Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe

There are days when you just get sick of eating at the hawker center or food courts and even those pretty little cafes can’t stir an appetite. In comes the Hong Kong Cha Chan Teng which offers a myriad of food to make sure you can find something that will agree with your stomach. Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe first opened in Singapore at the Cineleisure Mall and has been successful since then opening up more outlets in neighbourhood malls.

Having a clean and modern environment and multiple seating area is the main concept of the Xin Wang restaurants.

They also have booth seats for close group of friends or family with kids who prefer to gather together over food.

For simple instant noodles and toast offerings in the beginning, the menu has evolved to include the typical Hong Kong cafe menu and also some dishes localised for the Singaporean palate like Hokkien prawn noodles.

They have also digitised their ordering process to save on manpower and also improve order efficiency.

One of their hot favourite is this papaya soup noodles where you can customise your noodles to be instant noodles or rice vermicelli. This is a healthy version of soup compared to the instant noodles version. There are also various toppings to choose from; pork or chicken chop, luncheon meat or just fried eggs. The soup is sweet from the ripe papayas and corn used in the soup base with just enough milkiness to give the broth a slightly thick appearance. The chicken chop was very well grilled that it was not too oily and the meat was still very tender

This is another dish you will find commonly in many Hong Kong Cafe menu which is the cheese baked rice or macaroni. There is a huge slab of pork chop on top of the baked rice which is full of cheese and a tomato based sauce. The rice is slightly dry but goes well with the cheese, slightly more sauce would have been great.

This next dish is more Singaporean than Hong Kong, pig trotters fried vermicelli is a Hokkien favourite dish which is eaten on celebratory days like birthdays. Surprisingly, Xin Wang did a great job with this dish by using freshly braised pig trotters instead of the canned ones which most stalls used. The noodles has fully absorbed the collagen from the pig trotters and is soft and sticky but not greasy. The pig trotters itself was braised perfectly with flavours thoroughly infused in the entire trotter.

To cater to the steamboat madness, they have also introduced hotpot for one or two persons with a tiered set with 1 serving of meat, vegetables and bean curd and vermicelli. For the soup base, you can choose between papaya soup or mala spicy soup. The soup is refillable and you can also add on a la carte ingredients if you find the set provided not sufficient. The ingredients are pretty fresh so if you do crave steamboat and you are alone, this would be a great choice.

This next item is definitely more Singaporean than Hong Kong. They have the curry with toast set and you can choose the meat for the curry. The curry was moderate in spiciness and very thick and satisfying.

Instead of baguette, they provided toasted bread which is very soft and soaks up the curry gravy nicely.

This is something we find in our hawker stalls very often and Xin Wang also did this dish pretty well. The fish hor fun was smooth and had generous serving of gravy which is nicely seasoned and the fish meat was also fresh and without any smell.

After filling your stomach, you can also wander to the endless list of desserts or snacks available on their menu. Like this iced mango dessert which is good enough for 2 to share has mango ice cream, mango cubes, huge sago balls, pomelo bits and carnation milk. This is lovingly known as Yang Zhi Gan Lu.

You can also wash down all the food with the long list of beverages available. One of the top favourites is the Hong Kong stocking milk tea which is sweet but not as sweet as Thai milk tea and has a creamy milk consistency.

Overall, I always loved my visits to Xin Wang as there is a huge choice of snacks, mains, desserts and beverages for you to choose from and you can spend the entire day there with friends and share on the different kinds of food they offer. The food standards have improved greatly from the time they started and so far every dish is quite palatable and the prices is quite affordable as well. There might be some small misses since their menu has such a great variety and it is difficult to be perfect in all the dishes so I will not be overly critical on that.

Address: 370 Alexandra Rd, 01-13/14, Singapore 159953

Operating hours: 11 am to 10.30 am ( 1.30 am on Sat and Sun)