Zhen Zhen Porridge @ Maxwell Food Centre

During my last visit to Maxwell Food Center, I noticed there was a long queue at Zhen Zhen Porridge (真真粥品).  Today, when I went to Maxwell Food Center again, I decided I must give it a try at Zhen Zhen.

The queue was still as long as I saw it last time.  The stall displays two awards, one from Chanel U's U Viewers' Pick Award (优选美食王), the other one is from Makan Sutra. 

I started to queue up at 12.50pm, with an empty stomach.  It needed lots of determination, man.  The butterflies in my stomach were flying all around, making loud protests.  More than half an hour later, at 13.24pm, I finally got my hand on the much awaited fish porridge.

 

Ok, overly excited with my porridge.  Let's take a look first.  Does it look good to you?  Next, we will assess the porridge using the 3 criteria of good food: 1. Look; 2. Smell; 3. Taste.

1. Look

The look is ordinary, nothing exceptional.  If you ask me, I must tell you the only thing exceptional in terms of look is there are some traces of charcoal on the edge of the bowl.  It is kind of disgusting, I must say.

2. Smell

I couldn't smell anything other than spring onion.  

3. Taste

Well, for us Cantonese, when we eat porridge, we will NEVER stir the porridge upside down, inside out.  We only scoop using a spoon from the top, and then go down layer by layer.  That's the way Cantonese eat porridge.  However, in Singapore, the first thing people do when they receive their porridge, is to stir the porridge inside out, upside down.  Crazy!  If you do that in a Cantonese context, you may be considered to have no table manner.  I simply couldn't understand why Singaporeans do that, until today.  

You see, the porridge is plain without any taste.  Then they add ginger, spring onions, fried onions & sesame oil.  You HAVE TO mix them, otherwise, your porridge is going to be tasteless!  Well, after mixing all these with the porridge, I still found my fish porridge tasteless.  

There are two points worth praising of Zhen Zhen Porridge.  One is the fish is just nice.  The timing is almost perfect.  The freshness & tenderness of the fish are well retained.  This is something I must sing high praise for them.

Another point is the portion of fish.  If you order a bowl of fish porridge in a food court, you may get 4-5 slices of fish, that's all.  Here, they gave me quite a big portion, much more than the 4-5 slices.  But, I suspect many young Singaporeans may not like it, as their fish has bones.  I had to painstakingly pick out all the bones, which kind of made my porridge eating experience more like fighting a war with fish bones :P

Zhen Zhen is Stall #54 at Maxwell Food Center.  I have given you my opinion, try it for your own opinions.