So when do you all eat porridge? Do you treat it as a comfort food or is it something that you gather all you makan kakis and plan an outing to? I suspect it is the former.
I always feel like a bowl of porridge when I am not so well or when I have overeaten and are just feeling a little bloated and just want something light. Never have I craved for porridge as much as I do with Hokkien Mee or Satay. It is no wonder porridge never made it to the top ten list of Hawker foods. It received so few nominations that it might have been last on the list!
But a good bowl of porridge is comfort food when you need it most. And speaking of porridge, the different dialect groups have their different ways of preparing it. The Teochew like it whole grain with lots of water, the Cantonese like it really smooth and, in the case of this stall, the Hainanese like it sort of somewhere in the middle.
This 30 year old porridge stall in the Jalan Besar is your typical Hainanese style porridge where the rice grains are sort of grainy. Almost too grainy, I thought, being used to eating more of the Cantonese style congee nowadays. But the flavour is robust and for $2.50, there are lots of ingredients in each bowl. 4/5
Conclusion
It’s good but I would have liked it better if it were not so grainy. Then again, I am no Hainanese, so I might not know better.
