Wok Master 一品锅 (City Square Mall)

With quality ingredients prepared traditionally, enjoy authentic ‘Wok Hei’ and ‘Tze Char’ in air-conditioned comfort in Wok Master's City Square Mall diner!

We’d recommend their Honey Sambal Spare Ribs and Special Beancurd, try it out with Burpple Beyond’s 1-For-1: Main Dish deal~

Photo by Burppler The Hungry Fatty

I like to call Pork Belly with Red Beancurd (南乳炸肉), the porky equivalent of har cheong gai

To create this dish, red fermented beancurd (紅腐乳) is used to marinade the pork belly, enhancing its flavours, tenderising the meat and adding additional moisture. It also serves to 'cure' the pork belly of its 'gamey' aftertaste. Red fermented beancurd which incorporates red yeast rice also gives this dish a distinctive deep red tinge, flavor punch and aroma.

Wok Master's rendition of this dish was a little on the dry and tough side but still savoury!

Homemade tofu is a dish you can find in some but not most tzichar eateries because it is time-consuming and labour intensive to produce them and they are often produced in limited quantities to ensure that they are fresh.

I don't usually mind the slight premium charged (as with all things homemade/handmade) because fresh tofu has a soft silky texture and yet holds its jiggly shape well. It also has a cleaner taste.

Wok Master serves theirs deep fried and topped with mayonnaise and chicken floss, beautifully arranged like petals around a flower. The crust layer is crisp and the tofu interior soft. The combination of mayonnaise and floss cannot go wrong.

I did however feel that the homemade tofu could have been used in a much better way. I mean this is a dish that anyone could easier replicate at home with store bought ingredients without much difficulty and it would taste rather similar... It would have been better off letting the homemade tofu shine by braising it or with a simple sauce.

Sanbei Chicken literally means 'three cups' chicken because the braising sauce is traditionally made using one cup each of soy sauce, sesame oil and huadiao wine. It also usually contains sliced ginger, garlic and basil.

Wok Master's sanbei chicken was thoroughly enjoyable. The braising sauce in particular was really well balanced - the savoury soy sauce, the nutty sesame oil and the fragrant sweet huadiao wine. It also combines beautifully with the spicy ginger, buttery sweet garlic and minty herbaceous basil.

I'm sure you wouldn't be able to stop lapping up the sauce over rice!

The wonderful thing about tzichar eateries is that you usually get a wide range of dishes. There are however a few "standard" dishes such as pork ribs coated in a sweet sauce. The usual suspects are honey, marmite and champagne pork ribs.

Wok Master has a rather unusual style for theirs - honey sambal sauce. I must say though that this didn't really work for me as I couldn't taste the spices and the sauce tasted bitter-sweet and didn't pair too well with the pork ribs.

I have been back at Wok Master on 3 occasions after the #burpple #eatup in November 2023.

The main draw for me is that Wok Master serves good tzichar food at affordable prices in a comfortable aircon environment, making it perfect for large group meals without breaking the bank.

Their signature curry fish head comes with a half fish head in a rich lemak curry gravy full of fried taupok, tomatoes, eggplant, lady's fingers and long beans. It is the perfect dish with the current rainy weather.

The curry gravy is perfect over rice with a good balance between creamy rich and tangy sour. The fish is of good portion and was fresh on every visit. This is a must order if you do visit!