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About Hock Lam Beef
The Original four-generation strong, Singaporean Heritage Delicacy.
Hock Lam Beef continues the 98 year old tradition of serving the highest quality Teochew beef kway teow in Singapore. The most awarded beef kway teow recipe in Singapore was handed down two (2) generations later to Anthony Tan Hung Siang. Anthony was crowned Singapore’s Beef noodle King in 2002. Since 2004, Anthony’s daughter, Tina Tan, has taken over the crown and continued to win more national accolades.
Altogether, the business has maintained its standards and quality since 1911, when the business moved into its first store, where previously Anthony’s granddad used to sell his delicious noodles on foot around Chinatown.
Recipe Highlights – the 3 advantages of a true Singaporean heritage delicacy.
- Labour intensive, homemade 24-hour boiled gourmet soup with herb base;
- Homemade gourmet chilli sauce with 13 ingredients, and
- Hand sliced beef cuts (not machine cut) for maximum tenderness and flavour makes this a dish of the highest quality.
With 13 ingredients in the gourmet soup base and homemade chilli sauce, many wonder about the secret ingredient that makes this recipe so special. At Hock Lam Beef, generations ago, we realised that the secret ingredient was the effort in preparing everything by hand in-house. This effort distinguishes this original recipe from its competitors.
Altogether, the business has maintained its standards and quality since 1911, when the business moved into its first store, where previously Anthony’s granddad used to sell his delicious noodles on foot around Chinatown.
Having no low-cost compromises allows full quality control of the ingredients and avoids artificial flavours and ingredients. It may cost a little more, but we prefer doing it this way.
Having the oldest surviving recipe includes the advantages of being able to create the gourmet soup base and 13-ingredient chilli sauce without resorting to factory prepared ingredients. The soup is then boiled for at least 24 hours to extract the full flavour from the beef and beef bones used as a base. The additional advantage of the recipe is that it includes techniques for preparing hand sliced beef cuts, instead of less tender machine cut beef, which then requires tenderiser and loses the natural beef flavour.
These 3 advantages of the original recipe, homemade 24-hour boiled gourmet soup, homemade gourmet chilli sauce and hand prepared beef cuts without tenderiser makes this a dish of the highest quality, and a true Singaporean heritage dish.
Come down for a perfect bowl of the original Teochew beef kway teow today!
We are located at:
- 22 China St, #01-01, Far East Square (Off Upp. Pickering St);
- 949 Upper Serangoon Rd, and
- 1 Jelebu Rd, #01-60/61, Bukit Panjang Plaza
If you would like to give us your feedback, make enquiries or just to say ‘hi’, do drop us an email at enquiries@hocklambeef.com.
Lady Iron Chef – Hock Lam Beef 97th Anniversary Celebration with Operation Smile
Hock Lam Beef: 97th Anniversary and continue going
With more and more of our heritage hawkers getting in their ages, it is difficult for them to continue whip out the delicious food that they have been doing everyday for so many years. And being a hawker isn’t a glamorous job, compared to being a banker, lawyer, teacher or other professionals. Therefore, most of the heritage hawkers don’t any successor, and we risk losing out all the good food, which our future younger generations will not live to eat.
Lady Iron Chef Reviews Hock Lam Beef's 97th Anniversary
With more and more of our heritage hawkers getting in their ages, it is difficult for them to continue whip out the delicious food that they have been doing everyday for so many years. And being a hawker isn’t a glamorous job, compared to being a banker, lawyer, teacher or other professionals. Therefore, most of the heritage hawkers don’t any successor, and we risk losing out all the good food, which our future younger generations will not live to eat.
Hock Lam Beef is the golden testimonial to beef kuay teow. Having been around since 1911, it is a wonder to see it continue serving out bowls of beef kuay teow everyday rain or shine up till today, for 97 years already! We have Tina, the 4th generation owner, who gave up her professional job and rather slug it out in the kitchen, so as to ensure our beef kuay teow will still be there.
