衡山小馆吃粤菜

A random weekday dinner at Hengshan Cafe & Chinese Cuisine (衡山小馆) also turned into a spread of dishes on the table. *groan* If you want the familiar flavors of good Hong Kong or Cantonese cuisine, besides Tsui Wah Restaurant (翠华餐厅) this is a good choice. Avoid Crystal Jade at all costs. Am still scarred by the subpar standard of the food. I don't even quite like Crystal Jade in Singapore, unless it's the very yummy restaurant at Paragon or perhaps Ngee Ann City.

Hengshan Cafe held an aquarium of some catfish of sorts that didn't quite look like they ought to be eaten. (Been told it's a freshwater Amazon red-tail catfish. Dunno what's the other one though.) Although the aquarium was placed in the corner, it was attention grabbing. We stared and stared, watching the fish move. The habitat looked too small for the four of them. They seemed more like fortune fish of sorts. Hey, they're placed in a restaurant, what am I supposed to assume?

Only Cantonese restaurants know how to boil up a decent pot of soup. But no vegetarian soups are available. All pork. The friends dug around the bowl of ingredients from the soup and held up a long tongue. A pig's tongue. Woah. I don't know tongue is used in soups as part of the stock. The roast pork here was proclaimed "not nice" by the friends. So don't bother with that. 'The minced pork cake thingy with salted fish was surprisingly very well done, rousing long buried beautiful childhood memories and smells.

I got my lightly stir-fried greens, and braised tofu. Told them less oil but it was still glistening in a pool of it. Ugggh. The pumpkin fritters with salted egg yolk were AWESOMELY tasty. I loved that! That proves my theory, put salted egg yolk over anything and it would be a winner. Like salted egg yolk prawns.

The highlight at Hengshan Cafe is their claypot rice (锅饭或港式‘煲仔飯’). There were many versions. But I didn't look at the menu thoroughly. The friends randomly ordered quite a standard version, but they didn't find the sauce that impressive. Comfort food though, if you like Chinese sausages, liver sausages and a lot of tasty carbs.