Source: misstamchiak
Hey Steemit!
It's time to share yet another one of our recent food haunts we found during quarantine! Even though it's been a while since Singapore came out of Phase 1 of the lockdown (i.e. no dining in, most shops closed except essential services), we've still been limiting our time spent eating out, or just being out in general, to be safe.
One of our favourite places to get takeout from is this pretty old hawker centre (aka non-air conditioned food court) called Albert Centre!
Albert Centre has been around for a long long time. Unfortunately, I can't find information on when it was built exactly, but it does take its name from Albert Street, which was named in the 1800s in honour of Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria of England.
Although there's nothing even remotely regal about this place, it's definitely renowned for its many stalls selling cheap and good food that consistently attracts long queues of customers everyday at lunchtime.
Of course when we went there it was for dinner so quite a few of the stalls were closed.
But thankfully, one of our favourite stalls was not - Traditional Wanton Noodle!
As the name suggests, this stall specialises in wanton noodles; a Cantonese noodle dish ("wanton" is Cantonese for dumpling). The dish itself consists of thin noodles (colloquially called "mee kia"), roasted pork slices (aka char siew) and dumplings! It's served either in soup or dry with gravy and tomato sauce/chili sauce.
It's one of my absolute favourite noodle dishes and I really like this stall because they have both fried and boiled wantons! The chili is also just the right amount of spice to give it a kick without being too spicy.
Sean and I each got a bowl and the smell of the wanton mee was making my mouth water was I took these photos.
One bowl is $3.50 which is a pretty alright price nowadays. But the quantity can be a tad little especially if you're hungry (I finished my bowl in less than 10 minutes) so we got another dish to share!
Since it's been a while we decided to get carrot cake! But don't be fooled; even though it's called carrot cake it's neither a dessert nor made of carrots (I know, it's weird). Here in Southeast Asia, carrot cake (or chai tow kway) is a dish of Teochew cuisine consisting of stir-fried cubes of radish cake and egg!
We bought our carrot cake form this stall that also sells Hokkien Prawn mee (as is typical of most carrot cake stalls).
When you order, you have a choice of black or white carrot cake, where the only difference is that black carrot cake is also fried with a sweet black sauce. But since I'm not a fan of sweet mixing with salty, I always opt for white carrot cake.
It smelled really good when we got home and I was excited to try it!
Unfortunately the carrot cake didn't come with its own chili but it tasted alright nonetheless. It was pretty average, but I really like carrot cake so even average carrot cake is yummy to me. It wasn't anything spectacular though but for $3 you can't really complain much.
Overall, a really delicious meal that does fit the bill of being cheap and good! So if you're ever in the Bugis area, definitely check out Albert Centre! There are a ton of stalls here you'll be spoilt for choice of cheap good food!
Thanks so much for reading!
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