Hoki Cake Bakery 福气本铺古早味现烤蛋糕 - Tradition Cake improvised with their chocolate cake in a good way!

• Operating Hours: 12 PM - 9 PM
• Operating Days: Closed on Monday
• Address: 67, Jalan Austin Heights 8/5, Taman Mount Austin, Johor Bahru
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Taman Mount Austin is an area in Johor Bahru where hip cafes, nice restaurants, and bakeries are found. It has slowly gained popularity amongst the locals and Singaporeans for its wide variety and relatively cheap restaurant food (Please continue to maintain like this!). A good 10-20 minutes drive from Woodlands custom if you are going to visit Taman Mount Austin.

When talking about 鸡蛋糕, I bet most people will say Taiwan Danshui 淡水 has a stall that sells the best 鸡蛋糕. The craze for this traditional cake has been increasing constantly since a few months ago. Be it in Singapore or Malaysia, people are literally seen spending 1-2 hours queueing just to buy these cakes.

Just a few months ago, Hoki Cake Bakery 福气本铺 opened its very first traditional 鸡蛋糕 shop at Taman Mount Austin. Claiming to be the first shop in Johor that brings in Taiwan 淡水's famous traditional cake, it was not difficult to see endless long queues when it just started. I was one of them who queued for almost 2 hours to get these cakes. 

And just a few months later, the crowd at Hoki Cake Bakery has died down. As many similar shops were now seen at big shopping malls like KSL and City Square mall, it is inevitable for a shop like Hoki to lose its appeal to the consumers. However, it does not define their products are "not nice". It is in fact very nice and I will be sharing more in the later portion.

Big ovens and trays were seen at the shop front. There were many more ovens in the kitchen area, and imagine I used to queue up for 2 hours to get the cakes when there are so many ovens. Can you imagine the crowd?

This is the famous traditional cake with cheese filling. I tried once and I like it a lot. The generous amount of cheese really enhanced the sweetness from the cake, and yet it's not too overwhelming. Personally, I like to eat it with a cup of coffee as breakfast or tea break.

Rows of traditional cakes on the table waiting to be sold.

The chocolate flavored cake is Hoki's latest creation, and this is the main reason why I am back here again. Hoki is really very generous with the amount of chocolate chip used in their cakes. 

I don’t normally reach for chocolate desserts but for this but I would gladly grab one. Seriously, just look at the amount of chocolate stuffed inside the cake! I really like the chocolate version as it is really like a fusion kind of cake traditionally made with the simplest ingredients eggs, sugar, flour, and with very generous amount of chocolate given. The chocolate is not too sweet and in fact just nice for my liking. Really thumbs up for this!

Facing many competitions in the market, I like the way Hoki does it's business - friendly staffs, nice cakes, fresh ingredients used and most importantly, being the first to bring in this traditional cake to Johor, Hoki knows when is the right time to introduce a new flavor for their cakes so as to bring back the curiosity of the customers. Hoki's traditional chocolate cake is definitely a must to try and it is worth all your effort to travel there just to get one. Heard that if you put the chocolate cake in the fridge, they will taste better. As I have already finished the chocolate cake before knowing this fact, do leave me a comment and let me know how does it taste like when chilled, when you happen to get one! 

Restoran Yong Xin 永新鲍鱼粿条 - Refreshing Abalone Noodle in Skudai

• Operating Hours: 7.30 AM - 10 PM
• Operating Days: Daily
• Address: 143 Jalan Pahlawan 1, Taman Ungku Tun Aminah, 81300, Johor Bahru

Abalone Noodles is one of the unique dishes you can find in Malaysia. If you enjoy light, clear soup with fresh ingredients, Johor Bahru has many shops selling kway teow soup to satisfy you. Yong Xin 永新鲍鱼粿条 is a good option for you when you have that craving for some Kway Tiao with Seafood soup. Located in Skudai area,  They are quite popular amongst the locals for the Abalone Kway Teow Soup 鲍鱼粿条汤 they served.

Other than selling abalone seafood soup, they do sell canned abalone in their shop too!

For those who can't read Chinese, the history was the owner who formerly in the Mechanical industry for years in Singapore, stepped into the food industry in the year 2003. At the beginning, the owner opened his very first eating house serving Malaysian cuisine Bak Kut Teh and Kuey Teow Soup for a year.

The owner at then realised the market opportunity and studied deeply on the demand by locals, decided to stop his Bak Kut Teh career to venture into making abalone noodles, but he was criticised by customers in the beginning. So he spends 12 hours a day to cook and study the recipe, and finally, his abalone Kwey Tiao soup was accepted by the locals in just a few months since he started his business until today. 

This restaurant has attracted many visitors from the other states and even from other countries. Look at the number of celebrities that came to visit them. A very informational menu.

There are different combinations of the ingredients, so you can even choose without any of the pork organs like livers and stomach if you don't like them.

We ordered Yong Xin's signature Large and Medium Abalone Kway Teow each.

So while waiting for the dish to arrive, you can help yourselves to fried pork lard. It was crispy and crunchy.

The set we ordered came with our choice of Kway Tiao (they have noodles or bee hoon as well) and a bowl of soup with standard items - sliced canned abalone, prawn, oysters, sliced and minced pork, pig liver and stomach.

The difference between 12 RM large portion and 10 RM medium portion is that the large portion has additional ingredients plus fish maw and Pacific Clams which is very worth to top up 2RM for them.

Every ingredient was fresh, which I feel, they are the key to the good seafood soup. 

The soup is the main factor for this delicious bowl of Teochew dish. At Yong Xin, the pork bone based soup is light, clear and sweet. Part of the sweetness came from the ingredients in the soup which were all nice textured with natural sweetness.

There were a few of these small fresh oysters in the soup. Though tiny, these oyster are fat and juicy.

Kway Teow Kia, the slimy translucent kway tiao that was tossed with sweet black sauce. It was quite chewy and yet does not stick to your teeth. Though it was not Q enough, it was still very pleasant to eat it together with the soup, indeed a wonderful match!

Do check out this Kway Teow shop if you happened to be in Skudai area. Definitely a shop worth visiting! 

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!