Fu Lin Bar & Kitchen Review: Hipster Yong Tau Foo With Super Shiok Bak Chor Bee Hoon

Yong tau food made unhealthy but shiok

The beauty of hawker food like caifan and yong tau foo lies in how you get to build your meal with your favourite ingredients. Even though many people eat YTF because it’s relatively healthy – let’s be real, it’s practically a Chinese version of salad – I much prefer the more shiok version that involves ordering it dry and drowning my noodles in sweet sauce and chilli. Fu Lin Bar & Kitchen whips up a unique style of YTF that seriously appeals to this unhealthy side of me.

Food at Fu Lin Bar & Kitchen

We decided to go with 6 Pieces Set (Dry) with Signature Noodles ($6+) and three additional items ($0.80+ each) because over-ordering has always been my forte. We could pick anything from metal trays laid out before us, and as compared to other yong tau foo stalls, Fu Lin has more fried ingredients. To go with your YTF, you get a choice of rice or Signature Thick Bee Hoon ($2+ ala carte).

TADAH. We had bok choy, lady’s finger, eggplant, seaweed chicken, fish ball, fish paste wrapped in bean curd skin, bean curd skin roll, fish paste wrapped in wanton skin and crispy bean curd skin with a bowl of thick bee hoon.

All our ingredients were fried except for the bok choy. Honestly, most of the fried stuff look the same, but what stood out most was this crispy bean curd skin. It wasn’t as oily as I expected and the crispy crackling sound you get from munching on this is simply satisfying. This is salmon skin in the vegetarian world. GIMME MORE.

The glossy YTF sauce was lightly salty and sweet with bits of bak chor (minced meat) and shiitake mushrooms. It was starchy and thick but not overpowering in both texture and flavour to make finishing your plate a jelak affair. In short, it was super shiok!

I love how they use thick bee hoon to bring out the taste of the sauce. Using the exact same sauce doused on our YTF ingredients but with extra white pepper, the signature sauce complemented the bee hoon perfectly.

Along with bak chor and shiitake, this bowl of noodles created a good contrast between textures. As much as I loved the sauce, it’d be better if the dry version came with a bowl of soup.

For someone who spams chilli on everything she eats, I have a pretty high standard for chilli and this garlic chilli is worth a mention.

Ambience at Fu Lin

Kitchen in the morning and a bar at night, Fu Lin is pretty hipster for a Yong Tau Foo stall. With a contemporary industrial setting, it’s a great place to have a quick lunch at around the CBD without spending a bomb and hang out at after work for drinks.

The verdict

Fu Lin’s original stall is at Siglap, where they serve the same fare but in a non-air conditioned and more casual environment. Head over there for a fuss-free and slightly cheaper meal, but if you’re a CBD-kia then this outlet is definitely more convenient. The more atas environment also makes this a good spot to bring your tourist friends and relatives to for a meal of simple yet satisfying YTF.

This is an independent review by Eatbook.sg.