Gourmet Paradise

I discovered good food in Toa Payoh. It is the foodcourt called Gourmet Paradise at the basement of HDB Hub. Wow, I have been there a number of times but I did not know there was a foodcourt at the basement with so many stalls of good food. I chose something that looked the most appetising.

I ordered Lontong from the Malay nasi padang stall with heaps of delicious-looking dishes. As I was not that hungry and wanted to avoid the meaty stuff, I decided on Lontong. I love Lontong. It is made of pressed rice cakes, with curry cabbage and long beans with a triangular piece of fried beancurd as well as a hard boiled egg. I added the Malay-styled fried mashed potato. It was very nice and the gravy was not too spicy but 'lemak' enough for my liking. I finished every drop of the gravy.

For sides, I ordered the popular Rojak (sweet fruit & veg salad) to share. Imagine, I needed to take a number after ordering, estimated waiting time was 10-15 minutes. You could only collect your order when your number flashed on the box. My queue was 36 at about noon time. I did a mental calculation, if they close shop at 9pm, roughly they would have sold about 100 plates of rojak per day (and that was assuming each order was for one plate). So if they open everyday without rest days, they would have sold about 3000+ plates per month, assuming weekends were a 30% increase in business. In a month the earnings would be about S$10,000 most conservatively. After deducting rental of stall, say $3,500, and maybe $1,500 on cost of ingredients, their take-home pay would be $5,000. Viable business?

Anyway, the rojak was not bad. I love Rojak with its crunchy slices of turnip, pineapples, cucumber, bean sprouts, taupok (puffy, deep-fried tofu) and youtiao (cut-up Chinese-style fritters), all mixed with sweet peanut sauce.

I must go back to try the other stalls.