Tau suan ($1.50 each)!
Bendemeer/Boon Keng dessert stall tau suan at $1.50 each — split mung bean dessert with you tiao, the classic Teochew comfort sweet.
Sunday afternoon dessert stop with BB at a Bendemeer/Boon Keng hawker for a bowl of tau suan. One of those old-school Teochew desserts that’s slowly disappearing from the hawker scene, so we make a point of going whenever we pass by a stall doing it properly.
We ordered:
- Tau suan with you tiao — $1.50 each (two bowls)
The tau suan was the right consistency — thickened just enough that the split mung beans suspend in a glossy, faintly sweet syrup rather than floating in water. Not gluey, not runny. Pandan leaves give it that subtle green-bean aroma you don’t get with shortcut versions.
The you tiao (fried dough fritter) gets dunked straight in, soaks up the syrup, and goes from crisp to plush in seconds. That contrast is the whole point of the dish — you eat fast or you eat slow, both are right.
At $1.50 a bowl this is dessert pricing that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. The auntie ladling it out has been doing it long enough that the consistency is muscle memory.
Overall: 4.5 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Quietly excellent tau suan — would revisit and keep supporting old-school stalls like this.
