I grew up around here and this dim sum shop has been my childhood memories. They moved away for a while, but came back recently and renovated the whole place. Hopefully the taste remains the same.
126 Dim Sum, aka “Wan Dou Shek” 搵到食, a Cantonese phrase that literally means “finding good eats”, or figuratively as “making good income”, has been my childhood dim sum place offering cheap and good Cantonese snacks.
On the wall is the photo of the original shop with its signboard 搵到食, but the new signboard has the words in the traditional direction 食到搵. Not sure if the owners have changed. So if anyone knows where the original owners are, please leave a message below.
These days, we can find buahlonglong juice 沙梨果汁 almost everywhere we go. But the lemon tea that we used to have had upgraded to honey lemon tea 蜂蜜柠檬茶.
The first item to come was porridge with shredded duck meat 鸭丝粥. We were taken aback by the size of the portion. My goodness, did we over order the dim sum? We were famished so we simply tucked in.
The loh chap 滷汁 was flavourful and not too salty, and it was the soul of this porridge as the base porridge did not have any distinct taste. Very little duck meat, but that’s alright as the loh chap compensated with its taste. Good shallot oil and sesame oil tastes too, so if you do not like either you have to ask them to exclude them.
And what better to pair the porridge than with deep fried pig intestine 炸大肠. Unfortunately, the intestine was soft and had a funky smell. We left it pretty much alone.
The fried items were prepared in advance and were served pretty quickly. Their deep fried mango roll 金蕉香芒卷 was more like a dessert, but you have to eat it hot or I am afraid it will soften.
It tasted like McD’s apple pie, except the filling was mango. Too little of the filling though, so it felt like eating filo pastry.
Siewmai with marlin roe 鱼子烧卖 was my after-school snack when I was little. It used to be only $1 for 4 (back in late 70s), but thank goodness it still tasted the same.
Their prawn dumplings 虾饺 were a fail – skin too thick and broken, shrimp tasted like washed with antiseptic.
I couldn’t remember whether if their prawn rice roll 虾肠粉 came with this special sauce, but Princess loved the sauce as it reminded her of her own childhood snacks in school.
This was new on their menu, soup dumpling aka Xiaolongbao 小笼汤包. Don’t bother.
Another fail, their Teochew-style turnip soon kueh 蒸潮州顺粿. The filling was quite coarse, and the skin simply disintegrated right out of steaming.
I used to eat their Singapore-style lohmaigai 糯米雞 which is served in a stainless steel bowl or plastic container, but since then they have upgraded it to lotus wrapped glutinous rice 荷叶饭.
Obviously they are not sensitive to people with peanut allergy as there’s peanuts in the filling. While it was tasty, but somehow the proportion and the handling of the filling wasn’t quite there.
Another of my childhood favourite, their signature big pao 招牌大包, still remained the same for me, but my sister said it was different. Of course Princess wasn’t even born yet.
It still sells cheap dim sum of the nightbirds like us. But somehow the taste is different. Perhaps we have grown older and have regressed tastebuds. Or perhaps we have been through more in life and could not get back to the simpler times. Or perhaps, they simply have deteriorated in standards. Not coming back, let it remained in our memories.
126 Dim Sum 126 點心
126 Sims Ave, Singapore 387449
Tel : +65 6746 4757
Visited Mar 2025
PS: This is how they used to look like.
PPS: The owner has retired and two of its staff has taken over. They are not allowed to use the Chinese name 搵到食, so they have to changed to 126 點心.
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