Chai Chee Pork Porridge 菜市豬肉粥 Best Porridge in Fengshan Market and Food Centre

• Operating Hours: 5 PM - 2 AM
• Operating Days: Daily
• Address: Fengshan Centre, 85 Bedok North Street 4, #01-210, S 460085

There are so many stalls at 85 Fengshan Food Centre that you would likely to ponder over what to order. This was what happened to us when we traveled to Bedok for Dinner. We have heard that the Chai Chee Pork Porridge 菜市猪肉粥 was quite famous. In fact, they are so popular that they have 2 stalls – one open in the day, and the other at night till late. We were wondering if we should waste our stomach space on porridge for supper. 

When we were there, there was no physical queue, but when ordering, we were told we had to wait for around 30 minutes before our order was served to our table which you could see lots of people waiting for their takeaway order of porridge.

They serve a variety of porridge, from pork, century egg, fish to chicken porridge cost $3.50 each. We ordered pork porridge.

A warning first, do not immediately take a biteful of the porridge once presented, it was hot, really hot! Take a spoonful of it if you dare and you would understand what I mean.

Each porridge is cooked pot by pot. The porridge is the kind where the grains have been disintegrated, it was thick and smooth, at same time not too wet and grainy till almost a gluey texture, it take many hours of cooking to get this thick consistency. The porridge is well seasoned without additional soy sauce. It was incredibly flavourful. You could even eat it by it's own without any ingredient! 

The Pork balls are all handmade. It came with generous amounts of pork slices and minced pork and none of them were frozen, included spring onions and pieces of fried dough sticks 油条. The meat was cooked perfectly, it was tender and in thick slices. Very flavorful! 

Among the porridge I been, this has to be one of the best among the hawker centers that sell during dinner and supper. Bedok 85 hawker centre has a lot of other yummy food as well, so order them together with porridge. You will have a great meal!

Redhill Porridge (红山粥) - Best Porridge I had at a wallet friendly price

• Operating Hours: 5.30AM to 8.30AM
• Operating Days: Monday to Friday
• Address: 85 Redhill Lane, #01-90, S(150085)
• How to get there: Alight at Redhill MRT (East West Line) and walk towards Redhill Close road. Estimated walking time about 5 mins.
• Food I had: Pork and Fish porridge.

Fancy for some porridge early in the morning on weekdays?

It was 7 am on a Tuesday and here I am queueing up at an old school porridge stall. It is not an uncommon scene at the Redhill market, for people to queue up to 45 minutes waiting for their pork or fish porridge. The price was very reasonable and affordable. While I was queuing, I realized many of them in the queue brought along their containers as well (it will save you 20 cents for takeaway).

Look how affordable the price can be? Nowadays, you can't get much at $2.50. We ordered their Pork and Fish Porridge takeaway. A total of $5.40.

Both the fish and pork porridge tasted slightly different as the different seasoning was used. The fish porridge was added with ginger slice and the taste of the sesame oil was much stronger; whereas for the pork porridge, fried onion (bawang goreng) was used to enhance the porridge taste.

We were pleasantly surprised by the generous amount of pork slices that the stall owner gave for the price of $2.50. Each spoonful was filled with pork slices and basically, every bite you take, you can savor the smooth and tasty porridge together and the pork slices together, in just one mouth. The texture of the porridge is definitely something worth commenting. It was smooth, thick and hot.

Many of the porridge places I have tried in Singapore or Malaysia are just mixture of cooked rice and a soup, with visible rice grains, and many times I felt like I'm eating "rice soup" instead. At this place, rice grains were smashed and cooked, not forgetting the art of stirring continuously using low fire - this is what it takes for an excellent porridge to be served.

Kim Lian Kee Chee Cheong Fun (金蓮記豬腸粉) - One of the smoothest food in KL

• Operating Hours: 7.00AM to 4.00PM
• Operating Days: Daily except for Wednesdays
• Address: 51, 49, Jalan Petaling, City Centre, 50000 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Food I had: Chee Cheong Fun (豬腸粉)

Chee Cheong Fun - Rice noodle roll is a Cantonese dish commonly served either as a snack, small meal or variety of dim sum. What I am introducing is plain, sliced rice noodle rolls with spicy-sweet sauce and a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds.

In a corner of Petaling Street(茨廠街) at Chinatown, this Chee Cheong Fun stall is popular with tourist and locals. The location might be difficult to find as they are in a dark corner, do keep a look out for air Mata Kuching stall, it is located right across. At night, this place transforms into a well-known Kim Lian Kee Hokkien Mee. 

They serve Chee Cheong Fun with sweet bean sauce and chili sauce topped with a sprinkle of sesame seeds. The sweet bean sauce differs from Singapore-style which uses a thicker, saltier sauce. It may look simple but it’s absolutely delicious. The rice noodle was very soft and slippery, it sometimes breaks or slips off when trying to use a chopstick to grip it. I prefer this Chee Cheong Fun texture than those selling in Singapore. 

The business is so good that the Chee Cheong Fun is usually sold out by afternoon. Apart from Chee Cheong Fun, they do serve porridge too, so do take note beside this stall there is another stall that sells porridge too that displayed very similar dish.

Eminent Frog Porridge (明辉田鸡粥) - Best kung pao sauce on porridge?!

• Operating Hours: 5.00PM to 4.00AM
• Operating Days: Daily
• Address: 323 Geylang Road Lorong 19 S(389359)
• Food I had: Frog with Kung Pao sauce (dried chilli with sweet dark sauce), Frog with Garlic and pepper, Foo Yong egg (芙蓉蛋), Fried Shrimp Paste Chicken wing (蝦醬雞).

For some, frogs are considered an exotic food. They don’t look exactly cute nor tasty and they give you the creeps when they jump towards your direction. Eminent Frog Porridge is a zi char coffee shop style place, providing casual eating ambience but will be noisy when getting crowded. Located in Geylang, a well-known area for dinner or supper, Eminent Frog Porridge is one of the few favourite places for frog porridge lovers. 

The savoury sticky sauce overwhelmed with sweetness into your mouth. The frogs' meat was so smooth and tender! it tastes just like a mix between chicken and fish. One pot of 3 frogs was not enough for 6 pax, so we ordered another pot of 3 frogs in a Kung Pao sauce. 

Cost: $8 per frog (Buy 2 frogs get 1 frog free)

The kung pao version was prepared with more gravy and lots of dried chilli, which gave the dish spicier taste. Although it might be very spicy for those who do not like spicy food, the kung pao frog sauce does blend in very well into the porridge, much more than ginger version. The frogs used were not particularly big, but they were quite meaty, smooth and tender. This alone is a reason good enough for you to try them if you have not.

The porridge had a nice thick texture but it was tasteless, but the porridge becomes goodies once you poured the sauce from the cooked frogs for flavouring. The combination of porridge and clay pot frog sauce was delicious!

The Shrimp paste Chicken honestly does not have any trace of shrimp paste, it is just a normal fried chicken, it was tender but was fried till a bit too dry.

Foo Yong fried egg was another dish I would say it was a very normal dish where any Zi Char Stalls can whip out similar taste or even better.

Other than their popular frog's legs, they have a huge range of zi char dishes but not that amazing according to what I've tried. Do take note if you order too few dishes for a big group, you will be frowned upon and might be asked to order more. Nevertheless, it is still a great place for dinner or supper with a huge group!