Friday was the day for our Joochiat adventure! Although we were supposed to head there last week for one of our regular food hunts, we put it off. This week, we decided to head down for some durians and to explore some of the stuff that people have said were famous there.

Before all that, we headed down to Borders to get some stuff. I bought a copy of the PHB 2, and Stella got herself To Kill A Mockingbird. Headed to the Borders Bistro after for a drink and a snack before meeting up with Keane and Serene for dimsum dinner at Victor’s Kitchen.

Stella the happy camper:
The fateful smoothie. It was great stuff. Unfortunately the glass that we got had pieces of paper/sticker in it. I was constantly sucking out pieces of it, and finally I took it up to the manager who replaced the glass of drink for me. I suspect it was one of those brand stickers on the fruits that got into the blender. Whatever it is, that was fine – we actually got a free glass of smoothie out of it.
Tuna and cheese melt. Thought it was really value for money for about 12 bucks.
Next up, we headed down to Bugis for some shopping, before meeting up with Keane and Serene at Victor’s Kitchen at Sunshine Plaza. This was a place that Stacey’s friend recommended to us some time back, and it has sat pretty high in terms of its ‘dodgyness factor’ as well as the quality of the food.
When we left Bugis, it was around 9. We took a train down to Aljunied and the first stop were the durians. It was just a street down from the MRT station, and we had to make our choice over another stall which we first encountered. We skipped that when we observed not many people eating there. Turns out that the entire row of fruit stalls were owned by the same people. Doh. Had the Mao Shan Wang durians, for something like $18 per kg. This one was a 2kg durian, and we promptly set about demolishing it. Great stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much durian in my life before.
Stella looking very happy with her durians:
Next up, we headed down for some beancurd with youtiao (deep fried dough fritters). Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much from this because I’ve more or less tasted both before. I mean, beancurd? done that. Youtiao? done that too obviously. But man, this shit was good! Somehow or another, the combination of flavours (read: oil) were just right there. Totally hit the spot on that one.

Rochor Beancurd – the place where we had the good stuff:

Stage 2 – complete!
For the final leg of the food hunt, we walked down a little to the place they call 126, or wan tok sek. Supposedly it means something like ‘found a place to eat’ in Cantonese. We heard that the establishment was good for its dim sum, so we headed in for some. The general crowd eating outside was quite a good indicator that we had reached the right place. Sat outside for a bit before heading in – good decision since there was air conditioning inside (I wonder why non of those people outside realised that).

Had the paper wrapped chicken:
A smallish crab steamed with garlic:

Final verdict : wellll…. I didn’t think that it was that fantastic, really. It was cheap, truly, but it wasn’t something I would travel all the way to Geylang for. I think Stella feels the same about this place too. We would head back to Victor’s anytime for dimsum. The redeeming factor would probably be the fact that 126 has a pretty extensive menu, so there’s lots to try.

We then headed back home by bus. The crawlers of the night were just about to emerge, and Geylang started to unveil itself for what it was most famous for. Both of us were tired, but really happy that we managed to explore someplace new this week. We’ll be back to look for some of the other dishes that we missed out this round. We chatted and joked on the bus as we rounded off the night and the week in the best possible way – just a quiet time with the best company one can have in the whole world.