koo kee yong tau foo 高 记 酿 豆腐 (gao ji yong tau foo) At People’s Park Food Centre

For more than 60 years, Koo Kee has been dishing out bowls after bowls of delicious home-made Yong Tau Foo (YTF). It was until recently that I realised this stall is a brand name under Gao Ji Food.

My brother was the first to bring me to Koo Kee for YTF almost 2 decades ago. It was delicious then and it is still satisfying today.

Koo Kee is so renowned, it is hard not to notice the stall – simply the one who the longest queue in the mid section of People’s Park Food Centre.

Washiyama stood in line for about 30 minutes and finally came back with 3 standard set meals. It seems like you cannot pick your own secondary ingredients. However, you can choose soup or dry versions. The standard set servings consists of their specialty Mee Kia noodle with minced pork, Kangkong with fermented bean sauce and a bowl/plate of fish ball, stuffed (meat and fish paste filling) beancurd, deep-fried soyabean puff and Ngoh Hiang (meat roll).

First bite into the springy thin wheat noodles perfumed with lard hit hard on the umami note! It tasted really good and made lasting impression. I looked at Washiyama and said “Wow! I’d almost forgotten how good a simple bowl of mee can be!””

The clear soup was intensely flavourful with hints of soya beans and ikan billis (anchovies). The YTF pieces were ordinary, but that’s not to say I did not like them.

Zen asked what the sauce on the vegetables was. It’s 豆腐乳 (bean cheese to the westerners) or simply fu yee to the locals. It is fermented soya beancurd and has a unique piquant taste and not everyone liked it. Zen didn’t mind it so much. I preferred fu yee with stir-fried vegetables but to have them over blanched veggies is another story.

As for the chilli and the sweet sauce… I can do without them.