Black carrot cake for TGIF breakfast ($3)!
A plate of black carrot cake (chai tow kway): radish cake cubes fried in dark sweet soy with egg, chai poh and spring onion. $3.
A TGIF morning hawker stop with BB: black carrot cake (chai tow kway) for $3. 😋
What we had:
- Black carrot cake: radish cake cubes fried in dark sweet soy with egg, chai poh and spring onion
Carrot cake here has nothing to do with carrots and everything to do with white radish: steamed rice-and-radish cake cut into cubes, then fried up with garlic, egg, preserved radish and sauce. The “black” version uses dark sweet soy, which gives it that gorgeous mahogany colour and a sweet-savoury edge.
The cubes were spot on, soft and pillowy inside with crisp, charred edges from the wok, holding their shape rather than turning to mush. The dark sweet soy coated each one in a glossy, sticky sheen without pooling at the bottom of the plate. Egg was scrambled through to bind it all together, soft rather than dry, and little bits of chai poh (preserved radish) gave salty, umami pops throughout.
Best of all was the wok hei, that smoky char you could smell before the first bite. At $3 this is the kind of hawker plate that is getting rarer, and the dark sweet-soy version is my favourite.
Overall: 4.4 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Soft, charred radish cake glossy with dark sweet soy, egg and salty chai poh. Would re-order.
