapore has its fair share of the 'dimsum morning crowd', people who get up early to savour some good old Cantonese delights to start their day. We were going to try Ju Chun Yuan for their dim sum buffet but decided on somewhere 'flipflop friendly' for a lazy Sunday morning. Ho Kee was our first instinct -and there's one conveniently located at Maxwell. I guess one of the reasons why we chose Maxwell is because we knew the CBD area would be quiet on Sundays = more dim sum for us The stall span
The stall spans over 3 units, and sells congee, chee cheong fun (but they ran out by the time we'd arrived ) and the usual works like pau, har gow, siew mai, feng zhao (chicken feet) and other dumplings.
We bought 4 hargow and 4 siewmai for $5.60, an egg tart ($1.20), vegetable dumpling ($1.20) and my dining companion got the chicken feet as well as a char siew soh. We were so hungry we forgot to take a photo of the second plate :/Hargow is one of the most delicate dumplings in the dim sum family, this one really disappointed us though. The skin was too thick, and it wasn't smooth at all. It had a coarse, rice texture to it and none of the hargows had intact skins. Ugh. Nevertheless, it was served hot and the filling was ample. The siewmai was slightly better, it was of a good size and the meat tasted juicier than I'd expected. The sides were slightly sticky though. Could have been better.
The egg tart wasn't too sweet and had a slightly flaky crust. Other than that, it wasn't exceptional and you'll definitely find better egg tarts elsewhere. The vegetable dumpling was stuffed with chives or ku chye, which gave the dumplings a very distinct aroma -if you don't like chives you'd better steer clear of this dumpling! Not exactly juicy, the dumpling was mediocre at best.
My dining companion who had the chicken feet said that the flavour wasn't really there and that the skin and meat had gone all mushy. Yikes.
The chicken porridge was perhaps the best dish we had eaten. It was silky smooth and really thick! For $3.80, it was a good portion and the chicken used was also fresh. The porridge is salty enough on its own and does not require an additional dash of soy sauce. We recommend that you share the porridge though, it can be quite filling to have just that one bowl by yourself. Besides, there's other dim sum to try!Overall, the prices are great -hawker centre prices with a flip flop friendly dress code. However, we wouldn't recommend this to anyone because 1. There's nothing extraordinary to speak about the dim sum here, most of the items were mediocre at best, or barely making the cut. 2. If you really have a dim sum craving, GO TO A DIM DUM TEA HOUSE!! We're definitely going to other places like Ju Chun Yuan and Peach Garden.
If you do come here though, we say that the chicken porridge and the siew mai are our top picks!
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