Wonton Mee Goodness - Chomp Chomp

if there's something that i really love about singapore - it's the food. (that and the fact that you don't have to pay capital gains tax when you sell stock). so, every singaporean has a few favorite local foods. it's interesting to see the difference in what people find to be their favourite dish in sg. and love asking people about what their favourite food is.

you have the usual meepok, bak chor mee, chicken rice, char kway teow, hokkien mee, etc etc. sometimes, you may find people who have a strange favourite food. the strangest i've come across was this guy who apparently told me that his favourite food was pigs trotter in black vinegar. now, this is not the regular "te kah" that you eat. this is the old chinese style of cooking it, with BLACK VINEGAR. now that is some pungent stuff.

regardless, if there's one thing that i really like, it's wonton mee. (okay that and bak chor mee). to be honest, it's not easy to find a good wonton mee. i've had several that were supposed to be good, but they never really tickled my fancy all too much. i'm really anal retentive about my wonton noodles (d will tell you i'm anal retentive fullstop). i need it to be just right. the noodles need to be of perfect al-denteness, not too thick and not too thin. the charsiew has to be lean and coated with a nice sweet sauce, sliced not too thinly to be unable to enjoy the texture and flavor and yet not too thickly until you feel like you're eating steak. at the same time, it needs to be soft on the inside and slightly crisp on the outer ends. and the wontons have to be good, with just the right meat-to-flour ratio, and without the filling being overly soft and gooey or fatty.

i was about to give up hope on my quest for the perfect wonton noodles when one day d comes along and says: have you eaten the wonton mee at chomp chomp? i gave her a beffudled look on my face (aka the i'm retarded look) and said "huh?" then somewhere at the back of my head i somewhat recall that the wonton mee there is good. i go back again to my makansutra and BAM! there it was. i was right. it was good (i recently bought an extra copy of makansutra 2009 for my car so that i won't ever be lost without it again. everyone knows the horrors of being unable to find good food when you most need it. *shivers).

it was 5 chopstix (out of 6). in makansutra, there is no wanton mee stall that has received 6 choptix. so 5 is the best. i happened to try other one with 5 chopstix (eng's wanton mee) and was impressed, but not blown away. for those who are interested, eng's wonton mee serves really al-dente noodles that are slightly thin. it comes with thinly sliced pieces of charsiew and nicely cooked wonton's. but the main attraction for people is the chilli. it is spicy to the touch and stings.

now before i go on i'd like to briefly talk about a very important issue; sauce. there are mainly two types of sauce that make a dish. one is the traditional sauce type, and the other is the chilli type of sauce. when you eat food, say meepok/fishball noodles for example, you have stalls which sell ther fishball noodles with all the ingredients, then they put in their chilli as the main ingredient for the "sauce" of the noodles. without the chilli, the fishball noodles will just taste like fishball noodles. but there are other fishball noodles stalls have have good sauce. so what this means is they do not rely on the chilli itself to make a good meal. and this is what i truly admire. i'm not saying that they are better, all i'm saying is i greatly respect the ability of a chef to make a good dish WITHOUT using his chilli sauce as the main flavor for it.

so, to make a comparison, it's like eng's wonton mee and the chompchomp one. eng's wanton mee rely's on it's chilli sauce to make the dish, whereas the wanton mee at chompchomp tastes fantastic with or without chilli. the dark colored sauce makes a terribly good tasting wanton mee. in fact, i might go as far to say that the wanton mee might taste better without the chilli! having it chilli-less really allows you to get down into the bowl of noodles. you can really taste the combination of slightly sweet and salty flavors that go into the dish, coating the noodles perfectly.

this is what i really define as textbook wanton mee. good aldente noodles with delicious, meaty charsiew and the right sized wantons, all mixed together with a perfect sauce. it's something that i'm sure most of you have tried before, but because i was a late bloomer (in more ways than one), i was really able to appreciate this, after tasting all the half-hearted wanton noodles. wash it all down with one of the huge jugs of sugar cane juice with lemon, and there will only be one look on my face - satisfaction.

Swee Heng Wanton Noodles
20 Kensington Park
#01-12 Serangoon Gardens Food Centre, Chomp Chomp
5pm-12.45am