Hill Street Fried Kway Teow Review: Famous CKT Since 1961 In Bedok South

Famous long queue Hill Street Fried Kway Teow in Bedok South

Char kway teow isn’t one of my go-to hawker dishes, because there’s really only one stall that I eat it at—Hill Street Fried Kway Teow in Bedok South Market & Food Centre. Unfortunately, it’s pretty far out of my zone of convenience, and the queues for their fried kway teow are always super long, so I only eat it once in a very, very long while.

Hill Street Fried Kway Teow is listed on Singapore’s Michelin guide for the “intense flavours” in their CKT, which they have been known for since they started in 1961 as a pushcart stall. They’re named for the first hawker centre that they set up shop in, but have been here in Bedok ever since the turn of the millennium.

Sadly, the original founder passed away in 2018, but not before he had passed his skills on to his eldest son, who runs Hill Street Fried Kway Teow today. In fact, it’s said that it took his son a whole year of practice before his plate of CKT met his late father’s exacting standards.

Food at Hill Street Fried Kway Teow

You really don’t have any choice at all when you visit Hill Street Fried Kway Teow. There’s only the one dish, in one size, priced at $4.

There are multiple huge woks working at the same time in the stall, yet the average waiting time for your char kway teow can be anywhere from 20 minutes to—on the last occasion I had this, during the Circuit Breaker—one-and-a-half hours.

The kway teow-yellow mee mix actually undergoes a two-step frying process, starting with a first round that lightly chars and flavours the noodles. It’s then dished into baskets, ready for the cook to transform into the glistening dark plates of CKT you’re served.

They fry multiple serves of char kway teow at a time and take their time to ensure it’s done well—even though you do have to wait to get your hands on the fried noodles, you know it’s well worth it.

You get the usual additions of egg and beansprouts here, added incrementally and tossed together so it’s evenly distributed.

The wait between each customer is extended as the CKT is, at the end, fried in even smaller batches with the finishing condiments ahead of plating. They really don’t cut any corners.

Generally speaking, I prefer tau gey to be served separately from my noodles, but I found myself not minding the beansprouts in my CKT here. They weren’t green-tasting and raw, nor were they soggy and limp, adding just the right bit of freshness and crunch to the savoury dish.

My colleague and I had just tried another famous CKT some weeks ago, and agreed that this was far superior in terms of achieving a balanced flavour; I in particular had found the other plate of char kway teow too sweet. My colleague, however, thought that Hill Street Fried Kway Teow’s version lacked wok hei in comparison.

There was a very generous number of hum, AKA blood cockles, in both our plates of CKT. My colleague also loved how fresh they were, suddenly recollecting that the ones at the other stall had been slightly off. You’ll get super thin slices of lup cheong, or Chinese sausage, and crisp puffs of pork lard, which sealed the deal on this for us.

Ambience at Hill Street Fried Kway Teow

Hill Street Fried Kway Teow is a 13-minute bus ride, or 1.2km walk from Bedok MRT Station—in other words, not that nearby. Bedok South Market & Food Centre gets pretty crowded, and I imagine it’s even more so during the school term since Temasek Junior College is just a zebra crossing away.

There are lots of tables, but some seats do get obstructed by people queueing in between them. We’d arrived at 11:30am on a weekday, with around 10 customers in the line ahead of us. We had to wait approximately 40 minutes before we got to the front, and the queue had gotten even longer by then. If you have the luxury of time, getting here at 11am is your best bet.

The verdict

It could be that the last time I had Hill Street Fried Kway Teow’s CKT was three years ago, but I was super satisfied with my char kway teow, even if it did lack a touch of wok hei. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own favourites, and the snaking queues at other famous CKT stalls prove as much.

If you’d like to hunt down all the CKT around town, we’ve got a list of the best char kway teow in Singapore that you could check out. Outram Park Char Kway Teow in Hong Lim Market is one of them, with queues that regularly stretch up to an hour!

Address: 16 Bedok South Road, #01-41, Bedok South Market & Food Centre, Singapore 460016
Opening hours: Tue-Thurs, Sat 11am to 4:45pm, Fri 10am to 4:45pm
Hill Street Fried Kway Teow is not a halal-certified eatery

Photos taken by John Lery Villanueva
This was an independent review by Eatbook.sg