Wei Yi Laksa and Prawn Noodle – Could This be THE ONLY Laksa for You?

Can you imagine singing Wang Leehom’s classic 唯一 (wei yi) to laksa? Well, believe it or not, Wei Yi Laksa and Prawn Noodle shares the same name as the song! I journeyed to Tanglin Halt Market to find out if this famous laksa stall could live up to Wang Leehom’s song and indeed be THE ONLY laksa for me.

I popped by in the morning to beat the lunch crowd but, to my horror, there was already a short queue. And it was only 1030am! Many tables at the hawker centre were occupied by elderly patrons with Wei Yi’s distinctive red and white bowls. This built up my expectations and anticipation for their laksa!

Wei Yi Laksa and Prawn Noodle has been opened for thirty years and has accomplished a great deal. They were listed in CEO’s Hawker Guide, and also participated in overseas culinary exchanges in Shenzhen and Tokyo. Perhaps that explains why their menu has Japanese translations! Unlike the typical laksa stall that sends out bowls with the standard fish cake, bean sprouts, and cockles, Wei Yi offers some level of customisation. Here, you can choose from 6 sets, with each set being a different combination of chicken, fried bean curd, cockles and prawns. Wei Yi serves prawn noodles with fish cake too.

My mantra in life has always been go big or go home, so of course, I ordered the bao ga liao laksa with all the available ingredients ($5). I must admit that the laksa looked extremely enticing with its beautiful bright colours and a generous serving of ingredients. I dug in with high hopes. But sadly, it failed to match up to expectations. The first thing that struck me was the lack of coconut milk in the gravy. How could such a rich-looking laksa be missing coconut milk? And so I took a second spoonful, third, fourth and fifth — you get the idea. Alas, I could not detect even a hint of coconut milk in the thin gravy. The dollop of sambal chilli on the side was also lacklustre, lacking in both fragrance and potent spiciness to bolster the mediocre gravy.

The ingredients in the laksa did a lot better though. The chicken slices were very meaty while the tau pok was nice and fat, soaking up the gravy well. The deshelled prawns were slightly larger than usual, but the meat was rather flaky. Cockles are mandatory in laksa, to me at least, but I found the sizeable cockles too fishy for me. For $5, the amount and variety of ingredients were impressive. The portion was quite generous — I struggled to finish it on my own.

This is personal preference lah but I preferred the All Prawns Prawn Noodle Soup ($3) of the two. The prawn stock was savoury, rich, and intense, making it infinitely more flavourful than the laksa. I loved how Wei Yi threw huge, thick chunks of lard into the prawn soup, adding a fragrant greasiness that elevated the taste of the prawn noodles. If you remove the pork lard, the dish will taste almost exactly like primary school tuckshop food— very nostalgic! We chose the standard yellow noodles so the jian flavour seeped into the soup, making it pleasantly sweeter. But understandably, not everyone is a fan of the jian in yellow noodles. Compared to those in the laksa, the prawns were a lot bigger, fresher, firmer, and crunchier. The number of prawns you can fish out from this deceptively small bowl of noodles was quite astounding. Definitely great value for money!

In more ways than one, I was quite disappointed with Wei Yi’s famous laksa. I am someone who needs rich coconut milk in laksa and Wei Yi did not deliver in that aspect. If this crucial element could be nailed, this could very well be a darn good bowl of laksa in the West — bearing in mind its fresh ingredients, generous portions, and great value for money.

MissTamChiak.com made an anonymous visit and paid its own meal at the stall featured here.

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