Geylang dinner adventure (Lorong 19 & 26A)

Wednesday evening was a slightly atypical experience for me, as I had the chance to wander around the geylang/aljunied area with 3 other friends (my hostel suite mates from last year), an area I don't frequent as I live in the west and am very spoilt as well as more than content with the food choices we have back there

at the suggestion of C, we decided beforehand to try out a famous claypot rice stall, and after some Google searching plus walking, we found ourselves at Geylang lorong 19, where said claypot rice stall was just at the corner of the road. (I think it was called He Ping. In our excitement I totally forgot to take a photo of the premises :( But it's literally at the corner of the street!)

The auntie who came over to seat us and show us the menu recommended us to order a big claypot rice for 4 pax, as well as some side dishes. however, as we weren't particularly hungry, we only got the claypot rice and no side dishes (partly because we wanted to save stomach space for some tauhuey later)

Because we were rather early for dinner (5:45 I think), and in fact were the earliest dinner crowd arrivals, the claypot came after just around 10-15 minutes of waiting, during which we had a good time chatting and catching up a bit over each others lives (C & YK are gonna be fully fledged pharmacists awfully soon, my gosh!!)

the server auntie emptied out the top layer of the meat ingredients onto a plate.

Afterwhich, she commenced the dousing and mixing of rice in black soy sauce and oil, to get the characteristic dark coloured greasy claypot rice all Singaporeans are familiar with--

We were then left to our own devices and K helped to serve us a bowl of rice each! (there was still some left in the main pot which we had for seconds. portion wise I think its quite decent, unless you are a pubescent teenage boy, you'd probably be satisfied with the amount they give)

I really like how the auntie left the meat ingredients (chicken, 2 kinds of Chinese sausage, salted egg yolk, salted fish) in a platter separate from the rice instead of mixing it all up, as we could then have better control of what we individually wanted to match with our rice (e.g. the salted fish, which is a must-have complement to claypot rice, but needs to be added in small quantities). the salted egg yolk was a nice touch I don't see often in claypot rice, but I just realize they didn't include the usual dried mushrooms most other places usually do!! hmm, maybe that's why I thought this rendition was lacking a certain fragrance..

to be fair though, their chicken was cooked nicely and every piece I had was tender. but besides the novelty of having dinner in a geylang coffeeshop, I probably wouldn't travel all the way here again just for this--there are some pretty good claypot stalls in Jurong already (Jurong West Block 500, Jurong East Block 347 to name a few) Nonetheless, it was definitely not bad and if you're in the area, this could be a dinner option to consider!

next up, we headed off on our search for the good tauhuey YK had mentioned. it was at lorong 26A, and it took us perhaps 5-10 minutes walking from the claypot place. somehow, YK was pretty good at navigation and got us to the right street without too much trouble (it wasn't that straightforward but you can always refer to Google maps!)

tada! hahaha, C was berating me for taking my own sweet time snapping pictures of the stall front whilst crossing the road. (in my defense, I was anxious to get pictures upon realising I had earlier forgotten to photograph the claypot rice stall's premises :( sorry!)

again, the place wasn't too crowded when we arrived, so we got to order rather quickly.

the tauhuey here is made in traditional style (unlike the pudding sort which was all the craze in 2013), and it's very smooth plus light (though from my memory the Rochor road tauhuey is just slightly smoother! can't vouch for 100% accuracy of that statement though, its been awhile since I last had Rochor tauhuey)

one thing special about this place is their salty style tauhuey--toppings of soy sauce, minced meat, chye pok (some dried Chinese vegetable condiment) and what I'm guessing is heibi (dried prawn) powder.

Salty style tauhuey in the front-- it looks very different from regular sweet tauhuey

yummyyy, no regrets about trying something new this time :) thank you C, for the recommendation!

in a way its like super soft silken tofu with typical Asian toppings, and not quite dessert-ish unlike the sweet version. but flavours were so well balanced and whilst I might not come all the way here just for the typical sweet tauhuey, this savoury rendition is worth the travel!! (plus somehow, the tauhuey feels much smoother to the tongue paired with the salty style toppings compared to the one just dressed in sugar solution. I honestly have no idea why though, given that it's the same tauhuey)

YK got the tauhuey in soya milk, which I didn't try, but she seemed pretty pleased with her choice.

no one had good things to say about their dough fritters though-- it looked promisingly puffed up but once we tried it, YK felt it was too airy/holey, C and I felt it was too oil-drenched at the ends. skippable, unless you're the sort who absolutely needs to pair tauhuey with dough fritters!

'twas a memorable evening spent roaming the geylang area with good friends, and if you're up for adventure away from the modern metropolis of town, this area's a promising treasure trove--and it's relatively accessible from the nearby Aljunied MRT station. (I'm so game to explore the other stalls some other time!)