Teochew Cuisine – A Great Place for Over-The-Top Steamboat!

When you live in an international food hub like Singapore, the three staple meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) are just not enough. There’s so much to eat here, and only so many meals a day.

In fact, many eateries or dining establishments close after dinner – it’s not easy to find somewhere to sate your midnight hunger pangs. Not if you live in the Toa Payoh or Bukit Batok estate though! Teochew Cuisine is a 24/7 restaurant that whips up Teochew food. You can look forward to braised meats, kway chap, dim sum, and the exquisite Jing Tai Lan Fish Head Steamboat (from $65).

Jing Tai Lan, also known as Chinese cloisonné, is a unique art form that combines sculpting, painting, copper smiting and porcelain making into one. This dazzling form of art started to gain traction during the Ming Dynasty, and can usually be found sculpted on vases, bottles and earthenware.

Teochew Cuisine brings this magnificent form of art to diners in the form of their fish head steamboat, with the cloisonné decorated on the steamboat.

The addition of yam cubes and sour plum shows their dedication to stick to their Teochew roots. These ingredients give a robust and mouth-whetting flavour to the milky fish head broth. The steamboat, which is heated with charcoal, comes with a choice of sliced fish(red grouper or silver pomfret), as well as seasonal vegetables (we had tang o), enoki mushrooms and fried egg floss.

The broth was a tad bland, but after fish slices and other ingredients are added it, it starts to get more flavourful. What’s more, the refills are done with fish broth, not water, which means that the taste of the soup will not be too diluted.

We also tried the Teochew Oyster Omelette (from $12) which was too oily and soggy for our liking. It would be a wiser choice to request for the omelette to be fried crispier, which I did on another occasion.

Teochew Cuisine is also known for their braised dishes. The Teochew Lo-Shui Combo (from $15) comes with 4 braised meats(braised ducked, pork skin, pork belly, pork intestines), as well as beancurd and braised egg.

If you’re looking for traditional Chinese dim-sum breakfast, Teochew Cuisine has an extensive dim sum menu. Some offerings include Char Siew Pau ($2.40/3 pieces), Mushroom Pau ($2.40/3 pieces) and Prawn Dumplings ($3.60/3 pieces).

We liked how the mushroom pau is crafted according to how an actual mushroom looks like – with its brown, spotty surface. Split the pau open and you’ll see a mixture of chicken meat and chilli, which isn’t really that spicy.

I think that bonds are always strengthened whenever loved ones dine over steamboat. Cooking a piece of meat, or even the simplest act of just pouring a bowl of soup for a loved one, makes the recipient fuzzy and warm inside. 

MissTamChiak.com made anonymous visit and paid its own meal at the stall featured here.