Derrick Kuah, who learnt cooking from his mother and mother-in-law, opens a craft noodle shop, selling 6 noodle dishes, 4 sides, and 3 desserts. Everything is made from scratch, from sambal to noodles. Because ingredients are sourced daily at wet markets, they couldn’t acquire fresh prawns and chicken wings on the day we visited, and so prawn noodles ($15.90) and fried wings ($5.90) were off the menu.

The noodles are made fresh daily in Indonesian style: curly, hard, not as springy as local noodles, but very savory, and still better than the Indonesian noodles I ate at Jakarta. All the noodles are topped with lots of lard, and come with a bowl of radish soup. When I drank it, I immediately knew there was NO MSG. It was refreshing, and didn’t have that heaviness MSG brings.

The delicious double roast noodles ($12.50) consists sio bak and char siew that is triple-roasted, redolent of rice wine fragrance, altogether tasting like wonton mee.  The lor bah noodles ($12.90) didn’t look or taste like lor mee; more like bak chor mee, with a curious and appetizing piquancy. Delectable: lots of ingredients, and very well-cooked. They wanted an egg in between hardboiled and Japanese ramen runny egg—and they achieved that.

The fried wonton ($3 for $5.90) is again done in an Indonesian UFO style: lots of skin with a bit of meat in the middle. While this is expensive for 3 pieces of wonton, the crispy biscuit-like skin in a sweet chili was addictive. The meatball soup ($6.90) reminded me of the iconic Peranakan dish. The soup was flavorful, tinged with ginger. The meatballs were made from 100% meat with bits of chestnut, no flour, no filling, so they might come across as nuah, soft without bounce. My companion didn’t like it; but I did.

On hindsight, because the meal was so delicious, we should have tried the homemade desserts, sago pudding and chocolate tart. But there will be another day, I will return for sure. The food is sincere, creative, clean, healthy, honest, global yet homely, and wholesome; there are not enough positive adjectives to describe how good the joint is. It is the kind of food that deserves respect and support. We paid $38.20 for two persons. Cash only.

I Want My Noodle

1 Scotts Road #03-14/15, Shaw Centre Singapore 228208
T:  9758 3037
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11am-10pm
Rating: 4.038/5 stars

Written by A. Nathanael Ho.