To commemorate their 97th anniversary, Hock Lam decided to donate all their sales proceed on 1st Oct to to Operation Smile which is a worldwide movement to fix cleft palates in kids.
As proceeds for that day was all going to charity, Tina came up with a special menu, instead of their usual $4 a bowl beef kuay teow. There was three different selections, the beginner at $15 which had sliced beef plate. The original at $20, a mixed beef plate which included sliced beef, tendoin, tripe, shin and beef balls. And the “give me the whole cow” premium gourmet set at $30 which had the same stuff as the $20 set, with the exception of the sliced beef, and instead there was marbled shabu shabu beef.
Give me the whole cow gourmet set ($30)
The Gau lau mian (traditional dry noodles) was nice, with their sauce used. Besides having fresh beef, the other thing that makes or break a good beef kuay teow will definitely be the soup base. And Hock Lam’s one certainly was excellent. Personally i did not really like to eat beef kuay teow or noodles because from far i could detect the very strong beefy smell of the beef soup.
Hock Lam soup did not have a very strong beefy smell, but that did not mean that their soup wasn’t good, rather, the soup was very intense with beef flavours, which was evident of the many hours put in to cook the soup.
For the older generation and the traditional beef kuay teow purist, they might resist the idea of shabu shabu in a traditional shop like Hock Lam. But times are changing, and having gourmet beef at one of the best store serving Beef kuay teow, will be an interesting concept, which i believe appeals to the younger generations who will pay more for quality.
Tina and her father, for without them, there will not be any Hock Lam Beef kuay teow.
Happy 97th birthday Hock Lam Beef and many more years to come! And i will like to thank the folks at Olive consulting who invited me for the occasion, and Tina for her hospitality.
Hock Lam Beef
22 China Square #01-01
Far East Square
Tel: 62209290
Disclaimer: This was an invited review
Via http://www.ladyironchef.com/2008/10/11/hock-lam-beef-97th-anniversary-and-continue-going/
ieatishootipost blogs Singapore’s best food: Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow: Traditional Teochew Recipe since 1911
Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow: Traditional Teochew Recipe since 1911
With liverpool and iwatch_ueat
My Beef Kway Teow list would be incomplete without the inclusion of this famous stall which has been around for almost a century. Hock Lam Street is famous not only for its traditional Teochew Beef Kway Teow recipe, lately it has also become well known for having the most agreeable looking Beef Kway Teow Stall vendor in Singapore (As far as I know).
Screenshot - http://ieatishootipost.sg/2007/02/hock-lam-street-beef-kway-teow.html
When you venture into the stall, you are greeted by a young lady whom you think could be wearing a Sarong Kabaya. When starts speaking, you'd probably wonder why she's not wearing a Citibank uniform instead. The fact of the matter is this fourth generation Beef Kway Teow vendor just happens to be an Australian Degree Holder to gave up her $10K bank job to take over the family business! So you can actually buy a bowl of Beef Kway Teow and talk about the BULL market at the same time!
Tina is adament that the receipe be preserved in its original Teochew form, so it comes with salted vegetables and plenty of ground nuts and WITHOUT the familiar Chinchaluk (shrimp sauce). The sliced beef was nice and very tender. Tina tells us that all the beef is still sliced by hand and no tenderizer is used. The stewed beef and tripe were both very good. The beef balls were nice but they no longer make it themselves. I felt the sauce could be more Shiok, but Teochew food tends to emphasize more on the freshness of the ingredients, so Teochew sauces tend to be a little more bland when compared to the other dialect groups. 4/5
Conclusion
Definitely one of Singapore's heritage hawkers and one cannot discuss Beef Kway Teow without including this famous Zhao Pai (Signboard). I am glad that Tina is ensuring that future generations will still get to savour their age old recipe.
Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow
22 China St, #01-01
Far East Square
62209290
90180508 (Tina Tan)
POSTED BY IEAT AT SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2007
LABELS: 2 HOTLY COMMENTED BLOGS, 3 HERITAGE HAWKERS, 8 CBD, BEEF KWAY TEOW, TEOCHEW
Review on “The Atlantic”
A Remembrance of Beef Ball Noodles Past
When I was a ninth-grader in Singapore, one thing sustained me during the waning hour of many a school day: beef ball noodles.
The beef ball noodles at the food court of Scotts Shopping Centre, to be specific. When school let out at lunchtime, my girlfriends and I would eagerly pile into a bus, alight at the downtown shopping area, and make a beeline for the Scotts Picnic Food Court, a place that was famous in its own right—it was the first air-conditioned food court in Singapore.
Review on The Atlantic
There, a bowl of thick vermicelli waited. It came topped with springy beef balls and bean sprouts and drowned in a glop of brown gravy that was beefy and sweet, laced with tinges of spices like cinnamon and star anise. We would dump in some fiery red chili sauce, toss everything together in the bowl with chopsticks, and stop our teenage chatter for several long moments as we devoted our energy to shoveling mouthfuls of slippery, gravy-coated noodles into our mouths instead.
At age 14, I thought these noodles were sheer bliss in a bowl.
It was a feeling that would last for many years. Long after I graduated from high school and moved to the U.S., I would occasionally return to Scotts to seek them out, until one day when I visited Singapore in 2007 only to discover that a big hole existed where Scotts had once stood. I knew it had been too good to last—the ceaseless march of modernization and redevelopment had finally claimed the beloved food court of my teenage years.
Where had the noodle proprietor gone? No one knew.
To fill the void, I went on a quest.
I ventured near Singapore’s East Coast Beach to sample beef noodles at Kim Moh Beef Noodle & Authentic Asian Cuisine, a little Hainanese restaurant. These, however, came with slivers of meat instead of beef balls and with a wide, flat rice noodle instead of tubular vermicelli. The gravy was a smidge too gummy and the noodles were so far from al dente that some were disturbingly sticky.
Next, I went to Original Popular Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow, run by a family that’s been selling the noodles for almost 90 years. (Which probably makes them deserving of their rather long and immodest name.) The noodles here were delightful—and came with a sprinkling of chopped salted vegetables, which added a lovely, briny zing that helped cut the hefty meatiness of the gravy.
But still, I longed for the Scotts beef ball noodles of my youth.
Then, on a recent trip back to Singapore for book research, a friend casually uttered the words I’d been waiting for. “Hey, did you hear that the Scotts beef ball noodle place reopened?”
As soon as I could gather my two best girlfriends from high school, I found myself lining up at Scotts Beef Noodles, hungry with anticipation.
There were some changes, of course—the noodles were no longer Singapore $3.50 (U.S. $2.50) a bowl but instead cost Singapore $5.00 (U.S. $3.60), which would have been a little exorbitant on my teenage allowance. And the stall, located in the food court of Ion, Singapore’s glitziest new mall, was gleaming and spiffed up, sporting a fetching sign that gave a thumbnail of the hawker’s history, noting that the establishment had been selling beef noodles since the 1940s.
But as the Beef Ball Auntie slid my noodles across the counter, everything looked pretty much the same.
As my friends and I slurped up our noodles—which we’d ordered with both tender beef slivers and beef balls—we chewed thoughtfully. The balls were as springy as I remembered them, although they seemed a little smaller. And the sauce was fine. (I found myself wishing it came with some of those chopped salted vegetables that Hock Lam offered.)
“It’s OK,” my friend Jeanette finally said.
It’s true—it was OK. Perfectly satisfying. But just OK.
As a small swelling of disappointment began, however, I caught myself. Here we were, three women who had been the best of friends for 21 years and counting. With two of us (Regina and myself) now living in the U.S., it had been years since we’d gathered together for any meal, much less the very one that had helped seal our friendships all those years ago. The noodles, whether good now or better then, had served their purpose.
Our curiosity sated, we emptied our bowls and ventured out. Somewhere outside, coffee awaited.
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan