Saturday, January 21, 2012

Lao Ban Dou Hua (老伴豆花)

Singaporeans love queuing. Singaporeans love queuing for good food. Singaporeans love queuing for good food that is cheap.

This is the beancurd ($1.50) from Lao Ban Dou Hua (老伴豆花) from Old Airport. Unless you have been living under a hole, you would have heard of this new food phenomenon. Queues snake around like nobody's business and everybody snaps at least 20 bowls of beancurd at one go.

And there is actually an uncanny resemblance between the man on the plastic bag and the real man behind this stall (Mr Li Hui Shing). His wife (Mdm Hui Ywai Kwai) doesn't look that similar though.

So how's this different from other soya beancurd? Makansutra tells us that they use fresh soy bean milk, tame it with coffee-mate like milk and malt mixture with some gelatin. Then it's steamed, cooled and chilled for a few hours. Some even claim that they have found the recipe to this stall that attracts insane queues.


(photo credit: Lao Ban Soya Beancurd)

Maybe because expectations were too high, or maybe because yesterday I had tried something like this at Amoy Street Food Centre already. But my first response does not match the hype that it deserves. Yes, it's incredibly smooth, push it through your teeth and your teeth becomes an instant soya bean machine making beancurd into soya bean milk (new function for teeth). Unfortunately, it was a tad too sweet for me. Unlike the normal beancurd where you can adjust the sweetness level by telling them how much syrup to put, you can't tell them to adjust it here simply because there's no syrup!


It's lovely to try the beancurd form of soya bean and to participate in the national activity of queuing. Here's just an idea, but maybe they could sell different sugar levels (thereby adjusting the sugar level before refrigerating it) so that it can cater to different tastes, just like bubble tea. That said, here are just my two cents worth and in any case, you should give this new food phenomena a try!

Lao Ban Dou Hua (老伴豆花)
Old Airport Road Food Centre
51 Old Airport Road
#01-127
Tel: +65 8181 2201

4 comments:

I have tried 51 douhua, lao ban douhua, happy soy bean douhua, but I still prefer the authentic douhua which they sell in the market. The texture is smoother and not so artificial.












Me too. Taste too artificial. Still love traditional tau hua

yup! while i prefer the original beancurd, i thought it was interesting to try the new kind of beancurd too!

To me, it tastes good for a few spoonful, after that, is bland. O-o. Feels like unbalanced seasoning... Top sweet, bottom bland. I was underwhelmed. T_T. I love tao huay! the traditional one too!

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