Conventional prawn noodles by 29-year-old younger hawkers at Bedok

The Bedok North Market & Meals Centre at Blk 216 is an previous favorite of mine. It’s proper beside the newly renovated Bedok Public Library and polyclinic and homes a ton of excellent meals, like kway chap, rojak and carrot cake.

It’s exactly due to how mature this property and hawker centre is that such a younger and hip stall like Prawn & Mee stood out a lot.

After I walked by, Radiohead and Maroon 5 performed from its audio system. To not point out, it was helmed by two hardworking younger males who seemed to be round my age. I swear, I’ve by no means related with a hawker stall this rapidly.

Prawn & Mee was based by Raphael Sim and Gladwin Yap, who’re each 29-year-old hawkers. The stall, beforehand often called Plum & Rice, used to promote fusion Japanese meals, however Raphael and Gladwin determined to rebrand the stall in 2017 and promote prawn noodles as a substitute.

Why? Prawn noodles are extra conventional and cater to everyone, together with aged aunties and uncles that frequent the hawker centre.

Bedok North Market & Meals Centre is large. L-shaped with a number of aisles operating alongside every column, I needed to trawl by means of a couple of aisles earlier than lastly discovering Prawn & Mee.

FYI, simply so that you don’t need to spend 5 stable minutes weaving by means of the aisles, Prawn & Mee is alongside the row of outlets dealing with the Bedok Public Library.

Prawn & Mee’s menu is straightforward and solely has two dishes: Prawn Noodle (S$4/small, S$6/medium, S$8/giant) and Pork Ribs Prawn Noodle (S$4/small, S$6/medium, S$8/giant).

Each dishes can be found in both dry or soup variations. We received the Prawn Noodle (S$6, dry, spicy) and Pork Ribs Prawn Noodle (S$6, soup).

Excellent news for all you millennials who don’t wish to peel your prawns — Prawn & Mee peels them for you!

There was loads of kang kong in my Prawn Noodle (S$6, dry, spicy), which was an enormous plus in my books. After I combined the noodles additional, I seen that Prawn & Mee’s dry prawn noodles used chilli sauce relatively than chilli powder.

This made it simpler to combine, and I didn’t even have so as to add any soup to my dry noodles. On the similar time, I used to be a tad apprehensive that it wouldn’t be as shiok since if it had chilli powder as a substitute, it might be smoky, intense, and sizzling.

The prawn noodles resembled aglio olio in the way in which that it was slippery and easy, partially due to the chilli sauce and the bits of pork lard that had been thrown in for good measure.

After I slurped the noodles up, I used to be stunned at how candy it was. It jogged my memory of the candy brown sauce you’d get with yong tau foo. The spicy kick got here on the finish, which was refreshing.

Prawn & Mee makes use of pacific white shrimp, that are identified for his or her sweetness and agency texture.

Certainly, every prawn was actually recent and its pores and skin was taut. After I bit into it, the prawn snapped immediately.

The soup was considered one of my favorite components of the meal. Full-bodied and smoky, the soup was briny and candy with a wealthy umami flavour.

Whereas I normally use the soup to make my dry prawn noodles slightly wetter, this time, I ended up ingesting the soup by itself — it was that yummy.

Shifting on to the Pork Ribs Prawn Noodle (S$6, soup), this had a beneficiant sprinkle of chives on high and got here with giant, sq. items of pork stomach and two large items of prawns.

I learnt from Raphael that the soup is boiled in a single day with pork bones. In addition they use extra shrimp within the course of, leading to a full-bodied inventory that’s richly filled with briny and umami flavours.

The soup model was slightly completely different from the soup supplied within the dry counterparts and was extra flavourful and candy. It had that tinge of hearty savouriness from the added pork bones.

The pork ribs had been delightfully mushy and although they didn’t fall off the bone, they had been tender and candy, and it took me little to no effort to chunk by means of the meat.

There was additionally a good bit of bones and mushy bones within the pork ribs, so be ready to work your manner by means of each bit!

All through all the time we had been there, the queue at Prawn & Mee by no means appeared to finish. Each time I regarded up, there’d be a mixture of aunties, uncles, college students and dealing adults queuing for a bowl of hearty prawn noodles.

What I cherished about Raphael and Gladwin’s rendition of this native basic was how easy it was. It wasn’t fancy; it didn’t have lobsters or large prawns, but it surely was sincere, humble and scrumptious. The truth that it’s cooked by two 29-year-olds is only a bonus, actually. No marvel people from all walks of life patronise this stall!

Anticipated harm: S$4 – S$8 per pax

Penang Delights: The tastiest prawn mee & lor mee in AMK