He Zhong Carrot Cake

Awesome fried white carrot cake with dried turnip bits, crispy and not too oily. Portions start at $ 2. Served piping hot and with a dab of chili, it’s a great meal for breakfast or a simple snack. Open daily.

This is honestly one of the best fried carrot cakes I’ve had in recent years. There’s a stall in Chinatown that comes close, but I’d go for carrot cake here in a heartbeat. I tend to prefer ‘white with chili’ when it’s a proper meal (black features only as a supper craving) and the white version here is excellent.
It’s crisp, in 3 – 4 big chunks, plenty of pickly bits (I honestly can’t remember what they’re called) and on a weeknight at around 830pm, not that crowded! Sure go for lunch on a Sunday and you’ll probably have to wait, but I got my food after a government mandated workout at Maju Camp in the evening very quickly.
If you’re looking for some solid, delicious, and still affordable fried carrot cake, then this place IS IT.

I’ve said it before, carrot cake is my instant answer when folks ask what local dish I miss the most and so it’s fitting that this was one of my final bites this last trip back.
I remember eating this crispy carrot cake from way back when you had to be in line for what felt like eternity. It was totally worth it back then. Now you just give them your table number and they deliver it to you (still a decent wait) so I’ll cut them some slack but it was honestly better before. You still get the crispy exterior but they used to really sear that chili onto the outside for a nice spicy crust. Still, the generous use of chai po, fish sauce, and egg make for a very fragrant dish and the raddish cake has a soft texture which complements the crispy exterior.
I love carrot cake and I still really like He Zhong’s version. Thanks for the memories.

What do you do when you step into a hawker centre for the first time, and aren’t sure what to order? Look out for newspaper cuttings, or Makansutra certificates, or any other paper recognition of their eat-​worthiness, of course. Splashed prominently on the clean and clear glass screen in the middle of He Zhong Carrot Cake is a bright certificate of excellence signed and delivered by Channel U. Not that they are by any means better food critiques than that you’ll find at Unilocal,but it admittedly did a pretty good job in drawing me in.
But once the attraction stage is over, it’s all about the quality of the food, and the carrot cake here is top notch. At He Zhong it’s all about that one white carrot cake, nothing more, nothing less. None of that sweet black sort that some people (me included) prefer. I was sharing my last plate of carrot cake, and asked if they could split it so that half the plate was spicy, and half not, but even that was an absolute no — though he added some chilli on the side for me anyway, which was just as well because their chilli was slightly sweet, and very fantastic.
Everything else was fried really well — it was all held together perfectly by a very consistent egg, such that it almost seemed like it could be neatly cut out like an actual slice of cake. It wasn’t too salty, nor too oily, and it was just quite amazing how constantly good the whole portion was.
At $ 2/​$ 3/​$ 5, it’s a really affordable accompaniment to anything else you’ll get at Bukit Timah Market, so don’t even think twice!