a food entry oh gosh

this is not a food blog and im not a food blogger. but i feel i need to do justice to a place i just patronised.

it was my mum's birthday dinner and i suggested Prince Coffee House, or 太子咖啡座, an old-school fusion joint i saw on tv that somehow decided to freeze itself in the 70s, when it first opened at Shaw Towers.

yes. neatly arranged tables with cushion chairs from the 70s. red-white checkered placemats. a full set of cutlery regardless of what you're eating, probably for convenience' sake. an antique cash register.

from the 70s.

pardon me, cos you see, the place isnt just retro. or, it isnt retro for the sake of retro. it really is the 70s (forgivable too if labelled 80s). the props and the atmosphere bring you back to your parents' younger days, when they were having all the fun.

the place is also adorned full, due to their Shaw connection, with pictures of the owners in their younger days serving superstars of yesteryear 林青霞, 秦汉, 刘文正 and 林凤娇.

Prince Coffee House was featured as a 老字号 on a food program. dont mess with them when it comes to that title. yes we've all heard of stalls that date back half a century. but this place kept everything a carbon copy of Day One. the founders still personally serve customers, albeit a little more wrinkled. the man of the house insists on preparing daily their signature stewed oxtail. the menu and the presentation remain exactly the same.

when my brother sat down, he developed a hunch - this turned out to be his old haunt at Coronation Plaza when he was schooling at NJC (writer's note: many of you will remember it if you hung around Bukit Timah much some years back. Prince is now tucked away amidst the shisha outlets at Arab Street, much nearer to their old iconic location). he immediately struck up a conversation with the extremely pleasant boss, recalling how when he and his mates celebrated birthdays there, the towkay-neo would get them to pick 4-d numbers.

but my point is, this is nothing. the tv show featured generations of families who grew up and grew old eating here.

by this point, i was already consumed by the history and magic of the place.

the moment we sat down, the boss, a man well past 70, quietly and gently went around placing brochure-like cardboard menus (old-school!) in front of each of us. this was the longtime owner, serving brats like me and my sis. i was truly humbled.

with the ice broken the mood livened up, helped by the fact my mum likes to talk to new people. strangely, even as the owners were being so hospitable, my gut tells me "no, im sure they're nice to everyone."

dinner hadn't started and im already won over. good game.

but it's only just beginning, trust me. somehow guessing we're damn hungry (it was 830pm) and cos we'd only just ordered, the boss served complimentary garlic bread.

now where did that come from. this isnt some upmarket restaurant, it's a coffeehouse, for goodness' sake.

and this kicked off my parents' falling in love with the place. more than just the decor, this appetiser and all the food that followed are, according to them (and the helpful tv hosts), a kickback to the origins of "Western food" in Singapore - meat drenched in some oriental sauce, paired with lightly boiled greens, for example.

we noticed it's branded a Hainanese-Western fusion coffeehouse. huh? my mum duly explained the Hainanese interacted a lot with the British during colonial times. so maybe, what we know today as "Western food" may have Hainanese influences, just like Hainanese food could be westernised.

i ordered the highly-rated beef horfun and stewed oxtail. the latter is superb, period. the former, ordinary as it looked, had horfun so perfectly cooked prominent food blog ieatishootipost called it "gem of a find" and "finally managed to find what i was looking for". and the beef, oh man. how something so inconspicuous on the plate is such a star confounds me. hear this: apparently they fly in US beef for their horfun.

still, i should mention the beef horfun stood out probably for flipping expectations - it looked that dull. but put beside the best, like the one in Geylang, it probably has to concede.

my sis had tried the chicken cutlet at CP, so we got that too. this easily walloped the Hainanese pork chop in my opinion. mad succulent and flavorful, while the chops are typically drenched in ketchup, not the kind i like considering ive tried many good Hainanese pork chops.

the kailan was fine, but their 铁板豆腐 is the messiest 铁板豆腐 ive seen. in a completely positive way. it's got tofu, egg, prawns, fish slices, different kinds of mushroom, onion, celery, carrot, capsicum, black fungus, coriander... (i only remember these). it was like a pot of potluck.

thoroughly satisfying.

oh have i mentioned cos my brother finished his barley so quick, the nice owner replaced his glass with iced water, again quietly.

and, wait for it. we were done and dusted, when he popped up again with complimentary ice cream for each of us! not just was it super (it's coconut i think), according to my folks it's also similar to old times at coffeehouses!

that's it, free desserts done, pay up and leave.

wrong.

as if in a contest to outdo himself, the boss had prepared at the door a bag of yam cake, another signature, for us.

i wanna conclude this post, but im trying to gather myself, why am i writing it? i realised i might not be objective enough. but i also conclude im writing a tribute piece after a great dining experience, an experience the sum of all that happened at Prince, be it the food or being treated like, yes, family.

Prince Coffee House, the epitome... no, the crowning glory of early-Singapore Western fare.

p.s. readers are warned that some prices are steep. stewed oxtail for example is $20 and pork chop is $12. our bill came up to $90 for 5pax.

p.p.s then again our $80 meal last week was crap.
p.p.p.s. we got home to realise via the receipt they didnt charge us for our six big portions of rice.