POH @ Empress Road Market : Teo Chew Chye Poh Hor Fun

If you are on a diet or is highly conscious about the fat content in your food, then I highly recommend you to skip this place as you will not be able to enjoy the Chye Poh Hor Fun to your fullest contentment. Worst still, you might be doing a grave injustice to the the diligent hawker who has whipped up such an amazing dish if you could possibly not finish it.

Poh is a two-year old stall at Empress Hawker which sells Teo-chew style comfort food, Chye Poh Hor Fun at a standard rate of $5, a far cry from the hefty price tag of $10-12 in local Teochew restaurants

The dish is simple with only Chye Poh (fried radish), beansprouts, chives and eggs but it is oh-so satisfyingly good. It definitely doesn't look like any other fried kway teow and perhaps one might even mistaken it as carbonara due to its whitish egg cover. 

I have a penchant for anything with Chye Poh, be it Chye Poh Neng (Fried Radish Omelette) and Steamed Fish with Chye Poh, so this dish already won half the battle with the generous amount of salty fried radish. They are bonded firmly to the springy rice noodles that resided at the base with egg. The crunchy pork lards made the picture complete.

It is no surprised that this dish is packed with wok-hei flavour as the experienced hawker Mr Ng Tham Siew subdues the flame and wok with finesse. According to the ST times, Mr Ng has more than 20 years of kitchen experience in the Chinese restaurants of hotels such as Shangri La and Sheraton Towers. 

The place also sells other Hor fun such as Moonlight Horfun ($4.50), prawn paste chicken ($7), Sliced fish Hor fun, fried rice, etc. In the case for the Moonlight Hor Fun, the "moon" was rather shy as it was buried beneath the pile of aromatic noodles. Nonetheless, this dish was no less delicious than the Chye Poh Hor Fun as it has a subtle caramelized sweetness that makes it as tantalizing as a plate of black carrot cake. 

I would be lying to say that both dishes are not greasy. However, there is a time for everything and at Poh, it's the time to just dig in straight away.

POH

Empress Road Market & Food Centre

Block 7, Empress Road off Farer Road 01-89

11.30am-7pm daily (ad-hoc days off)