Having been to Beauty World Centre, half my life, I have definitely eaten my fair share of XLB and dumplings from You Peng noodle dumpling house. This time, however, I decided to try something new, their fried red bean pancake. ($4.80)
They also have fried onion pancakes, but red bean trumps all.

Red bean is life.

The enthusiastic server handed us the beeper and we sat down to enjoy our dessert we also bought from Food Mapping. (Their review is next!). I guess the wait wasn’t excruciatingly long, but it did take around 8 to 10 minutes. (I wasn’t counting! I was busying slurping up the dessert)

Finally, the beeper buzzed, as though waking up from the dead. I hurriedly shoved my boyfriend towards the stall.

The pancake came in a perfect circle, divided into 8 pieces and the top covered with sesame seeds. The pancake was piping hot and it was burning my fingers. Probably the reason why they give you chopsticks!

After taking a bounty of pictures, I took a sensible chunk out of one piece. I pulled a ‘meh’ face, while my boyfriend grinned and took another bite. It turns out that there were not enough red beans in mine, whereas, he got a nicely filled piece.

The red bean paste wasn’t distributed evenly *insert a sad face here* (Two pieces were nicely filled with red bean and some pieces were 99% dough) If you are unlucky like me, you just end up with more dough than red bean. I dissected one piece and what I ended up with was the Singapore Horror Story. Most of the pieces had less than half a teaspoon of red bean spread around it, only two lucky pieces were densely filled.

Taste wise, the pancake had a nice doughy feel and chewy. The sesame seeds gave the top a nice crisp texture. The red bean wasn’t overly sweet and it didn't have an artificial taste to it. (My pet peeve=Artificial tasting red bean paste!)

One thing noticeable was that it leaves your fingers oily but the pancake itself wasn’t overly greasy.

It seems a little pricey being a $4.80 pancake, but it comes down to being $0.60 per slice. So if you share it amongst a few friends, it’s actually relatively affordable. (Just be the first one to grab the thick piece, because it’s probably filled with more red beans J Muahahaha..)

Overall, this pancake looks tempting but I found it a little underwhelming, due to shortage of red beans. Nevertheless, it's not exactly something you can find everywhere.

Making it to the judge’s scorecards: 7/10