I live up north in Yishun. Yet I’ve been to Kim Hai Hokkien Mee at Circuit Road Food Center about 4 times in the last couple of months. My dad, he has been eating there for at least the past 10 years. It was because of him that I got to taste this lovely unassuming hokkien noodle.
Circuit Road Food Center is an interesting one, because it has a very old school charm, looking almost like a makeshift food center with not that many stalls.
There are two hokkien noodle stalls on the strip, but Kim Hai is the one people go to. The noodles come in $3, $4 and $5 options, pictured here is the $4 option.
Though there are only 3 shrimp and a few rings of squid, every spoonful of noodle is packed with multiple layers of flavours from the porky prawn broth to the smokey wok hei. The noodle is of the wetter variety, hence the way to eat would be to gather a spoonful of noodles with the chopsticks and eat it off the spoon.
The chilli while mild on the heat, paired flawlessly with the noodles, fortifying them with a whole new set of flavours. It wasn’t long before I finished the entire plate effortlessly.
While you are there, if the barbeque stall on the opposite side of Kim Hai Hokkien noodle is open, you should also order 10 sticks of pork satay!
Pork satay is only made by Chinese satay sellers, and they are in my opinion the best meat for satay, because between every piece of lean meat is a piece of fat that had been caramelised and half rendered over the charcoal flames.
The satay at this stall was remarkably well cooked, with lots of maillard reaction on the charred edges, translating to abundant ecstasy in the brain upon tasting. They’re also super cheap at 60 cents a stick!
The peanut dipping sauce was also spot on with a myriad of flavours, though I wished it had the nostalgic pineapple puree i grew up eating with.
So there you have it, hope you enjoy my record of these 2 un-mainstream hawker stalls that beat many mainstream ones out there. *coughgeylanglor29cough*