ST: Mee tai mak gets new life
| By Huang Lijie | ||
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 Kim Choo Kueh Chang Restaurant's mee tai mak in bakwan kepiting (pictured), Toast Box's laksa mee tai mak and Orchard Cafe's version stir-fried in black sauce with seafood show how versatile the 'rat noodle' is. -- ST PHOTO: KEVIN LEONG | |
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Once a staple in Teochew minced meat noodles and fishball noodles, it is winning new fans with its multiple reincarnations in laksa, XO sauce noodles and even the Peranakan meatball soup, bakwan kepiting.
The noodle also goes by its Cantonese monicker, lo shi fun, or literally, rat noodles, because its cylindrical shape with pointed ends is said to resemble the rodent's tail.
Mr Raymond Tan, 36, director of Tan Seng Kee Foods, a noodle manufacturer here which has been making mee tai mak for more than 70 years, says the noodle enjoyed a brief surge of popularity in the early 1980s.
He says: 'There were many Malaysians working here then, so hawkers sold stir-fried mee tai mak in dark sauce, which was a popular dish in Malaysia.'
The rice flour noodle is made these days by machines, which extrude the dough through a mould. The noodles are then parboiled before being packed and sold.
Interest in this noodle has been revived recently, thanks to food retailers cooking it in creative and tasty ways.
At the Peranakan eatery Kim Choo Kueh Chang Restaurant in East Coast Road, mee tai mak is added to its meatball and flower crab soup, bakwan kepiting.
On how the dish came about, restaurant director Raymond Wong, 29, says: 'Some three years ago, a regular customer asked for a noodle soup dish, but we didn't have anything like it on the menu.
'So we improvised by adding the noodles we had on hand, mee tai mak, to our popular meatball soup, bakwan kepiting.'
While hardly a traditional offering, the unlikely pairing charmed the diner, Ms Sandra Vatsaloo, who is of Peranakan and Eurasian heritage.
The 46-year-old, who is in between jobs, says: 'I never liked mee tai mak in the past because I found it to be tasteless. But the stock and meatballs in bakwan kepiting lend the noodles a lot of flavour and made it more palatable.'
She adds that the chef tried substituting mee tai mak with kway teow, a flat, broad rice noodle previously, but the dish lacked the oomph of the chewy mee tai mak.
Word of the delicious noodle soup soon spread, and today, the restaurant sells as many as 40 bowls of mee tai mak in bakwan kepiting over a busy weekend, with each order serving four persons.
The noodle is also served at the two-month-old Asian-inspired eatery, The Canteen in Shaw Centre, where it is topped with minced pork and XO sauce, and finished with chopped century egg.
The idea for it came from Mr Randy See, 34, director of group operations for the Les Amis restaurant group, which owns The Canteen.
He says: 'I was inspired by the dry fishball mee tai mak with ketchup that I used to enjoy as a child.'
This grown-up version, which has a spicier kick, is a top seller at the outlet with an average of 60 orders daily.
At the casual Singaporean cafe chain Toast Box, mee tai mak is paired with laksa, the dish with a spicy coconut milk gravy.
A spokesman for the eatery says the noodle was used instead of the usual cylindrical, rice flour ones because mee tai mak is thicker and absorbs the flavour of the aromatic gravy better.
Indeed, this noodle is so versatile that Orchard Cafe at Orchard Hotel serves it in no fewer than four styles - stir-fried in black sauce with seafood, stir-fried with minced meat and bean sprouts, in fishball soup, and with laksa.
Mrs Alice Heng, owner of a beauty salon who is in her 40s, and a fan of the mee tai mak at Orchard Cafe, says: 'I used to have fishball mee tai mak, but I like it better stir-fried because it is very fragrant and so easy to eat with a spoon.'
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