Stuffed myself silly at lunch today. I pass by the Hougang branch of Nakhon Kitchen on my way home from work everyday, and it seems that ever since the Zaobao Sunday supplement ran a small feature on this place a couple of weekends back, queues have been lining its corridor every evening. So I thought to lunch there with ma and yipuo today. Discovered there's a Bedok branch when googling for its address, and went there instead since it's so much nearer.
OK, before I bring on the food porn, very important information for anyone who wants to go to the Bedok branch, its at Bedok North Avenue 3 Block
136, not Block 133, which was the address I found online.
Now for the meat of the post.
Clear tom yam soup with seafood. It comes with prawn, fish, mushroom, cherry tomatoes and the usual vege garnish. There's squid too, but we asked them to leave it out. Ma said it was good, so I'll have to take her word for it. My first sip of the soup was so spicy I pretty much stayed off the soup for the rest of the meal.
Pretty (and juicy) cherry tomato from the soup.
Asparagus. The Thai waitress recommended this. I thought it was pretty ordinary. But its relative blandness was a good foil for the more fiery flavours from the other dishes.
Spring rolls. Simple dish perfectly cooked, probably my favourite of the meal. Wonderfully crispy, not too oily, and tastes great with the sweet and spicy chili dip.
Fried Chicken with garlic. Also waitress' recommendation. Chicken was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. If I had one quibble though, it was that the cabbage the chicken was served on was not fresh, and the leaves were lined with black edges. Yes, I know those were meant as garnish, but I've been even more conscious about leaving food on the plate ever since reading that Singaporeans throw away
570 million kg of food each year.
Phad Thai. Thai kway teow. Sort of. This one's sweeter than the ones I remember tasting at Thai Express. Very fresh, crunchy bean sprouts, and good bean curd too.
Ruby. With jack fruit slices. The ice and coconut milk were much-needed antidotes to the spicy heat from all the chili sauces I've been dipping my food in. Ma wasn't such a fan though.
They even provide free tissue paper (OK it's really a toilet roll) in a pretty rattan case:
and the chili dips that caused me so much teary-eyed grief:
And all that for just $32, for three people! They don't charge for GST or service charge (yet), so what prices you see on the menu is what you get. We're definitely going back there before they change their mind about their no-additional-charges policy.
The food in the glass shelf looked exactly like what you'd find in 菜饭 stalls, and have probably been left there for the whole day. No thanks. Outside, they had only one item in their menu file, the National Dish of Burma - the Mohinga (sounds a bit african):
It's the National Dish! Of course I had to get it:
According to Wikipedia, Mohinga is rice vermicelli in fish soup [and] usually eaten as breakfast." Imagine oyster mee sua but less viscous and salty, mee siam but not spicy, fish porridge but with vermicelli instead of porridge, and you get something like Mohinga. Which was exactly the comfort food I needed in the cold wet weather. It also has this yellow crispy cereal-like ingredient that I haven't figured out yet:
Yummy. Am definitely going back for more.
