Pork knuckles you should not try

To avoid the crowd, I was lunching with a friend at a Bugis Village cafe. I thought I had try something different instead of rice dish sets. So I ordered a mushroom soup and half slab of Roasted Pork Knuckles. The choice was horrendous.

While I waited, I noticed there was hardly any diners in the cafe. An old man was sipping coffee. A couple of guys were about to leave, and another lady was finishing her food. The lady called for the bill and when the bill came, she told the waitress, "the food is terrible". I saw there was quite a lot of her food left.

My mushroom soup was normal, and passable with a few slices of mushroom in addition to the chopped mushrooms, although the croutons did not tasted right. Then my Pork Knuckles came. Either the knife given was not sharp enough or the roasted piece of meat was so hard I could not sliced it. It took alot of effort to cut it. The roasted skin should be crispy and fragrant, but it was not - it was pretty "chewy" (meaning it took a lot of effort to cut and chew). The fatty part after the skin normally should melt in your mouth. But this just tasted like hard-to-chew jelly, or a very hard Agar Agar. The taste was quite hard to stomach. I thought the final lean meat part should at least be edible. It was hard to chew again, and it tasted barely cooked with no fragrant taste at all. Not even a burnt taste. I gave up after managing a quarter of the dish. Normally no matter how bad the food, if it was still edible, I would finish it. But unfortunately today, everything went wrong with that dish. At that moment, I had rather eat Char Siew/Siew Yoke Rice which costs only $3.00.

To me, pork knuckles should be very crispy on the outside, with juicy fats oozing out and melts in your mouth and then with the fragrant crunchy meat inside, to make this dish complete. But in that cafe, this dish barely made it on all counts. Un-delectable. Now I know why the cafe was so empty during lunch hour. I think they would not survive another 3 months, eventhough it was such a hot and busy location. A pity. Luckily it was not that expensive, otherwise I would have blew my top.

Instead, the Pontian Noodles I tried at Marine Parade yesterday, was so much more fun. I did not know there is this chain of outlets in hawker centres selling black sauce wanton noodles (aka Malaysia style). It was black sauce alright instead of our ketchupy reddish local wanton mee. The char siew (roasted meat) was crunchy and the fried wanton good. The steamed wanton went into the soup which was better than the fried ones. I ordered an extra portion of fried wanton to share, with mayonnaise and chilli sauce. Such a simple fulfilling meal.

Although its real counterpart in Malaysia should taste better, this stall in Marine Parade is better than nothing - black sauce noodles. I remember the coffeeshop next to Federal Hotel in KL selling this wanton mee. It was good and their noodles pretty QQ.