You might have heard of Ben Yeo's chee cheong fun by now. The mediacorp celebrity is no stranger to our F&B scene, having headed eatery Hawkerman and fried chicken chain Tenderfresh. Although he’s sold his shares, his latest venture has proved to be incredibly popular.
Simply named Singapore Chee Cheong Fun (SGCCF), the online business is a partnership with local heritage brand Kwong Woh Hing. SGCCF only offers one product: a chee cheong fun kit that comes with handmade chee cheong fun and artisanal sauces. During festive seasons (such as Christmas and Chinese New Year), the brand also releases limited edition specials.
Over this CNY period, we got to try their Original SG Chee Cheong Fun, along with the CNY special, SG XO Chee Cheong Fun. Here’s how it went down!
Original SG Chee Cheong Fun
The Original SG Chee Cheong Fun kit comes with 10 handmade chee cheong fun rolls, a packet of sesame seeds and five artisanal sauces – soya sauce, sweet sauce, peanut sauce, fragrant oil mix, and sambal chilli.
There weren't any directions included with the kit, but we found an online tutorial on their website. The prep process was pretty easy! Simply put the chee cheong fun into the microwave or steamer for one minute.
Once it was done, we cut it into bite sized pieces.
And here it is, all ready to be dressed!
First up is their umami soy sauce. Since the directions say that we can add more if we like our chee cheong fun saltier, we went pretty HAM with it…
Next is the sweet sauce.
Followed by the peanut sauce. Give it a good stir before dressing the chee cheong fun!
Next is the fragrant oil mix, which comes with crispy fried shallots, garlic and ikan bilis.
At this stage our chee cheong fun looks really saucy! A scoop of sambal chilli by the side and we’re done with the sauces.
Lastly, we finished it off with some sesame seeds.
Ready to be devoured!
First off, this is definitely different from what you’d get at the hawker center. The chee cheong fun has a really smooth and silky texture. It’s thinner than the hawker center variety, but thicker than the Cantonese dimsum version. The crispy fried shallots, garlic and ikan billis added a nice texture to every bite. Together with the sambal and other sauces, the combination is sweet, savoury, umami and slightly spicy.
We were very impressed. You can really tell that the sauces aren’t your usual run-of-the-mill products and each has its own depth of flavours. According to Ben, the sauces are made with “secret ingredients”. The peanut sauce comes from Li Kwong, fragrant oil mix by Artisan Kitchen Foods and other sauces by Kwong Woh Hing.
Overall, we all shared the same opinion — we would order again and happily pay the $28 price tag.
SG XO Chee Cheong Fun
The SG XO Chee Cheong Fun is a collaboration with Chef Cao Yong, an acclaimed chef who represented Singapore and won first place in the World Chef Championship in Shanghai. You may have also spotted him on numerous occasions in Mediacorp's programmes!
For CNY, SGCCF curated a flavour to honour our parents, coming up with an XO flavour with premium ingredients. They say that a bottle of their XO Sauce alone would retail $18 a bottle if they were to sell it separately!
Let’s get to it and see how it tastes.
We absolutely loved its packaging and thought that it would’ve made a great CNY gift! But again, no directions were provided in the kit, and we also weren’t able to locate any on their website. So we steamed the chee cheong fun for a minute, and then pretty much winged the sauces dressing from there.
First up is the steam fish soy sauce.
Then we went ahead with the XO sauce. Right away, we could pick up a very strong seafood and fishy scent. Whew, this XO sauce must pack a punch.
Next we dressed it with the fragrant oil mix.
And then we finished off with the brown rice puff.
Here’s our finished product! The kit also included fortune cookies which we weren’t sure if it was supposed to be part of the chee cheong fun (again, no directions provided), but we used it as a topping anyway.
The site says that generous portions of scallops and Jinhua ham were used in their XO sauce, and we could definitely taste it. It was much too fishy for our liking, but we think seafood fans and fans of XO sauce would appreciate it.
Without a sweet kick to balance it out like in the Original Chee Cheong Fun, this dish was way too savoury and oily for our liking. Since we still have some portions left, the next time we will be more light-handed with the sauces. But overall, we didn’t fancy this as much as the original version. It was fun to try, but with a $38 price tag, we probably wouldn’t buy this again.
If you’re interested to try it for yourself, you can get it on SGCCF’s website here. Only 1000 sets are available. They’ve already restocked their store once, so we think it’ll be running out pretty soon!
Both the Original Chee Cheong Fun and XO Chee Cheong Fun serve up to five. They can be kept in the fridge for up to a week, but are best consumed within two days! Delivery will be free for orders above $83.