Chinatown Complex Food Centre

The Fusilli Pesto ($7) is nutty and aromatic, but a tad salty for me. It comes with cherry tomatoes and mushrooms, and a generous sprinkle of cheese. The portion is very big too. Overall, I enjoyed this - wouldn’t mind returning again to try the other pastas!

I love vinegar pork trotters and the one sold here ($6.80) has just the right balance of sour and sweet notes, which goes really well with rice. The pork trotter has a good fat-to-meat ratio, but I wish the meat is a little softer. It is also somewhat disappointing to find that the hair on the pig trotter skin is not removed thoroughly:/

I am not a big fan of pig stomach soup as I often find it too peppery for my liking, but the Fish Maw Pig Stomach Chicken Soup ($6.80) from Chef Sham H.K. Vinegar Trotters and Fish Maw Pig Stomach Chicken stall at Chinatown Complex Food Centre (#02-007) is a different story altogether.

The old hen (老母鸡) soup is boiled for over 20 hours and the end result is a rich and flavourful collagen-packed soup. The pig stomach is tender and the pieces of chicken in the soup have a nice bite. Having said that, my favourite ingredient is the crunchy fish maw that soaks up the delicious soup - so good!

This is my first time trying Zhao Ji Claypot Rice ($20 for 3-4 pax) at Chinatown Complex Food Centre (#02-53) and it’s actually pretty decent! The chicken is very tender and smooth and the bits of salted fish and lap cheong (Chinese sausage) add flavour and oomph to the fragrant claypot rice. There is a nice char at the bottom of the claypot but the rice remains moist. Good stuff!

The Mixed Beef Noodle Soup ($4) from Joo Chiat Beef King at Chinatown Complex Food Centre (#02-024) comes with a really generous serving of beef tendon, beef offals, beef balls and beef that are cooked till soft and tender. The soup is not the sweetest I have tried but still pretty decent. The tangy chilli goes very well with the beef and noodles. Not bad!

The Bak Chor Mee ($3) from Teochew St. Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle at Chinatown Complex Food Centre (#02-023) is a pretty decent bowl of BCM - the noodles are springy, the fish balls and meat balls are fresh and delicious and the chilli is fragrant. The $3 portion is quite small though - will definitely go for the $4 option when I return😅

Chanced upon an an interesting Yong Tau Foo stall at Chinatown Complex (Tak Hei Delicacy at #02-18) that specialises in Hakka YTF:) I ordered 6-piece YTF with Hakka Noodles ($4.60) that turned out to be pretty good - the egg noodles tossed in minced meat sauce reminds me of Koo Kee YTF:) The Hakka Abacus Seeds ($3) are fried with mushroom, minced meat and garlic and has a nice fragrance to it - the yam beads are a little soft though, thought they could be a tad chewier:) Overall, although the variety of YTF ingredients is smaller than usual, I felt that the interesting variety of carbs (be it Hakka noodles, abacus seeds or chee cheong fun) made up for it👍🏻

The YTF ingredients are really fresh and go well with the vinegary chilli, and I love the fried brinjal and bitter gourd that you can order on the side to go with the fixed YTF combi (you can’t choose the ingredients here)!

I tried this after watching the xiaolongbao episode on @eatbooksg and it’s really good and worth it! The XLB are juicy and tasty, the skin is thin and they are super affordable at $6/10 pieces! The dandan noodles is a gem too - the peanut sauce is fragrant, not gelat and comes with minced meat:) No wonder they have snaking queues at both lunch and dinner time!