Often touted by loyal regulars as an underrated contender among the big names, I made a trip to Circuit Road Market and Food Centre to find out if this can surpass my favourites.
I was there on a Tuesday evening around 5.30pm and the food centre was on level 2 with most stalls closed for business. There was a small crowd of slightly over 10 people sitting around, most of them without food and likely to be waiting for their order of fried hokkien prawn mee.
The ordering system is efficient, your number will get called out when your food is ready. They only have two sizes, which are the $6 and $9. Do note that each batch of fried hokkien prawn mee takes around 20 minutes to fry. The first batch after I ordered only saw the queue move by 5 numbers. Long story short, I waited an hour for my order to be ready.
The Taste: Not What I Expected
It took me around 20 minutes to get home and this was a $9 order. This looks like the slightly drier type of fried hokkien prawn mee. They were generous with the amount of sotong pieces and de-shelled prawns and there was a heaping scoop of sambal belacan.
I took my first bite and what hit me first was the lack of prawn-y seafood-y flavour you would generally get from a good fried hokkien mee. How could this absence be so obvious? It made me doubt my taste buds since the reviews were raving about wok hei, flavour and all. Did they run out of prawn or seafood stock? Took a few more bites sans sambal chili and it did confirm that there was a lack of flavour in this packet of noodles.
This brings me to my next point, which is the sambal belacan chili. The addition of the sambal belacan didn’t help at all because it was way too salty and spicy hence do taste it first before mixing it into your noodles.
Of course taste is subjective but I find that this is perhaps too hyped up. This is just my personal opinion so please go try it for yourselves. Cheers!
Rating: Unrated
Chuan Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee
Block 80 Circuit Rd, #02-05, Singapore 370080
Google Maps Link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/1tmPsiKC9xZKwoUH8
