Fried Hokkien Mee

Uniquely Mee

See an old man slaving and hunching intently over a beaten and well worn-in wok tossing fried kway teow and some will think…”wah, must be good lah!” believing he’s been perfecting it since the advent of the internet.

Then you cross a stall manned by this young chappy, quivering around his wok of fried hokkien prawn noodles and you’ll go “aiyah, the father off today so the part time cook son takes over.”, and you promptly offer a huge discount on its quality.

But stereotyping will hurt if you give this young man frying under a sign that says Ah Liang Fried Hokkien Mee, a wide berth. Because in my humble opinion, this 32 year old hawker is set to be an icon of this uniquely Singaporean dish, if all plods on naturally. Typically, he does not even know the heritage of the only dish he’s ever learnt to cook commercially nor does that he care the person his stall is named after, is totally fictitious.

But Mr Chia Tong Ngee is fastidious about the ang kak or red banana prawns he uses, it’s got to be fresh, not frozen. “So what if it cost $3 per kilo more than the regular frozen tiger prawns, the taste and quality is what makes it different” he reveals. Mr Chia fries up to 30 kilos of these prawns a day and is very confident about just what makes a great plate of fried hokkien mee.

Which is why he goes to great length to perfect the stock for frying into the noodles. It has come a long way since he learnt basics it from his cook house sergeant ten odd years ago. This self made hawker improved as he snooped around, questioned, experimented and today, his magic brew includes ingredients like red banana prawn heads, vongole clams and fried dried tee po (flat fish). When I spooned a dash to taste, it was like Neptune’s nectar, you can cook any seafood dish with it.

At the ripe young age of 21, he knew his calling was to be a hawker, and on reflection says “ I don’t know why but I am comfortable about it.” He closed his first stall at a Macpherson area hawker centre after three years citing the 16 hours at the stall daily was too high a price to pay for success. He returned after a break and today he’s says he more comfortable with a saner 12 hour daily routine.

Fried noodles is a specialty of the Hokkiens from south China. It is believed that this dish was created by the post war Hokkien sailors working in noodle factories. Come nightfall, they would congregate around Rochor Road area, squat over a charcoal stove and fry the excess noodles from the noodle factories they work in. Today some older folks still call it Rochor Mee.

But the dish has evolved.

No longer is it so porky. Mr Chia’s almost non stop daily routine sees him constantly blessing his wok with garlic, eggs, soy sauce, yellow noodles, beehoon, towgay, prawns and sotong. He avoids using fatty pork and is easy on lard, preferring instead to mix it with more vegetable oil. Then it is flooded with stock, stewed for a minute and fried till damp. One unique method he employs is the sprinkling of dried tee po dust as he fries. It simply enlivens the taste. And if you order a $4 takeaway version, he’ll wrap it in fragrant opei leaf (actually a soft palm bark) with some calamansi limes. Just let it sit and infuse for about ten minutes, soak off some excess liquid and the fragrance will bowl you over. It comes lightly damp (though I much prefer the rarer but dry version) with every strand of noodle soft, well flavoured, textured with eggs and topped with prawns and sotong rings with sambal, lime and red cut chillis.

And yes, it is a joy to watch him fry the entire dish right in the stall front right before your eyes.