Wanton Seng’s Noodle Bar @ 52 Amoy Street

How can one simply improve a traditional hawker dish, taking a step further what our ancestors did? Of course, there are hotels serving high end chicken rice which costs $20+ per plate, prawn noodles, bak kut teh, etc.

So what about quite a dish that barely makes into headlines of Singapore’s best food and must try — Wanton Noodles!

Was really excited to try this atas and hipster wanton noodle bar, and I must note that I haven’t tried the original Seng’s or Eng’s noodles at Dunman/Bedok before.

We reached there at about 1PM+, and was informed beforehand that their noodles may just sell out before they close for split shift. Luckily, we managed to get a place, and order our noodles.

You would have to say the people who did their branding hit all the right hipster notes, with all the deco, typography, menu design. The service was pretty good too, with the restaurant managed by aspiring youngsters. The order system here is simple, decide what you like to have, go to the cashier and make your payment plus order.

And we were only left with Choice A (Char Siew) and Choice B (Roasted Pork Belly). You might want to note that the 5-minute egg is a separate side order from the noodles, which brings us to a long story which I’ll leave to the end to explain.

The soup broth is actually served on a thermal flask, which you pour into the IKEA bowl yourself, there’s also FREE refill if you want to. Condiments are also available on the tables, worth a mention is their crispy pork lard. The noodles comes fairly quickly after a short wait, but just note that the wanton dumplings are usually hidden below the noodles.

My order was the B set, roasted pork belly. At first glance, it looks pretty dry, both the noodles and meat, and the meat was rather unevenly sized, though all were really chunky. It’s really quite a generous portion I must say. However, this chunkiness can lead to too much fatty taste on your palate, which my colleagues agreed upon too. The skin of the pork belly was really crispy, but the meat just lacked tenderness, and needed more flavouring for my taste.

The broth was really sweet, which I guess they used a lot of soy beans to boil the soup, very different from the wanton noodles type of soup if you ask me. And wanton wise, has plenty of fillings.

My colleague passed me a piece of char siew to try, which was also really chunky and generous. This char siew is really different from what you get on a normal plate of wanton noodles, it’s the fatty part (五花肉) , which was roasted nicely with a little ‘charred’ taste. Still required more taste in the char siew for my liking, needed more caramelization for a sweeter taste.

Having said that, I strongly recommend you to try the char siew version instead of the roasted pork belly.

Noodles wise, it’s thin, a little springy, and has the egg noodles taste, not sure if it’s really handmade or from suppliers though. It tasted a little like the ‘kolo mee’ texture. For me, the noodles passed, but needed more gravy for that generous portion again.

But of course, there’s their famous chilli to go along with the noodles. The chilli was supposed to be super-spicy from what I heard, but was milder than what I had expected. But certainly adding the chilli gives more shiok and dimension to the noodles (just that non-spicy lovers will be left out this way).

 

The 5-minute egg was one of the best part in the whole experience at Wanton. The egg was perfectly cooked, with no part of the yolk getting solidified. It was savoury with the shoyu or soya sauce taste, and one of the better eggs I’ve eaten for quite a while.

And to the 5-minute egg story — which we ordered at the cashier and later told that it’s sold out when our noodles were served. So a refund was obligingly given, and with some perks! The ‘towkay’ of the restaurant offered to make up for it, eventually reached to an agreement for an additional bowl of wanton.

And after the agreement, came 3 plates of 5-minute egg! We weren’t sure where they got from, but yeah, we eventually managed to get some eggs on the house. Really commendable service here, and as a Singaporean, Mr Kiasu would give a thumb of approval.

Had a good chat with the ‘towkay’ after our meal, cause one of our colleagues know their fishing-kaki or something, so we found out they are still trying to get feedback from customers to make a better bowl of wanton.

This experience at Wanton didn’t meet all the raves and expectations from this place. Actually I would suggest the pork belly to be braised instead of roasted, since they did the 5-minute egg, which is japanese style, so why not right? But after chatting with them, I guess they’ll be making improvements along the way, which I really hope they would.

Wanton Seng’s Noodle Bar
52 Amoy Street Singapore 069878
Opening Hours:
Lunch Menu: 11am – 3pm (Walk-in Only)
(Dinner menu from 5pm)
Monday – Thursday: 11am – 11pm
Friday: 11am – 1am
Saturday: 5pm – 1am
Closed on Sunday

http://wantonsg.com/
https://www.facebook.com/wanton.sg
https://instagram.com/wanton.sg