ABC Market’s Famed Fatty Cheong Opens Zi Char Stall With Shiok $5 Fish Noodle Soup

Even as a quinquagenarian, Tuck Cheong (pictured) is adept at moving with the times. Though his char siew is already popular, he modernises the classic dish by adding red wine and kimchi to the pork to appeal to younger customers. “I want the Z people to try my food,” he chirps (‘Z people’ is his endearing term for zoomers).

He’s also eager to revive and introduce more traditional dishes to the mod crowd, which is why he has opened a new stall on May 7 this year called Cantonese Private Dishes, also at ABC Market. It’s his third stall there, after his roast meat joint and a wanton mee stall selling noodles topped with roast meat and a fried egg (the latter two shops are now run by his two sons; he also has a daughter who’s not in the family biz and instead works at a F&B management company).

His new biz has been open for only a week when Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) kicked in. “My business dropped by 40 per cent, but still got people lah,” he says. The brightly-lit stall is also right across the popular Tiong Bahru Yi Sheng Fried Hokkien Mee, which regularly has a long queue even with the no dine-in rule. Tuck Cheong reckons that the lively foot traffic is a boon for everyone: “People also order my food while they’re waiting for their Hokkien mee.”

‘Private dishes’ is a popular term used in the Chinese culinary world, where chefs and cooks pride themselves on adding their own unique touch to their menu.

Tuck Cheong personally cooks at his new stall. “If I have to hire someone to cook, I wouldn’t have opened this stall,” he says, explaining that he had apprenticed under “three masters” in his youth. “One taught me dim sum, one taught me zi char and one taught me how to roast meat. I want to pay homage to them and not let their home-style cooking knowledge go to waste,” he shares.

He forayed into the dim sum business in the early noughties, with a short-lived restaurant called “De Bao Dim Sum” at Chinatown’s Smith Street. “I didn’t continue, because the rent got too high,” he says.

It appears that hearty nosh is Fatty Cheong’s forte. At Cantonese Private Dishes, he offers just three types of communal-ish dishes: Cantonese Sliced Fish Noodle ($5), Cantonese Prawn Crispy Noodle ($8/$13) and the fun, customisable Fish Head (seasonal price), with your choice of red grouper, red snapper and bighead carp head (grouper and snapper tail also available).

You can have your fish cooked in four different ways — Bean Sauce Steamed, Hong Kong Style, Ginger & Onion and Curry Steamed.

“These are dishes that very few people are serving these days,” shares Tuck Cheong, who figured that “it’s a lot of work [to prepare and cook], so you hardly see it now”. When the local Covid-19 situation calms down, he plans to roll out more “meat and veggie dishes” for his zi char menu.

For just $5, you get a generous portion of sliced fish noodles that’s good for two light eaters. The Cantonese version of this classic comfort dish is rich and creamy, unlike the delicate, clean-tasting broth that the Teochews favour. “I don’t use any milk for my fish bee hoon,” says Tuck Cheong. The Cantonese clan member is so proud of this dish, he invites us to observe him as he cooks.

To get a silky consistency for his broth, he boils a whole chicken, pork bones, pork ribs and “other ingredients” for up to two hours. The soup is then cooked in a wok over a robust fire with stir-fried ginger and sliced fish, a liberal dash of Shaoxing wine, and covered briefly with a domed lid to simmer before thick bee hoon is added.

The result is a heady, boozy, full-bodied bowl of fish noodle soup — the broth a sexy, toasty brown — that’s good to the last drop. But we don’t recommend tapow-ing this for long distances; the bee hoon gets soggy fast. Savour this when dining-in resumes.

Fatty Cheong’s crispy sang meen is a popular fancy banquet dish in the ’70s, topped with a fluffy prawn omelette and draped in a hor fun-style starchy oyster sauce. The noodles are only fried upon order (packed separately with the sauce if you tapow).

Watching Fatty Cheong cook the crispy noodles is almost like enjoying a fascinating display; he drops a handful of eggy strands into hot oil in a well-seasoned wok, and the noodles immediately blossom into a perfect disc. He languidly flips it a couple of times with his ladle before lifting it out, a whole process that takes mere seconds. Incidentally, Tuck Cheong is a celebrated lion dance coach and consultant, which may explain why he’s a natural performer (and the snazzy red-and-yellow T-shirt he wears daily).

He then fries a crispy-edged prawn omelette and lays it ceremonially on top of the noodles. Despite being deep-fried, the noodle isn’t oily, and retains its crispiness even after we bring it home. It softens a little when we pour the accompanying sauce over it, but just crunching on it is very shiok. It also feels like we’re eating a special treat, even though we’re not at an old-school banquet.

The Cantonese adore steamed fish, and it’s not hard to see why; we think it’s one of the best ways to enjoy a fresh catch, when the steam gently cooks the translucent flesh till it turns pearly-white while still retaining its buttery texture and sweetness.

Like any good cook of his dialect, Fatty Cheong serves the dish draped in black bean sauce, or in a Hong Kong-style (with a simple soy sauce and Shaoxing wine-based dressing) or stir-fried with ginger and onions. But 'cos not everyone likes their fish clean-tasting and light, we KIV-ed his other offerings and went for the crowd-pleasing curry fish head for this story.

Tuck Cheong whips up the curry in a separate saucepan on a portable electric stove. He laboriously chops up vegetables like lady’s finger, brinjal and tomatoes, and tosses them into the pan with curry paste, cut red chillies and a strong-handed drizzle of evaporated milk. The curry is then poured over the separately-steamed fish head — still glassy-eyed — and plated.

While not as meaty as the belly portion, our fish head still yields a decent amount of tender, juicy flesh that we dip into the rich curry. It’s very good. After we finish picking through the fish head, eyeballs and all, we pour the remaining curry into a bowl of warm, fluffy rice and hoover it all up. Ho sek.

Cantonese Private Dishes, #01-20 ABC Brickworks Market & Food Centre, 6 Jalan Bukit Merah, S150006. Open daily except Thur, 11.30am-8.30pm.

Photos: Kelvin Chia