Of family and fun

Every family has their food routine, preferences and beliefs.

When we were kids, we would have dinner together every evening at around 6:30-7:00pm. Being a true blue Chinese family, it was always rice plus four dishes – soup, meat, fish and vegetables. Eating out was reserved for the weekends and we always visited the same few favourites before moving onto the next batch of same few favourites.

Naturally as a kid, my parents’ choices shaped my preferences. Dad, by default, called the shots. Case in point: he would always order char kway teow without “harm” (cockles) and till this day, I still don’t know what “harm” tastes like.

I liked ordering what my parents did as it made me feel like a grown up. I guess my parents never restricted us though ours was always kid-friendlier - like I always wondered why their steaks (medium rare) were tastier than mine (medium).

In terms of beliefs, I learnt that anything listed as “market price” should be treated with utmost suspicion, and we never allowed to order more than what we couldn’t finish.



The one thing my family never had was ‘fun’. Well, chee cheong fun, to be exact. Fun-ny enough (har har!), kw’s family is fond of the fun. It is their family weekend breakfast ritual and these days, kw and I have taken on the duty of picking up his grandmother’s favourite fun from Hao Qing Xiang (Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4 Block 628, #01-74) that does the most filmy, diaphanous chee cheong funs.

I have always felt quite ambivalent towards chee cheong fun till I discovered - drumroll please- the sweet-sauce-less chee cheong fun. By removing the sweet sauce and adding soya sauce, the ordinary rice noodle roll morphs into crossbreed between the Hong Kong dim sum rice noodle roll and Vietnamese Bánh cuốn.

I have always known there was something not quite right about chee cheong fun but I never knew a simple subtraction would multiply the satisfaction levels by that many folds. In other words, fun-tastic!

I discovered this by snooping over what the person in front of me ordered accident but on hindsight, it seems like common sense, doesn't it?

Any ho, ever since I told my parents about this trick, they are now fans of the fun. If you have never been a chee cheong fun person, let me know if this seals the deal for you too.