I had been craving for Dragon Beard Candy for the longest time, so you could only picture my delight when I see a positive reviews on Yelp for a place that specializes in traditional Chinese snacks. I could already taste it in my mouth.
I actually spent quite some time looking for this place, for some reason I expected a bigger storefront, but this must add to the authenticity being that they were so tiny. This place is actually right outside of the MTR (but of course, you know that the MTR spans a million blocks so who really knows?! Just kidding, trust Google Maps... and don't walk blindly like myself).
I was ultimately disappointed by the one thing I was looking for-- as it is not fresh and made on-site (they had a bunch of everything just stored away in a container to take out when the customer orders). I want to note that I have only ever had Dragon Beard Candy fresh, so I'm not sure how they should taste once they've lost that soft texture and become a little chilled and hardened. I will admit that it gets better after you've acquired a taste for it after 2-3 candies, but who wants to merely acquire a taste for something that should be so delicious?
They offer a multitude of other snacks, some were just placed outside and the same were placed in a dedicate showcase (with temperature control I assume? ... there was a fly in there though, so I decided to get the snack fresh from the container instead). The staff here were, as mentioned, slightly rude (but we're in Asia, so I kind of got used to it-- there aren't very many friendly places to begin with so can we really count this as a negative?)-- but eventually the second staff (because the first one was taking forever with the customer that skipped me, of course-- expect to be skipped at all times) decided to assist me.
I'm sure that their star of the show isn't the Dragon Beard Candy and is more so the puddling and that they do make everything themselves (just not seemingly on-site). Oh well, I'll come back eventually (when it isn't disgusting and humid) to try other stuff.. read more