Entree Kibbles: Jiaocai Seafood (蕉财海鲜) - Michelin Plate @ Yishun Park Hawker Centre [Singapore] #michelin

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Jiaocai Seafood (蕉财海鲜) - Michelin Plate @ Yishun Park Hawker Centre [Singapore] #michelin

My first visit to Jiaocai Seafood (蕉财海鲜) was before they secured a placing on the Michelin Food Guide for Singapore in 2011; I enjoyed the food but other food stalls in the same hawker centre, like Smokin' Joe, appealed to me more.

But it's time to check it out again, and to make it easier to try other dishes on the menu, I hauled along my parents so that we can order more! I think we over-ordered but the good thing was that we still managed to clean up almost everything. Here's what we had.

Chinese Spinach in Superior Stock - its Chinese name is a much better representative of the dish as the key ingredients, aside from the Chinese spinach, would be the three kinds of eggs; salted egg, century egg and normal egg.

Frankly a bit too liberal on the salt and my mom, being an advocate for less salt and sugar, requested for some plain water to dilute, which I thought was a wrong move as the broth became bland! Nevertheless, even without the extra dilution, it was at most average in my opinion.

Fuyong Omelette - it's been a while since I last had such delicious fuyong omelette! Fluffy without being overly oily, I also found plenty of "liao" inside that consisted of prawns, char siew and onions! p.s. great with plain, white rice!

Sambal Sotong - I was expecting this to be on a hotplate, which was its usual mode of representation when you go to a seafood food stall in a hawker centre.

The chilli wasn't potent enough and the texture of the squid was rubbery. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement and this small portion cost me S$14.00.

Salted Egg Yolk Prawn (Deshelled) - unlike most people, I don't mind cooked prawns that came with shells as I would just eat them together with meat for the crunch and extra calcium; latter of which is essential as we age.

Since deshelled appeared to be the norm here, why not give it a try? And each piece appeared pretty big! Sadly, the batter was too thick and the prawns were long, narrow limp strips that, while nice, weren't meaty enough to wow us.

Eventually, we decided to just remove the cloying batter and eat the meat on its own, with the salted egg sauce of course. Personally, I feel that Jiaocai should consider having shelled prawns, as people like me would likely prefer them, so long there wasn't that much batter to begin with.

Curry Fish Head - to be honest, I have been craving for curry fish head for quite some time yet I had been resisting it as it's so darn addictive to have the curry drenched over a bowl of plain, white rice and then slowly devouring the mixture. Point is, one serving of rice is seldom sufficient and that's not good news for someone who has been diligently following a low-starch diet.

That's why I brought my parents along; to share the sins! Unfortunately, their appetite is much lower now that they are older. And it's of mixed feelings for me. The gravy was viscous, dense and absolutely hit the right spot amongst my thousands of taste buds!

Utterly delightful with the rice! I must also add that there were so much vegetables within; cabbage, brinjal (eggplant), ladyfingers (okra), tomatoes etc! Fish wise, my mom liked it whereas I thought it was just average. p.s. not much of a fish lover except for maybe cod.

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See how much batter I removed from the Salted Egg Yolk Prawn (Deshelled)! More misses than hits for this meal; next round, if I were to return, I will definitely order the omelette and maybe try other dishes like assam fish head.

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