Mei Heong Yuen Dessert - Black Sesame Paste and Green Tea Snow Ice

Tong Shui (糖水) outlets have sprouted like wildfire in recent years, in particular, in town areas like Orchard.

The best of these, however, still resides within Chinatown, and my favorite one is the one referred by my friend of 20 years, called Mei Heong Yuen Dessert at Temple St.

This place is perpetually full, and finding a table usually requires some waiting time. Fret not, the staff there are always on hand to guide you to an empty table, and they even have a CCTV installed for this purpose.

The desserts are split into the more traditional hot dishes like almond paste, ginger milk etc and the more modern cold desserts using snow ice.

Snow ice is actually a more refined version of shaved ice used in ice kachang and ice chendol. The shaved ice is shaved so thin that it actually has the texture of real snow, hence, snow ice dessert. They come in multiple flavors, from mango, durian to more funky combos of almond and black sesame.

Green Tea Snow Ice

Pauline decided to go for the very visually appealing Green Tea Snow Ice, which really had a very strong taste of macha in the snow ice. It came garnised with red beans on the side and as you can infer from the photo, it almost looks unreal, yet colorful to the eyes.

Overall, it tasted refreshing with the green tea aroma, and the crunchiness of the red beans complimented it perfectly. It really felt like eating fresh green tea snow!

Black Sesame Paste

I usually prefer the almond or black sesame paste as I used to remember having this at Kreta Ayer Market when I was young, and having a bowl of this really brings back a deep sense of nostalgia.

The black sesame paste here was really delicious, that slight burnt taste of sesame went down really smooth. If you are a fan of these traditional paste desserts, you can hardly go wrong coming here, both in terms of quality and variety.

As we were gulping down our sweets, it was obvious that this place has become a sort of tourist magnet. Nevertheless, it still beats the more recent tong shui stalls in town hands down. And situated in the heart of Chinatown, it feels just right at home consuming these time owned traditions.

Mei Heong Yuen Dessert
67 Temple Street
Chinatown