In The City

Now that the non-local friends' Singapore experience this round also included a minor accident (no one was injured) between their van and a car because one party didn't put on his indicator, and having to deal with the irony of needing to give directions to the non-Singaporean-non-English-speaking driver hired by the transport company, I threw in a zi-char-probably-with-MSG dinner to complete the experience.

The friends loved the Indian food they managed to ferret out at the eateries in Little India, all by themselves, armed with GoogleMaps. So a local zi char style dinner wasn't unwelcome. We went to Por Kee Eating House at Tiong Bahru Estate. The tea was bad, very bad. My fault. I should have known. It was supposed to be jasmine tea. It didn't taste anything like it. It wasn't just burnt. The tea leaves were horrid. We had to spit it back into the cup. The tea left an acidic and bitter aftertaste. We had to tell them to take it away and bring us bottles of water. Bottles of cold beer were ordered. Those were a much-appreciated relief from the heat.

The saving grace- food was all right. Ordered the usual zi char dishes and emphasized on having less oil in our food. Of course the kitchen didn't care about that. The vegetables and tofu arrived gleaming, soaked in a pool of oil. We skipped the rice and ordered beef hor fun and fried bee hoon with crab meat. Didn't do crabs either. That would be eaten another day somewhere else. The red garouper was nicely steamed Hong Kong style. Fresh. What a pity that the brand of soy sauce used in the gravy was ridiculously salty and chockful of MSG. Ugh. Still, all sorts of interesting flavors to the tastebuds. The dishes were pretty decent, and the friends enjoyed it. It was their first time eating prawns fried with oatmeal! They were absolutely fascinated.

Por Kee Eating House
69 Seng Poh Lane
Singapore 160069