Part 2 - Turtle And Co at Old Airport Road Food Centre

The popular soups over at TURTLE & CO are the Turtle Soup & the Shi Chuan Black Chicken Soup. On on average 26 days working month, Eelicia & Hari can dish out about 80 - 100 bowls of soup a day, quite a mean feat, considering they only started their venture barely more than a year since last 9 Feb 2011. To date there were some TV Celebrities like Fiona Xie who are their customers. 

About 90 % of the soups here are placed in steamers, with exception of the Turtle soup which is double boiled. 

The meat (Turtle, Chicken, Pork ) are ordered fresh from the abbattoirs & suppliers. The herbs used are fresh herbs, and used whole in the cooking process, not in the powdered form like in some stalls.  Every day Eelicia & Hari starts to prepare the ingredients as early as 8 am in the morning, and by lunch time the soups are ready to be served. 

Please note they rest on Mondays, so if you are keen to stock up on your Genki, do drop by their stall from Tuesdays to Sundays. 

Below is the full menu for your choosing before you placed your order. 

They do serve takeaways and have containers specially for the soups. 

Take note they prepare the soup in two batches fresh daily, first batch for the lunch crowd, and second batch for the dinner crowd. The soups are sold out every day, so be sure to get there early in order not to be disappointed. 

Currently  there is 10 different types of soups available and there are plans to expand the menu to cater to patrons with a broader palate. So look out for my posting updates on their menu. 

One thing to note their servings are pretty generous, my order for the Shi Chuan Black Chicken soup comes with half a chicken, tenderly cooked yet still juicy & sweet. 

For the environmentally conscientious patrons, the turtles are fresh water turtles from farms in Indonesia & China that are breed for consumption and not caught in the wild, as such there is no disruption to the turtle population in the wild. 

Here are the business owners of TURTLE & CO 

Charming & Intelligent Hari

                                 Beautiful, Smart & Hospitable Eelicia

Part 1 - Turtle And Co at Old Airport Road Food Centre

Bob told me there was this young lady & gentleman who operates a food stall at Old Airport Road Food Centre called :"TURTLE & CO". He said the couple looked like those Office Executive you find at Shenton Way, and really seem out of place at Old Airport Road, they looked like the educated Stall Owner. 

These days you hardly find young people willing to strike out on their own and making a living through sheer hard work in the F&B industry. Out of curiosity I approached  the stall on 30April 2012 ( the day I went to Old Airport Road after collecting my newly minted NRIC from the ICA) and collected the TURTLE & CO Business Card from Eelicia Huang the lady owner of the stall. 

I made to make an appointment to do a write up feature for TURTLE & CO. So Sat I visited Eelicia's TURTLE & CO. 

Eelicia, Hari & one other partner started this stall TURTLE & CO. Eelicia & Hari were colleagues at Maybank , the former clocked in 5 years in Credit Loan Department whilst the latter clocked in 3.5 years in Business Development. 

They decided to be their own bosses and were deliberating on starting F&B Business or Fashion Apparel Business, and eventually decided on a niche F&B Business. They paid an undisclosed sum to learn the business from a veteran in the trade, and really take pains to master the art of making delicious tonic soup. 

Here are some samples of their hard labour. 

Pork Ribs Soup 

This is what I ordered :

Shi Chuan Black Chicken Soup(S$5.00per serving)

Each serving comes with a bowl of white rice. The rice used is of good quality and are not broken rice bit but comes in whole grains. The soup stock taste sweet due to the generous use of red dates & wolfberries. Eelicia & Hari does not use MSG in their cooking. 

Part 1 - Toa Payoh Rojak at Old Airport Road Food Centre

Because of the many layers of peanut shavings I had difficulty getting this plate of Rojak  into focus. So you do not need to adjust the resolution of your laptop nor your iPhone in a bid to see clearly the finished Rojak. 

Toa Payoh Rojak operates like a clinic where you take a number at the front of the stall. Wait till your number flashes at the top right side of the stall, then place your order with the son-in-law. 

The Rojak comes in sizes of $3, $4 or $5 depending on your appetite. Each serving comes with a generous dash of peanut shavings, with ultra thick serving of the Hae Tao Gor (Prawn Paste), and a distinctive taste of the finely chopped Bunga Kantan (Pink Ginger bud).  

Mr Cheng Kok San believes in giving the best to his customers , so he is very generous  in doling out fresh ingredients with lemak sauces used in his Rojak recipe, which is currently practised at his Toa Payoh Rojak "Clinic" - delivered by none other than his son-in-law.

Ultra Lemak Rojak (S$4.00) 

Notice the number at top right corner 

The Son-in-law

The elderly Mr Cheng Kok San 

Lao Ban Soya Beancurd at Old Airport Road Food Centre

Bob & I went to Old Airport Road this Monday 30 April 2012 for lunch after picking up my new NRIC from the ICA. We were quite intrigued by the incessant queue building up at this stall "LAO BAN Soya Beancurd" that dishes out chilled soya beancurd pudding by the dozens. 

Out of curiosity I too join the queue and bought the original flavour to try. The soya bean is blended very smooth, light  & silky, and is mildly sweet to the taste.   The texture is not cakey at all. I could easily have downed almost 5 at one go.

Original Flavour