Tiong Bahru Lor Mee

Address Blk 155A, Bukit Batok West Ave 8 01-324

Opening Hours 5.45am-11.30am

Good food in a bad location and bad food in a good location can sometimes mean one good thing…great business. Blame fengshui and a master chef. But what when you deliver a dynamite of a recipe and serve it at a hotspot for foodies?

It’s the definitive goldmine.

You know a food stall is successful when foodies name them after the place they are located at - like Changi nasi lemak, Katong laksa, Bedok cheng tng or Newton cha kway teow.

So why oh why did the famous old Tiong Bahru lor mee stall not return to their original hotspot when the spanking new hawker centre was re-opened last month? They have all the ingredients for that killer application - a popular location , great recipe, cheap pricing, long history and a good reputation.

“Aiyah, my mother old already, so she wants to take it easy and retire.”, reveals Elsie Cheok, the diligent daughter who gave up on her quest to become a policewoman just so to keep the faith of her family’s Tiong Bahru lor mee legacy. She has been faithfully helping her mother Mdm Teo Mee Wah dish out their silky lor mee laced with piquant black vinegar for decades at the old Tiong Bahru market.

Mdm Teo, who is now enjoying her sunset years at a sweet old age of 64 is happy that her daughter and brother is continuing this family makan heritage she inherited from her father in the 1950s. But it riles her when friends tell her some stalls in the new Tiong Bahru food centre is cashing in on her absence and conveniently confusing unwary customers by associating themselve with her. “ They tell customers my mother is retired and they are her relatives, so that’s why she’s not around.”, complains Elsie, who had meanwhile been running another stall at Bukit Batok over the last ten years manned by assistants..

But the test is in the pudding. Elsie’s lor mee (which stays true to her mummy’s recipe) has up to 9 toppings if you order the larger $3 version. The noodles are buried under a brown pile of mini crispy fried taupok (which tasted dangerously like lard cracklings!), fish cakes, ngoh hiang, fried wanton, char siew, fatty pork slices, red cut chilies, fried fish slices and a little ngoh hiang biscuit ball.

And they all float happily atop their dark and porky stock thickened with corn starch which Elsie personally makes each day as it’s the most important ingredient. It’s very smooth, bold and not lumpy. I hate it when the noodles aren’t blanched properly and too much water escape into the lor (sauce) and it gets watered down as you devour. But no such thing here. Personally, I like it with a mix of yellow Hokkien noodles and bee hoon, which help ease the heaviness of the dish and of course, I shower it with chopped garlic and spray it with more black vinegar than they assume I need.

It is almost a gastronomic perversion to like a dish like this, all gooey and brown and neither savoury nor sour and can leave you with garlic breath if you eat it in its authentic glory. Which is one of the reasons why they had always opened at an ungodly hour of 5.45am and close just before lunch.

“I think Singaporeans don’t like starchy and sticky stuff in the afternoons and evenings.”, according to Elsie, who is happy to be up at the stall well before 3am each day for preparation and do brisk business for just half a day.

But hey, I think it’s just dandy to have a great following for a successful street food business toiling for just half a day each day and be satisfied and not bother about where and when you sell it.