Ootoya (Clementi Mall)

I was heading to Clementi for some CNY shopping, or rather, Bak Kwa shopping. J's shop at Clementi market sells what I think is the best Bak Kwa in Singapore. Too bad they're gone before I remember photos, else they can hold a post by themselves. 

Anyway, back to the point, since it was Clementi, I asked E out for dinner. We roamed around Clementi mall trying to find a not-so-crowded-to-the-point-of-frustration restaurant and found it a hopeless venture. Eventually settled for Ootoya because of the poster at the door advertising some sangen pork that was supposed to be very tender or something. We had to wait a little for our table, but it was ok because there were seats at the waiting area.

The 'table' turned out to be a very long U-shaped one, with the outer side lined with chairs, and the inner side decked with a square platform. Basically diners were assigned seats with half the group sitting inside. I chose to be the one sitting inside, and had to take off my shoes, walk across the platform, and sit facing E at the edge of the platform. The nice thing about this concept is there was plenty of space behind me for my 3 kg worth of Bak Kwa. The downside is you are really sharing table with everyone else. We were fortuntate to get the last seat, so only had neighbours on one side. But the neighbours were really close to us, essentially right next to us since its the same table. I was overtly eavesdropping on their conversation and I'm sure I caught them laughing a few times at ours too.

It's so long ago I forgot the actually names of what we ordered. Essentially we both got pork cutlets in different sauces. One of it I think was a tenderloin but I forgot which one. I think E's comes with a separate rice, so she ordered black sesame rice. Mine came with the cutlet atop rice. The cutlets were thick and chewy. The non-tenderloin one was a little challenge to bite off. The sauces were rich and flavorful. We enjoyed the first half of our food. E didn't like her sesame rice too much and didn't finish it. The food got a tad cloying towards the end, being fried and saucy and all. I stuck to my usual habit of finishing up everything, but E gave up.

We did leave space for dessert and ordered a pudding (I forgot the name too - my fault for taking so long to blog about this). I remember it was sweet and nice and a very good ending to the meal.

Pork tenderloin in egg sauce?

The full set

Miso soup

Pork cutlet with seafood sauce? on rice

My full set

Dessert

Overall I remember leaving the restaurant very full and satisfied. I think I found the rest of the menu pretty interesting too. Turns out E owed me a favor and I got to have this meal for free. =)