Singapore Rice Noodles of the Month

Jen's Chinese Restaurant in Port Jefferson Station, NY. Lots of curry but still not spicy enough for me (wo xiang chu hen la shi wu). A very serviceable SCMF, very typical of takeout places in these parts.

Singapore Rice Noodles of the Month

The standard Chinese take-out recipe for Singapore Chou Mei Fun tends to be a rather bland, yellow, powdery recipe with the noodles a little too al dente and a very bland curry. After all, this dish seems to be on the menu of almost every Chinese restaurant I've been to in America, and in a couple of cases where it wasn't, the chef was able to make it for me. Within the range of what I would call "standard run-of-the mill" SCMF, there is a spectrum from not very good to pretty good. Win Hing Restaurant in Port Jefferson Station, NY is on the pretty good end of the spectrum. This tends to be correlated with how good their other dishes are, which in this case are very good (we've tried their Moo Shoo Pork and Kung Pao Tofu). The meat and vegetables are fresh and the curry is not overwhelming. There is a nice delayed hotness as well.

Another Obsession

Another thing I want to make this blog about is the one true food obsession I have, and that is Singapore Rice Noodles (also called Singapore Chow Mei Fun or Singapore Mei Fun). This is a dish that is available in virtually all Chinese restaurants (even if it occasionally is not on the menu) and it is truly heaven on earth (when well made, which it often is). The main ingredient is rice noodles (ranging from a vermicelli-like to an angel hair-like width), which are stir fried with curry (almost always), vegetables, and thin slices of meat, as well as shrimp (usually), and egg (usually). It is usually listed as a spicy dish but often you won't find it particularly spicy unless you ask for it to be (possibly in some cases due to the fact that many Chinese chefs don't expect Americans of European descent to like/tolerate spicy food).

Even though this dish is available in most Chinese take-out and sit-down restaurants, there is a wide variety of specific ways in which it is carried out, some more successful than others. The main variables include: type and quality of meat, types of vegetables, grade of curry, grade of noodles, and overall dryness of the dish.

In my travels around NY and other places, I have been sampling a great variety of Singapore Rice Noodles. Pictured above is the current, and by now fairly longstanding, gold standard, from the Sung Wo Restaurant in Rocky Point, NY. Ordered as "Singapore Rice Noodles, spicy, with everything", this version is on the oily side, with lots of egg, vegetables that are not overwhelming (i.e. no celery and not too much carrot), spicyness that is just right (i.e. exactly halfway to nuclear), and pieces of very very tasty and succulent beef (probably the rarest meat to find in this dish).

Future installments on this blog will discuss and picture the dish from other establishments as my search proceeds.