Before I Lose My Mind: Food Places: J & J Special Beef Noodles

As much as I love eating, I surprise myself with the fact that I've yet to write about food places yet, so here's my first entry. My inspiration came from our usual post dragonboat training early dinner, and last weekend, it was at the Old Airport Road hawker centre. For those of you who are not familiar with the Singapore scene (if you ARE from Singapore but don't know the hawker centre.. which rock have you been living under?!), the hawker centre is located just a 10 minutes' drive away from Suntec City, and for dragonboaters, a mere 5 minutes' drive away from the Kallang Water Sport Centre (where we train). The place is literally chock full of delightful eats, so if you want a place where you can try some nice local food in a wholesome environment, cooked by hawkers who actually run their own foodstalls.

We stumbled upon this stall purely by accident. It's located at the side closer to the Dakota train station, where it's quieter, and easier for us to find seats for our group. Most of us usually venture towards the famous stalls like the famous western food stall (known for its garlic sauce), rojak, soya beancurd, etc. The first time I'd ordered from J&J Special Beef Noodles, it was purely because I was too damned lazy to walk too far after training, even if I was starving. I tried the "Beef Muscle" while Kat had the beef tendon, and both were really tender. The tendon was really soft and gelatinous, and it just melts in your mouth. A friend of ours reckoned that it's full of collagen, something that the ladies would be interested to know.

We were back there again after training last weekend and some of our team mates who actually had no intention of eating because they were heading off to a gathering after that, tried what we ordered and decided that it was too yummy to resist. This time, Kathy ordered the beef ball noodle (it comes with only kway teow, or flat rice noodle) soup, with slices of onion and spring onion in the stock, and it reminded us very much of the lovely bakso that we had in Manado, Indonesia. The soup was kinda brothy without being too salty, and had a hint of sweetness which I reckon comes from the onion. Being the very boring person that I was, I wanted something without the carbs, I'd ordered the same "beef muscle" again. The beef and the tendon are cooked in soy sauce, and dipped in the chilli that comes with it, provides a great combination of flavour with just enough bite in your mouth without being too much heat. In fact, the soy sauce based gravy reminded our friend Kheng of "kong bak pau" or braised pork belly slices wrapped in steamed bun. And J&J does sell that combination of "beef muscle" with steamed bun. Our group ordered quite a number of items from the menu because they enjoyed what they'd sampled, and so we had a bit of a J&J buffet spread on our table.

If you're in the neighbourhood and wanna try something different or not willing to queue at the usual stalls, do give this shop a try! It's located at #01-162. And do check out our friend's food blog, this guy's a huge foodie and his pictures are lovely! The blog just started started, so do keep going back if you want some ideas of where to go for your gastronomical fix.