The National Institute of Education canteen is really quite a hassle for most NTU students to visit. At the edge of the NIE main block, you need to walk plentiful before reaching it, a route march distance if you start off at South Spine. Most of us wil probably visit it only twice a year for its bookstore, but I am oh-so-willing to brave the walk for its Bak Chor Mee!
While there are plenty of good stuffs like Yong Tau Foo and the original Western Food, the undisputed longest queue is at its noodles store. Priced at $2.20 per bowl, they whipped out BCM, Prawn/Pork Rib Noodles and Lor Mee that could be sold out as early as 2pm!
Now I'm letting out the best well-kept secret of the store: (At least thats what I think la) Do you know that you can order a special version of BCM at 3 dollars? This one hsa extra noodles, ingredients and comes with their prawn soup!
But here comes the hard part: The uncle at the store can be quite a Food Nazi, so he will really scold you if you don't say properly what you want, or not in the order he wants to hear it. Ready? Repeat after me:
"Uncle, 我要3块钱肉挫面,加虾汤,料随便掺!"
This loosely translates into "I want 3 dollars BCM, with prawn soup, anyhow mix the ingredients"
Minced Pork Noodles
And there you go! Its one of the few BCM that really piled you with Minced Pork, alongside generous dosage of dried mushrooms, sliced ngor hiang and fried wonton. The noodles is al dente to my liking, with a good mixture of chilli and vinegar. Not something spectacular, but very comforting!
Prawn Soup
The second highlight! Now don't expect Beach Road standards, but it was still better than many of the prawn mee stores out there. With a pork ball and fishcake slices, the soup had a subtle prawn flavour which doesn't leave you thirsty afterwards. An obvious choice over the usual plain BCM soup!
Lor Mee
Besides BCM, the Lor Mee was also very well done with plenty of ingredients, thick stock and a good balance of thin vermicelli and thin broad yellow noodles. A real hearty steal at its price!
To me, this is probably the best thing 3 dollars can get you at NTU, diligently coming back weekly for my BCM fix! I heard that you could replace the "anyhow mix the ingredients" with other items, but I have yet the courage to ask uncle that. Anyone willing to experiment this for me?
2 comments:
My vague impression of the NIE canteen is the Yong Tau Foo & the fruits stall that sell refreshing apple cucumber juice...
Seeing the photo of the stall, I think I have tried it once but the impression wasn't great. What I remembered the most of NTU food is Cafe by the Quad... Yesh, SBS and baked rice... and also Canteen 2 for its beef ball soup (not as good as before) and glutinous rice.
Before Canteen A was renovated, which was donkey years ago, the Japanese dons were good. Japanese curry seems to be my staple diet at that point of time...
The problem with NTU is the lack of canteens and the queues were pure madness between noon to 1pm.
Guess that is about it for my 2.5years stay in NTU. I missed NUS food more though...
Mmm... The only two NUS canteens that I have explored are Yusoff Ishak house and Engineering..
I heard cafe by the quad serves up good zi char at night these days!
And the japanese store moved up to the new food court can A, but i didn't find it very good though..
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