The Beef House @ 217 Syed Alwi Road

The Beef House at 217 Syed Alwi Road is famed for several things: yong tau foo, beef balls, beef tendon balls, soon pan (笋粄) and suan pan zi (算盘子). 

It is not hard to understand why they are so immensely popular because nothing here is factory made - well, maybe except for the various noodles (bee hoon, kway teow, Hakka mee) used here but otherwise, everything else is handmade.

I ordered a bowl of beef tendon ball soup with bee hoon ($5), two pieces of soon pan ($1 each) and a plate of suan pan zi ($2).

Traditional Hakka Lui Cha @ Boon Lay Market

Hakka Lui Cha (客家擂茶)

Lui Cha (擂茶) is an iconic Hakka rice dish that is topped with chopped leeks, long beans, kale (kai-lan), mani cai, string bean, cabbage, beancurd (tau kwa), pickled radish (cai pok), and served with a bowl of grinded tea made from a selection of herbs such as basil and mint.

Well, there might not be any hard and fast rule stipulating what vegetables to be used in the making of this dish as I believe the Hakka womenfolk simply used whatever vegetables they have on hand or had growing in their backyard at that moment.

Video: The Tragic Encounter Of A Pretty Reporter

This video of a Taiwanese female reporter from a Hakka TV Station reporting on a secret slide in The Grand Hotel turned viral after she took the plunge down the slide and let out a series of shrieks which bore an uncanny resemblance to the screams of the Angry Birds.

The slide was in fact an emergency escape route for Chiang Kai-Shek - former President of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Measuring 2.1m tall, 2.2m wide and 90m long, the secret passageway had it's own independent electricity, drainage system and the lamp shades were of shatter-proof quality.

Recipe: Yong Tau Foo Soup 酿豆腐汤

The Yong Tau Foo originated from the chinese ethnic group, Hakka. It is basically Tofu stuffed with minced meat (add some salted fish to the minced meat mixture for that extra oomph!) and deep fried. My Mum is a Hakka so she would made it for us periodically. I guess as time progresses, people became more health conscious resulting in more varieties being made with vegetables such as brinjal, okra, chilli pepper and bittergourd. The name Yong Tau Foo has thus been used liberally to apply to foods prepared in this manner. Yong Tau Foo in soup is generally a healthy (just omit the fried stuffs) one-meal dish comprising mostly of vegetables. Well, it just happened that it is one of those days when I felt lazy and do not want to cook up a storm in the kitchen. I bought some pieces of Yong Tau Foo from the wet market and simply threw them into the stock in the evening and voila, dinner is served. Serve this over a piping hot bowl of steamed rice. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. Bon appetit!