Paradise Inn (Funan)

This dinner was essentially decided by Groupon. Haha... I chanced upon a Groupon which was $8 for a Traditional Double Boiled soup worth $17.90. Expecting myself to have some solo lunches because of hubby's alternate Saturday work schedule, I purchased it months ago for one of those Saturdays. Turned out I never had that solo lunch. The groupon was expiring this week, so I finally headed to Paradise Inn on Monday at Thomson Plaza, only to discover that the soup is meant for 2-4 pax. No way I could finish that alone (maybe I could, but I didn't want to look like a glutton trying).

So I asked Lynn out for dinner yesterday to make use of this deal, and we decided on the Funan branch. Initially she was asking who else was going, before I pointed out that two of us soup lovers falls within the '2-4' pax. Not because of our larger than average appetite. You do need to know that 1 serving in a Chinese restaurant typically means a small rice bowl full, which really isn't a lot.

We chose a Spareribs with Winter Melon with conpoy soup, and added on fried white bait fish, three egg fried spinach in stock, and a Supreme Seafood fried rice. The soup came in a pretty large pot, which divides out to about 3 small bowl-full of soup for each of us. The soup was rich, very sweet from the conpoy and spareribs. The ribs were tender. Lynn found them a little to 'porky', but nothing a dip in chilli with soya sauce can't solve. Guess the groupon made it worthwhile - $8 for a huge crockpot of soup. But not something I will pay $17.90 for... I'd rather go to Soup Restaurant for that kind price. I mean, I do like it, but not at this price. (And seriously, both my moms can fix a soup at this standard...)

The fried white bait were quite small. Very crispy all the way through. Nice in a kind of way, but we prefer those slightly bigger ones which are crispy on the outside, but you can still feel the fish inside. These ones were just crispy - a little like fish flavored potato chips or something. The spinach, hm... wasn't bad, but I had better ones elsewhere. Still, it was a good complement to our fried rice and fish, considering we were both having bad throats and really should be avoiding fried food... The fried rice was very regular tasting fried rice with good portions of shrimp meat.

Small bowls of soups dished out for us by the server

The main pot of Spareribs and Winter Melon soup with Conpoy

Three egg fried spinach

Fried white bait fish

Supreme Seafood Fried Rice

Overall the food weren't too bad, but wasn't something we would rave about. Pretty pricey actually. I always say Pu Tien serves very regular homestyle food for ridiculous prices, but with what I just paid for, I'd rather go to Pu Tien. I do think Pu Tien's chef does a better job. The service staff who collected our payment wasn't very nice too. He was literally waiting with his arms outstretched while I was trying to look through the receipt entries. And our card wasn't returned to us after 15 minutes. We had to go to the cashier counter to ask for it. Not exactly the best service...