Yong Huat Delight: $3 chee cheong fun made from scratch by milling own rice at Marine Parade

Chee cheong fun is one of my favourite breakfast dishes. Comprising thin sheets of steamed rice rolls accompanied by your choice of toppings, this classic Cantonese dish always hits the spot. I might’ve just found my new favourite place for chee cheong fun— Yong Huat Delight at 50A Marine Terrace Market.

What makes Yong Huat Delight so different from other chee cheong fun stalls? Apart from making each roll fresh to order, the owner even mills her own rice from scratch to create her own rice slurry. Talk about real effort!

Yong Huat Delight is run by Ms Liang Yuan and her family. Ms Liang Yuan, a former beautician, decided to look for a more active job and eventually settled on selling chee cheong fun. She even returned to her hometown, Guangzhou, to learn how to make it!

Chee cheong fun is typically made with rice flour and water, and while Ms Liang Yuan first started off using this conventional recipe, she felt that store-bought rice flour didn’t give her the texture she wanted.

Thus began the process of milling her own rice to create her own rice slurry. As the hawker stall operates from 5am to 2pm on most days (Tue to Sun), this means Ms Liang Yuan has to return to the stall at night to soak the rice, return at 1am to grind the soaked rice, before preparing the stall to be opened.

Even up till today, every roll of chee cheong fun is handmade on the spot by Ms Liang Yuan. Despite the long hours she’s put into her work daily, she still greets each customer with a smile and laugh, and her bubbly personality instantly won me over.

More impressively, Ms Liang Yuan and the rest of the family members at Yong Huat Delight recognise regulars on sight. While I was waiting for my food, I noticed that they could even recall their orders in a heartbeat, without the customer even having to utter a single word!

What I tried at Yong Huat Delight

Yong Huat Delight offers 11 types of chee cheong fun, starting with the cheapest option, Plain Chee Cheong Fun (S$3). There are also other varieties that cost S$4, such as Chee Cheong Fun w/ Mangkuang & Shrimps, Chee Cheong Fun w/ Char Siew and Chee Cheong Fun w/ Chicken.

I decided to try the Chee Cheong Fun w/ Mangkuang & Shrimps, as I’ve never had chee cheong fun with bang kuang (aka stir-fried turnip) before!

The minute I placed the first piece of Chee Cheong Fun w/ Mangkuang & Shrimps into my mouth, it positively melted. I couldn’t even taste the chee cheong fun as the thin sheets of rice flour dissolved quickly with every bite. All I could taste was the crunchy and savoury strips of bang kuang, which instantly reminded me of popiah.

For S$4, the portions were insanely generous. Each piece of chee cheong fun was stuffed to the brim with bang kuang, to the point that I’d say there were more bang kuang than there were rice sheets— the stir-fried turnip strips even spilled over onto the plate!

I absolutely loved this. The bang kuang was crunchy and tasty, and its savouriness took over every spoonful of chee cheong fun. I didn’t even need to rely on the light soy-based sauce for any additional saltiness or flavour— unlike most chee cheong fun places.

While I usually switch between dishes for variety whenever I’m at a tasting, I found myself shoving spoonful after spoonful of smooth chee cheong fun in my mouth. Before I knew it, I finished this entire plate of Chee Cheong Fun w/ Mangkuang & Shrimps in a heartbeat, and finally moved onto my next item.

At Ms Liang Yuan’s recommendation, the second plate of chee cheong fun I tried was Yong Huat Delight’s Chee Cheong Fun w/ Minced Meat (S$4).

As compared to the first plate, this chee cheong fun was less stuffed, despite coming with a sizeable amount of minced meat.

The Chee Cheong Fun w/ Minced Meat certainly didn’t have the same crunch as the previous chee cheong fun as it didn’t have bang kuang and chives. As a result, it had a more pillowy effect as the silky yet soft sheets of steamed rice flour shone as the main element of the dish.

I thoroughly enjoyed the springy bits of minced meat, which complemented the luscious rice sheets well, and strangely enough, the entire experience reminded me of the feeling of biting into a piece of warm, soft pau.

Yong Huat Delight serves its chilli on the side, and interestingly, it was more sour than sweet— almost like the chilli you’d get with char siew rice— with a gradual kick of spice.

Apart from chee cheong fun, Yong Huat Delight also sells 14 types of porridge. I chose the Boat Porridge (S$7), the priciest item, as it had the most variety in terms of ingredients.

If you’re on a budget, fret not— most of its porridge options are affordably priced from S$3.50 onwards, such as the Cuttlefish Porridge (S$3.50), Chicken Porridge (S$4) and Century Egg Meat Ball Porridge (S$4.50).

This was the epitome of velvety, Hong Kong-style congee. It flowed like lava— thick and viscous— and my taste buds couldn’t even identify the individual grains of rice! That was how melded the porridge was, making each spoonful incredibly comforting.

I loved the combination of ingredients in the Boat Porridge, as each served its own purpose— the fish slices for an added silkiness, strips of cuttlefish and peanuts for crunch, and springy prawns for variety. The one ingredient I enjoyed the most were the handmade meat balls, which were marinated in hua tiao jiu for that aromatic twist.

Final thoughts

I loved everything about Yong Huat Delight. From Ms Liang Yuan’s positive demeanour to amount of hard work that goes into each and every roll of chee cheong fun, Yong Huat Delight truly is the epitome of one word: “dedication”.

Its chee cheong fun dishes are admittedly a little thicker than others— not by any fault from each individual thin sheet— but more from the fact that each sheet stacks up into a sizeable piece, so it might not be to everyone’s fancy. Yet, I highly urge you to still give it a try, as I enjoyed every single roll.

Do note that some rolls sell out by lunch, so come early if you want to try certain flavours!

Expected damage: S$3 – S$7 per pax

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