Holland Village XO Fish Head Bee Hun Restaurant

I love Fish Soup... but the fish soup stall at my university closed down due to renovations. The Yu Pian Mian Xian was really good (at least to me), and the fish slices were always very fresh.

I love drinking soup, some people attribute this to my being a Cantonese. A piping bowl of hot soup, sipped bit by bit, never fails to give me loads of satisfaction.

Thus imagine my great disappointment upon returning back from Canada only to find that my regular source of fish soup was gone! Hence I was pleasantly surprised when SH and I stumbled upon this XO Fish Head place. We were headed for Holland Village's Nasi Lemak (shall blog about this in the next post), so we decided to return the next day for this yummy delicacy!!

It was raining heavily the next day. But we persisted in our attempts to get to the block. Despite my shoes being drenched in the heavy rain, we were still glad we made it to the place in the end. Upon arriving, we saw the row of XO bottles lining the shelves, and lots of pictures of celebrities adorning the wall. Not a bad sign. Unfortunately, my "pai-seh-ness" limited me in my photo-taking attempts. How do people do it? Snapping away at food stalls with everyone looking at them... I just couldn't bring myself to do it! So I hid away at some corner and took this picture from an angle... just to show you guys that it is really a Coffeeshop... hahah!!! It is the stall on the left most.

The funny thing about this coffeeshop was that there were always as many as 3 round tables "reserved". On the 2 days that SH and I walked past the stall, the "reserved" signs would be placed on the tables. That was really strange to us because firstly, it was a coffeeshop, and nobody really reserves places in coffeeshops, and secondly... even if there were people who would actually bother calling up in advanced to book a place at this coffeeshop, was there really that MANY people reserving the places? Perhaps this stall is really popular... but at least not to my knowledge!

The fish soup was really very good. The white milky soup looked really good, and you could see that alot of ingredients had been added... very value-for-money!

The first spoonful revealed a broth simmered with XO, making the soup really fragrant and unique-tasting. Upon rolling the soup in my mouth, I could taste the milkiness of the soup as well as the taste of well-simmered fish. I read somewhere that the colour of such soup is not because milk has been added, but really because the simmering of the white fish results in a white broth that makes the soup milky looking. I didn't dare to ask the auntie about this though, because as usual... I am very "hum-ji" (scaredy-cat)!

The soup was not too salty and was really very tasty. Unlike some soups which have not been boiled long enough (resulting in a very bland and flat taste), you could taste the depth of the flavours in this soup... very well-cooked!

The noodles really went well with the soup, providing texture and complementing the general taste of the fish soup. The fish was very fresh too. I like my fish with skin, because usually there are some fish fats stuck in between. To me, this fish fats make the fish really tender and soft. Just the way I like it!

The only gripe I had was that the fish could have been cut into thinner slices. This is because thinner slices would have enabled me to taste the freshness of the fish better, and I would have been able to savour the full taste of the fish slices, rather than having to chomp on the big pieces of fish first and losing the first taste as a result. SH and I were both very quiet while "savouring" the yummyliciousness of the XO fish head bee hun, for we were both too busy eating and enjoying our share to talk to one another! We devoured the whole bowl in a record time of 15 min.

I love fish soup! I don't know when the craze for me started, but having a hot bowl of rewarding yummy fish soup while it was raining cats and dogs made it really worthwhile. SH and I both agreed that it was a good bowl of fish soup, and that fighting our way through the thunderstorm had been worthwhile. On the whole, the aromatic XO taste really brought out the fish soup and the dish in general made a pretty good dinner. Think thick chunks of fish pieces, noodles, and yummy white fish broth in one spoon, and that's what I call "Smack-a-licious"!

Swimming to you at: Block 46 #01-359 Holland Drive

Ambience: 2/5 (Don't go there for the ambience!)
Service: 3/5 (The auntie was very efficient!)
Food: 4/5!!