Alexandra Village Hawker Centre

Alexandra Village - a very famous hawker centre.  We hadn't been here in a while, so we decided to bring the family there for some lunch.  It would also be very good exposure for our kids.  They are used to eating in air-conditioned food courts and even restaurants.

Good hawker fare is one of the best things about living in Singapore.  Food, glorious food.  As it turns our, our Alexandra Village adventure was fun because we tried many things that afternoon.

Chinatown Tai Chong Kok Confectionary
A very traditional store selling egg tarts and other traditional delicacies.  We stopped to get one egg-tart, just to try.  The store certainly looked antiquated, but who cares.   In Singapore, you don't have to worry about food hygiene.  The standards are very high.

Here are some of the biscuits they sell, including the "Hong Kong Style Old Wife's Biscuit" - second row.

Those are egg tarts, at $1.10 per piece.  Freshly baked.

An old rattan chair.  Looked well-used.  Such chairs were very common 20 years ago in Singapore homes. Not anymore though.

We head over to Alexandra Food centre, just opposite the shops.  For some reason, I decided to try out this Thai store, called Phati Thai Food. Funny name, I guess a spin off 'Phad Thai'.

Here is the menu.  I chose a Phad Thai for $4.

Some chillis and condiments that you could help yourself with.

There were two ladies cooking.  It sounded like they were speaking Thai to each other.  My Phad Thai was freshly fried.

Here is the Phad Thai.  For some reason, I can't get the photo to turn around, hence the odd angle.  It was a decent portion.  Taste-wise, it wasn't great though.  Well, maybe that's because I just had very good Phad Thai in Bangkok.

Got some satay, 60 cents a piece.

The peanut sauce that comes with the Satay, with some pineapple.  Very traditional.  Frankly, I can't really taste the pineapple.

The chicken was quite lean.  Not much fat.  That was good.

Also got a ketupat.

I saw this coffee store nearby that also served premium coffee.  Decided to give it a try.

This place was called White Coffee Corner.  On top of the normal coffee, it served Cappuccino, Latte, Mocha and the likes.

Here was the price list.  For the White Coffee series, a Latte was $2.50 (hot) and $3 (cold).

There were some newspaper adverts.  Apparently, this store had made the news before.

This was the iced Latte.  Very generous with the milk.  Turned out that my kids loved it and they almost finished my Latte.  Oh well.

And now, we consume the egg tart.  It wasn't too bad.

We also got this Avocado juice from an Avocado store behind.  This store specialises in Avocado juice.  Didn't really like it.  There is a burnt taste, not sure why.

After the meal at the hawker centre, we went to look for a store selling kueh.  This wasn't the famous store, but another one facing the main road.

A lot of different stuff here that I wasn't very familiar with.

The various types of kueh - Bean, Coconut, Salty Bean, Peanut.  70 cents per piece.

Quite a number of newspaper cuttings.  Looks like this shop has been well featured in the press and magazines, well at least in the past.  Some of the articles looked rather dated.

On the way back to the carpark, I stopped to take this photo of this rather unique looking buildings.  Looks like some very large LEGO bricks stacked haphazardly on one another.

I gather this is the Interlace project.  Previously, this plot of land was the HUDC estate called Gillman Heights.  A lot of controversy surrounded that enbloc sale, which made so much news and even went to the Courts. Anyway, all that is history now.

Safe travels!