Katong

> Location : G/F, 8 Mercer Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
> Cuisine : Singaporean
> Tel. # : (852) 2543-4008
> Website : N/A

Right across from malaymama is a restaurant that serves laksa and prawn mee in singaporean style! the restaurant, katong, offers similar types of food as malaysian food. there are slight differences in ingredients and types of dishes offered. first of all, katong's prawn mee has more extra toppings to choose from such as meat ball, squid ball or fish ball. for $5 hkd more for selective prawn mee dishes, you can get prawn mee in dry style. the other difference between these two places is that, katon offers mee siam. mee siam is a sweet and sour wet rice vermicelli dish which comes with the usual prawn or shrimp, egg and tofu. pricing wise, these two places are about the same plus or minus a few hkd for comparable dishes. substitutions are also available if you want different types of noodles such as flat egg noodle, vermicelli, rice noodle, or rice vermicelli. so besides mee siam and prawn mee, and prawn mee dry, katong also has laksa, singapore dessert and also singapore snack to choose from.

okay, onto the food! having enough of prawn recently from malaymama, and the other thai restaurants, i went with shrimp instead. shrimp what? i got the mee siam with shrimp, egg and tofu pot. costing $36 hkd (compared to $48 if you choose prawns), this dish as i mentioned above is a wet sweet and sour rice vermicelli noodle dish. the sweet and sour flavor isn't extreme. the sensation is mild which is just right. other ingredients also spotted are green onions, onion bits and pork bits. the egg is boiled and already cut into a few slices. this dish is extremely unique because there aren't many wet noodle dishes in asian food. wet rice dishes are more common such as ying yang fried rice or fujian fried rice. the flavor isn't something you can grasp and love quickly. coming in only three varieties, mee siam isn't katong's top priorty. overall, this mee siam dish is a good dish. it definitely has its resemblence with singaporean stir fried rice vermicelli flavors if you ever had it before. it is one of those delicacy type of dishes. not the usual eat it and love it type. i highly recommend it if you enjoy something unusual and good!

on the side, i wanted to try katong's highlight "snack." this snack is called rojak ($28 hkd). rojak is a singaporean salad which contains small chucks of oily stick, cucumber, guava (the hard white kind), pineapple, crushed peanuts on top, a type of eatable chinese root and dressing made out of thai black shrimp paste. the dressing pretty much covers every part of the salad. each and every ingredient of the salad is nice, fresh and crispy. the dressing is a very unique sweet flavor and a tiny bit of saltiness. the type of sweet flavor reminds me of those small chinese red round slices of cracker/candy. i forgot what its called, haha. but the flavor is similar. but obviously as the cook told me, it's made out of a thai black shrimp paste. again, this is one of those delicacy flavors. the sweetness from the dressing is not a fruity sweet or like a orange chicken sweet, it's like a sweetness with a touch of spice to it like rosemary. very unique indeed.

drink wise, katong offers a wide selection of drinks from coke to barley water. a total of about 23 drinks. one drink i enjoy drinking when going to malaysian or singaporean restaurants is barley water. pretty much it's a mildly sweet drink, slightly thick and has that touch of barley (rice) flavor. kind of like mexican horchata but mixing the cinnamon and other specific ingredients. anyhow, katong is a good place for prawn mee, prawn mee dry because of their wide selections. their laksa are pretty good with my prior knowledge. of course, if you want mee siam, malaysian cuisine can't offer that. so anyhow...

< 4 out of 5 >