Tucked away in a little corner of Circuit Road Market and Food Centre is a hawker stall that sells fried oysters, oyster omelette, and carrot cake.
Oyster omelettes are rather common in Singapore. However the version sold at Ghim Guan Fried Oyster is quite special, and perhaps not very common: it comes drenched in a rich and spicy sambal sauce.
Its Oyster Omelette (S$6/S$8/S$10/S$12) comes with chunks of omelette that are not so dripping with oil that you feel like you're eating oil with a side of omelette. The oysters are fresh, plump and juicy.
The star of the show, however, is the sambal sauce. It's salty, spicy, garlicky (thanks to an abundance of minced garlic) and has a very strong wok hey. It tastes very much like a sauce that you might find in a zichar dish.
We tried asking the lady boss what goes into this sauce and received a rather vague response, leading us to believe that it's a secret recipe.
Image by Joshua Lee.
Here's another photo of it that we found online:
Ghim Guan also sells Fried Oyster (S$4/S$6/S$8/S$10) and Carrot Cake (S$3/S$4/S$5).
Fried oyster. Credit: Miss Ha ~/Burpple.
3rd gen hawker still uses same recipe, ingredients from grandfather's time
While looking for more information about Ghim Guan Fried Oyster, we found a video interview featuring the boss, Ang Poh Huat, on YouTube:
Apparently, Ang is a third-generation hawker who carried on the business, which was originally started by his grandfather — then a travelling hawker who hawked his food at street shows during religious festivals.
The recipe and ingredients that he uses in his fried oysters haven't changed since his grandfather's time, simply because his customers love how he does it.
Ang actually worked as a technician for 27 years, before he opened a stall to sell fried oysters at night, in order to bring in more income to support his family.
He would work from 8am to 5pm as a technician and then sell fried oysters from 7pm to midnight.
Today, most of his kids have entered the workforce and so Ang continues selling fried oysters as a "pastime".
There are other places in Singapore that also sell oyster omelette with sambal sauce.
Lim's Oyster Omelette at Berseh Food Centre has a "wet" version of fried oysters while you can find something similar at Bedok North 85 Fried Oyster.
Guan Ghim Fried Oyster
Address: 79 Circuit Road, #01-60, Circuit Road Food Centre, Singapore 370079 (map)
Operating hours: Thursday to Tuesday, 5pm - 10pm. Closed on Wednesday.
Social media: Facebook
Top image credit: Caleb Lee/YouTube, Joshua Lee.