L32 Handmade Noodle @ Tampines 1

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I have heard about this very famous handmade noodle stall at Geylang Road for a while now. The stall had a rather strange name called L32 which actually stands for Lorong 32, with reference to its location at Geylang.

Geylang is rather out of the way for me so when I found out that they had a branch at Tampines, I was overjoyed.

Tampines is not that near to me either but it is much more accessible than Geylang. The branch in question is located at Tampines 1, inside the food court on the fifth level. I finally found the opportunity to make my way here after sending my parents off at the airport earlier this week.

I took the MRT from Changi Airport to Tanah Merah and transferred to Tampines. Upon reaching, I realized the food court is Kapitans by Kopitiam.

Other than the usual pork and chicken options, you can have your handmade noodles in soup or dry paired with either fishball, meatball, prawn, sliced fish, clam and fish head. Tom yum soup is available too.

There was quite a queue on a Sunday afternoon but it cleared pretty fast. I was in line for about fifteen minutes before it reached my turn.

Hoping to try something different, I opt for the meatballs and chose ban mian (板麵). You can also choose u-mian (幼面) and mee hoon kway (面粉粿) just to name a few.

As I ordered the dry version, they cracked an egg into a small bowl and poured boiling broth over it. I left the egg white in the bowl but I scoop out the raw yolk and mixed it into the noodles, giving them an extra smooth texture.

The broth is robust and sweet. With the addition of the egg white, it is quite an enjoyment to feel bits of the semi-cooked egg white going down my throat. Very smooth, very shiok.

Here is my bowl of noodles all tossed up in the sauce. I saw the staff squeezing dark sauce from a bottle into the bowl followed by a dash of oil. No chili sauce is added.

The concoction of the sauce seemed simple enough but whether they add any other condiments to the dark sauce is anyone's guess.

Other than six meatballs, the noodle is garnished with fried anchovies, chye sim and fried shallots. The noodle have a good bite to it however, I find the sauce a tad too sweet. If only they come up with a non-black sauce based sauce that is more savory than sweet.

Help yourself to the two types of chili available. They have sliced chili in light soy and coarsely chopped chili which is good as a dip but not the kind I would like to mix into dry noodles.

As I am not too fond of minced meat, I am glad to have firm and chewy meatballs as an alternative option.

Judging by the reviews online, it seems this sweetish dark sauce based handmade noodle is quite popular but I think I will stick to the soup version unless they provide the sambal kind of chili.