loong fatt v 603. may the best tau sar piah win.

Today, we bring you the battle of the tau sar piahs. Actually, we wanted to review Loong Fatt only but Sharon decided that we should do a comparison with the only other stall that was open, 603.

Everyone knows the best tau sar piahs are found along the Balestier Road stretch. (You there shaking your head.. Don't tell me you don't know. You're lying.) And the most famous of all is of course Loong Fatt.

You cannot claim to have eaten tau sar piah till you have tried these. No, don't show me those pandan flavoured tau sar piahs from JB. Don't show me those dry and coarse ones in the pink paper wrapping. Those put tau sar piahs to shame.

And what is the deal with these tau sar piahs? They are very very smooth and buttery. Did you not know? Haven't you heard? It's the love story of when Chinese-Flaky-Pastry (Huaiyang) met Butter, fell in love, got married and had kids.

(you know that was a joke right? Sharon thought it was a Chinese fable)

trivia: Did you know that the Huaiyang pastry is basically made up of two separate dough, the water dough and the lard or shortened dough? After the water dough and lard dough are mixed separately, the lard dough is wrapped inside the water dough, then the combined dough is layered by rolling and folding. Did you also know that the 'water dough' also has lard? No wonder its so bLARDy oily. (did not mean to swear)

Loong Fatt is more famous for its sweet than salty tau sar piah. Their tau sar piah is really one of a kind. The crust has the melts-in-your-mouth thing down pat. Normal tau sar piahs are flaky. This is crumbly. Normal tau sar piahs are dry and tasteless. This is buttery. See the difference? Yet the crust is not so buttery that it sticks to your teeth when you eat it.

The lotus paste is very smooth and sweet and oily. It's pure oily decadence. Have it when it's still warm, it makes a world of a difference. It's well, comforting. Yummy-yummy-yummy-I've-got-love-in-my-tummy childlike comfort.

This is the 603 tau sar piah. It's also nice just not as good. The pastry was not as fragrant and crumbly as Loong Fatt's. Sharon suspects that they gave us overnight tau sar piahs instead of fresh ones because it was too early in the morning. The paste fared poorly compared to Loong Fatt's delightful smooth one. According to Sharon, "overall its a 'rougher' tau sah piah than loong fatt".

The first thing you notice about Loong Fatt's salty tau sar piah is that it is very thin. It's almost flat! The next thing you will notice is that the filling is not the usual salty filling. Instead, it's almost difficult to tell the filling apart from the sweet ones. I think they mixed the sweet filling and the salty filling. You can tell because the filling is more pasty than powdery. (Look at the photo below)

Not only does it look like the sweet one, it even tastes like the sweet one. You can't really tell the sweet apart from the salty. The difference is minuscule. The only way I could be sure it was salty was because the sweet one had sesame seeds on it and this one didn't. For Sharon, this had a placebo effect. After noticing the absence of sesame seeds, she started to appreciate the savouriness.

This is the 603 salty tau sar piah. I preferred this because I like salty tau sar piah and this tastes properly salty the way it should be. I quite like the way the filling disintegrates into minced portions as you crush them between your teeth and you have to scramble to catch the random bits that fall out of your mouth. Messy, old-fashioned goodness, I say.

Sharon thinks that 603 sweet tau sar piah is better than their salty ones but I'm biased towards the salty one (no one fed me the sweet one when I was growing up so the salty tau sar piah is like childhood food to me) so I liked the salty one more the sweet one. But for Loong Fatt, it's clear that the salty is inferior to the sweet.

We also tried the egg tarts from Loong Fatt. One look at it you know it's not what they're famous for.

Sharon: dun need to review la... nothing good to say about them also.

Well, what else can I say? The boss has spoken. zip.

Maybe just this bit, the crust at 603 was better. But don't waste your calories.

Loong Fatt Eating House and Confectionary
639 Balestier Road

and

603 Tau Sar Piah
603 Balestier Road