Tai Hwa - The vinegar bowl that hits the comfort spot

When I get homesick, thing I crave most is bak chor mee. The bowl that really hits the comfort spot … Tai Hwa Bak Chor Mee.

The people who run Tai Hwa are masters of their respective roles. The cooking here is done in a very systematic manner - the first guy plunges the noodles into the boiling water, passes the bowl down to the next cook who dresses the noodles and adds the minced pork, the bowl is then returned to the first cook for more ingredients and then passed on to quick succession to another person for the finishing touches. The order taker is amazing and he has an elephant memory. He walks down the queue and takes multiple orders from multiple customers. He covers an average of seven to ten customers which means a ballpark of twenty orders and then walks back to the store and starts stacking bowls, adding bits of noodles to indicate your noodle of choice and spoons to indicate soup.

The queue here is annoying. And you actually have to stand in line. But despair not, there is a fantastic bowl of bak chor mee at the end of the wait. I personally love vinegar and the way they use it here. A winning splash of great vinegar, some chilli, some lard, in the right proportions is a winning concoction. Stir some noodles in the simple heady sauce, add some pork, braised mushrooms, dried flatfish and serve it with sweet pork flavoured soup, it is a winning combination. I could have this for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Tai Hwa Bak Chor Mee
Block 466 Crawford Lane #01-12