A hidden treasure

In my post of 16 November 2008, I mentioned Katong Shopping Centre ("KSC"). KSC is a shopping mall located in the eastern part of Singapore. It has been around for decades.

People who live or grew up in the eastern part of Singapore will be familiar with KSC. During its heyday, it was a very popular haunt for shopping. Alas! With the passing of time, only die-hards like my family still patronise KSC.

Other than popular shops like, Rey-Im cosmetics house (which sells skin care and other toiletries at a fraction of the price in departmental stores), we patronise an optical shop, a Christian book store and a clothes alteration shop.

We also patronise the food court that is located at the basement of KSC, next to the clothes alteration shop. According to Da, where the food court is currently located used to be a restaurant / cafe known as "De Castle". As such, long-time patrons of KSC still refer to the food court as "De Castle".

Whenever I mention KSC, I often encounter "eeh.... such a dingy place... there is nothing nice to eat over there" as a common reaction. However, before you discount KSC, do check out the following food at their food court.

The chicken rice stall sells delicious boneless roast chicken. There is often a long queue during meal times but the wait is worth the while.

You can place a side order of beansprouts at the chicken rice stall. The beansprouts are cooked to perfection - crunchy and yet not undercooked.

Each plate of chicken rice comes with a complimentary serving of pickled vegetables comprising carrots, onions, cucumber and pineapples.

The complimentary soup given by the chicken rice stall varies daily but one of my favourites is the lotus root soup with boiled peanuts.

Alternatively, you may want to patronise the stall selling western food. It used to be known as "Joe's western food". Lately, the name "Joe" has disappeared from the signboard although the same stallholder is still there. I like to eat their chicken cutlet.

Da likes to order their grilled fish. As you can see from the photographs above and below, the portions are very generous.

One of my mother's favourite stall is the noodle stall. More specifically, she likes to order the mini pot noodles. Unlike other mini pot noodles, the mini pot sold at this stall has ingredients such as fish ball, fish cake and crab stick, in addition to pork slices and pork ball. The mini pot sold at many other stalls only contain pork, pork and more pork.

For the mini pot, you have a choice of a bowl of rice or a bowl of dry noodles. What I like about the dry noodles is that if you do not want chilli sauce, you can ask the stall holder to mix the noodles with black sauce instead of tomato sauce.

Another popular dish at the food court is that of the Chinese rojak. The stall holder is very generous with the ground peanuts.

Last but not least, an all-time favourite of Singaporeans - yong tau hu. The soup is full of boiled peanuts, which makes the soup very delicious.

If you were to select fried ingredients, the yong tau hu stall holder will fry the ingredients and serve them separately from the ingredients that are in the soup.

So the next time that you are in the eastern part of Singapore and you are feeling peckish, do make a detour to KSC and try out the food at the food court. I believe that you will go back again for more.