The Shrinkflation Is Real I’ve never been all that keen on the Singaporean hawker classic of char kway teow mainly due to the proliferation of substandard & barely passable ones. However, purely due to the fact that my office is in Joo Chiat, I’ve discovered Joo Chiat Place Fried Kway Teow. The wok is worked by the original owner’s daughter, so the recipe is pretty much the same as the one that they started out with in the 1950s.⠀
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The default spiciness of the chili is pretty amped up here, so you’re gonna need to prepare your tongue for some fire. The noodles are well fried, it’s decently eggy with a good few chunks of egg here and there, and there’s just enough cockles to satisfy any char kway teow aficionado out there. It would be an average plate of char kway teow, but what sets it apart from the competition is the wondrous wok hei instilled into this messy delicious plate of noods.⠀
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If you witness your order being whipped up by the chef & proprietor, you’ll see a gargantuan plume of smoke rising from the wok as the owner works her magic. That’s Joo Chiat Place’s calling card: the heady, intense smokiness from the screaming hot wok that permeates everything. Each strand of noodle or beansprout, each slice of fishcake & lap cheong (Chinese sausage), and each cockle is so sensationally smoky. Other places have the chili, or the noodles, or the sauce, or something else as their trump card, but here? The wok is the secret.⠀
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Unfortunately, the price of a plate here has soared in tandem with the cost of living. A large plate used to be $5.50 back in 2021, and now it’s $6.50. Portions are kinda small too, so you might wanna take a stroll around the ‘hood for some dessert to finish your meal proper.