Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng Review: 11-Ingredient Cheng Tng Made With An 83-Year-Old Recipe

Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng in Bedok has cheng tng with 11 ingredients

When I saw that I’d been assigned to visit Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng, I have to admit I wasn’t stoked. I have never liked 清汤 (qīng tāng)—I shun it when it appears at catered buffets and wedding banquets, having tried and found it too sweet, with little by way of ingredients worth my interest.

Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng has been around the sun almost thrice as many times as I have since the current stall owner’s grandmother first started making the dessert in 1939. Surely they’ve got something right, I thought to myself, if they’ve survived this long selling just one item—and they most definitely changed my mind about the dessert.

Food at Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng

The only decision you’ll have to make when you visit Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng is whether you’d like your bowl of dessert hot or cold. Each bowl is priced at $3, with the cold version being the more popular option.

For what looks like a simple bowl of dessert, there’s a whole lot of preparation that goes into its making. There are a whopping 11 ingredients in Ye Lai Xiang’s version, which you’ll see in the display fronting the stall.

The individual ingredients don’t look like much in the huge serving bowls and platters, but they come together to form quite a colourful sight, with their different shapes, textures, and colours.

What ties them together is the syrup base, of which there are two components at Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng.

The first is a pandan-infused syrup, and the other is water that dried longan are soaked and rehydrated in before they go into the bowls of cheng tng.

Having tried both the hot and cold versions of the cheng tng, I felt that the flavour of the pandan was more pronounced in the hot soup, but not unpleasantly so. Both bowls had a light, almost floral sort of sweetness, neither being overwhelmingly sugary.

Unlike my other experiences with cheng tng, which left me feeling like I’d drank the syrup from a can of longan, this was almost revelatory for me.

Besides the rehydrated longan, you’ll find canned longan, gingko nuts, dried persimmon, candied wintermelon, mung beans, sweet potato, barley, and white fungus.

These bowls of cheng tng also feature large pearls of sago, which we were told take extra effort to cook.

Rounding up the 11 ingredients is 胖大海 (pàng dà hǎi), or malva nut. Translated, it reads ‘fat big ocean’, named for the way the nuts balloon when they’re soaked in water. According to the stall owner, they’re extra finicky to prepare, but ultra cooling for the body, especially in our tropical weather.

I wasn’t particularly fond of the sago, being a brown sugar pearl kind of person myself. But that was a small inconvenience in the bigger picture of Ye Lai Xiang’s cheng tng.

What I did enjoy was the sheer variety of liao in the cheng tng, my favourite being the dried persimmon and longan, and candied winter melon.

If you’re ordering it cold, the bowl is topped up with crushed ice, rather than cubes, which meant the dessert was evenly chilled throughout.

Ambience at Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng

The nearest train station to Bedok Food Centre, where Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng is located, is Tanah Merah MRT Station. It’s 15 minutes away by bus or a 1.5km walk. I was pleasantly surprised by how clean and tidy-looking the hawker centre was, with spaciously allocated seats and al fresco tables in the centre of the space.

It was pretty quiet when we visited on a weekday morning—we were told that business has generally been slow since the pandemic, and they struggle to sell even half as many bowls of cheng tng as they used to.

The verdict

If Ye Lai Xiang weren’t located so awfully far away from where I stay, I might just have picked up a cheng tng-guzzling habit. I wouldn’t say they’ve changed my mind about all cheng tng, but till I find another bowl that’s as good as theirs, it’s safe to say that theirs is the only cheng tng I’ll be eating.

House of Dessert is another stall in the East which has got old-school sweet treats, including a watermelon ball dessert! Otherwise, tau suan fans can check out our guide to the best tau suan in Singapore.

Address: 1 Bedok Road, Stall 31, Bedok Food Centre, Singapore 469572
Opening hours: Wed-Sun 9:30am to 7pm
Tel: 9299 5062
Website
Ye Lai Xiang Cheng Tng is not a halal-certified eatery, but does not use pork or lard

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