Food review 2008 #06 - Ga Hock Seafood

This was our 2nd visit to this zi-char stall. It's definately not located somewhere I'll consider convenient. If not for my younger brother who brought us there for dinner before, I'll never had the chance to try the food here. And surprisingly, the food's good and prices reasonable! Which explained why we were there for a 2nd time. The shop name is pretty confusing to me. Firstly, it was located at the ground floor of the 福建会馆 and right at the front of the coffeshop, there was a huge signboard which read " CHOON HUP"... but then only during this 2nd visit that I noticed that the stall was named "佳福" (Ga Hock Seafood)...

Anyway.... just outside the coffeshop, there's some parking spaces. The actual dining area is behind the shop. There's a huge area behind which allowed the stall owner to place easily 30 tables! The lighting conditions pretty bad tho'. And that's why the photos that follows are really badly taken. (Yeah rite... giving excuses for pics poorly taken huh? LOL)

We ordered a total of 9 dishes... and here they are :

First up... The claypot braised fish head. The dish tasted just OK to me. Alot of sauce in there for us to mix our rice with. The fish head's quite meaty and the serving of the vegetables in the claypot is huge too. But I'll prefer the sauce to be just a little bit saltier. It'll be so perfect!Next, we had mongolian ribs.... now... tell me, how does mongolian ribs taste like? the name's so intriging that we had to try it! but well.... i'm disappointed... it's just pork ribs fried and then cooked with some sweet n sour sauce. DUH....trust the chef to come up with names of dishes like this!

After the disappointing ribs, we had cereal prawns... now this is GOOD. the prawns were huge and very fresh. It was not overcooked.... my only gripe is that the shells of the prawns were not fried crisp enough that I can chew it up and swallow. The kids loved the cereals but there's some chilli flakes in it, so they were complaining abt the spiciness in the cereals.

Stir fried dou miao ("豆苗"). Not oily and seasoned just nice...simple dish of stirfry with some garlic.... good job! Then we had stir fried curry venison. I loved this dish ALOT. the meat's very tender and the curry's not overpowering. I can still taste the venison beneath the coating of curry. Not too spicy too and it went very well with rice.Deep fried baby squids. The chef did a good job for this dish too. The squids were very crunchy and it's not too small. The fried squids remained crunchy after it turned cold.Braised sea cucumber with duck. This dish came in a claypot. The duck and sea sucumber were cooked just to the right texture. Tho' DH said he'll much prefered the duck to be softer. The sea cucumber were cut in huge chunks... very generous portions. The sauce was cookedjust nice and full of flavours...The grand finale was the chilli crabs! The crabs tasted really fresh and meaty. In fact, the meat had a sweetness to it! They were quite good size crabs. However, I'm rather disappointed by the accompanying chilii sauce. There's no "ommph" to it ... I think 'coz it's not spicy enough to give that extra kick. Also I'll like chilli sauce to have alot of egg bits swirling in it... but there's very little in there. Well, guess the quality of the crabs kinda made up the difference... but if only the sauce was just as good.... I'll be a loyal fan!

The final dish was fried mantou... well, I won't classify it as a dish on it's own... it's more to "mop up" the chilli sauce in the crab dish. But the kids loved it plain as it is... and when I asked them which their fav dish was that evening, they said it's the fried mantou! *rolls eyes*

On the whole, the food served here was good... and for the 9 dishes we ordered, it was under SGD200! Quite a good deal. Sad to say, there's something that really irritated the hell out of me while there. The drink stall that just next to it had the worst service! It was run by a guy and he had a helper, a woman in her early 40's (maybe) and both of them behaved like the whole world offended them! They were very impatient when taking orders and went abt the place with super black-as-charcoal faces! My goodness... I think next time I'll bring my own drinks!

Ga-Hock Seafood is located at 794, Bukit Timah Road. Singapore 678175, tel : 63145725. It's further down the road from the Linear condo and before the shell petrol stn. The place gets filled up very fast during mealtimes. I'm not sure if they take reservations, can call and try yr luck. So either you come early or be prepared to wait for a table.