Happy New Year! I’m going to start off with something sweet. Very pan-tang leh. Big Money Big Money!
Sick of going to places where standards fall once they become popular. I’ve been going to Mei Heong Yuan for years now and I have to say, the standards remain very constant and high. “Mei Heong Yuan” — sounds familiar?
Bet ya you didn’t know the peanut brand and the dessert shop are connected! So their famous dessert is peanut paste. Go early and order because I was there several times but the peanut paste ran out.
peanut paste
Walnut paste
Peanut paste and walnut paste are twins! Look at the photos. And their surnames – “Paste”.
I left the peanut paste to cool for several moments and looked what happened to it! It is amazing because it means that the poor kitchen help has to keep stirring the the pot. But once I stirred the congealed parts, it became liquid again.
Actually making peanut and walnut paste is not difficult but it requires a lot of work. It helps if you have an excellent grindr (hehehe, gay pun here). I bet Mei Heong Yuan has a laser gun to pulverize the nuts lor. Their pastes are so smooth and not-overly sweet. You can add ah-bo-ling (tang yuan) in them too. Their balls are very good too, thin-skinned with viscous sesame or peanut filling (but the balls are something you can buy in supermarkets). Shiok! Very warming for cold days. No one to cuddle, eat Mei Heong Yuan! (That should be their advert tagline.)
Sesame and almond shaved ice and Mango shaved ice
These days, many patrons are ordering shaved ice because it’s a newfangled thing from Taiwan, and because it’s very huge so two to four people can share it. The two shaved ice above were very delicious-the mango one was very mangoey, and the sesame-almond one was very pretty, refreshing and not sweet at all–but honestly speaking, I think this is so similar to Ice Kacang I might as well go eat Ice Kacang.
If you don’t want hot pastes, then I’d strongly recommend the mango ice with pomelo, instead of any shaved ice nonsense. You will never get sick of this dessert because it has as many faces as Zoe Tay: the different textures of mango–puree and solid–and the contrast between the bitter pomelo and the sour-sweetness of the mango. Of all the dessert shops I have been to, no shop does it better than Mei Heong Yuan. The dessert is so fabumarvetastic that it deserves a new word to describe how good it is. Very cooling to eat on a hot day.
What people don’t know is that… the food here is pretty decent! My friend liked the texture of the carrot cake, and you can still taste the radish within. I like the humongous Cantonese zhang (ba zhang, rice dumpling) because it is rare to find something as big as my face and there are so many ingredients inside. Sorry, I haven’t eaten it in a while so I cannot describe the taste to you but I remember liking it very much.
The only thing i dislike is that there are so many customers that the polite and nice servers are so busy that sometimes they neglect to take our orders. This is a place for good food, eat and go, don’t hog the seats, not a date place, not a friends’ outing place. Noisy ambience during peak hours.
Mei Heong Yuen
65-67 Temple St
(Chinatown)
Tel: 6221 1156
Sun-Fri, PH – 10.30am – 9pm
Sat: 10.30am – 10pm
Rating: 4.712/5 stars (value for money)
Categories: $0-$20, Chinatown, Chinese, Dessert, Singaporean
Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow 
I know this is quite an old post, but Mei Heong Yuen is still going strong. Probably my second favourite dessert place in SG – after Blackball! Of course, they are both Taiwanese concepts.
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Mei Heong Yuen is awesome. I just went there two weeks ago. It’s a SIngapore brand, not Taiwanese. They started off by selling peanuts, so their peanut soup is famous. Today their menu expands to snow ice, a Taiwanese dessert. Personally, I like it much more than Blackball.
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