AOne Claypot House (Causeway Point)

This was a random discover that I ended up liking. The hubby and I were at Causeway Point to get something from Metro. Looking around for dinner places, we spotted a few vegetarian options in AOne Claypot House's menu. Partly because of a mistake on my part. I had assumed that they serve all claypot rice, and seeing the mushroom and tofu I had imagined a vegetarian version of our standard chicken claypot rice. It was only after we were seated that I realise its just mushroom and tofu, no rice. Hubby was fine with it though, so we stayed.

So yes, we ended up ordering the claypot mushoom and tofu. Plus a few more dishes that the hubby can eat. He went for rice, I spotted a congee option so I ordered that. The server seemed shocked that we want rice on top of congee. I was surprised by her shock, but I stuck to it, because the congee contained silverfish and scallop so the hubby can't eat. He's not a very congee person anyway. It was only upon serving that I understood her shock. When I saw the congee option, I had thought it was just one bowl. Turned out it was one pot. And its a pot comfortable to be shared by 2, thus explaining the server's shock. Because we ordered one pot of congee plus TWO bowls of rice (for him).

Silverfish and scallop congee

But anyway, I loved the congee. The consistency is perfect. It was a thick and silky congee, yet the rice are still visibly whole not disintegrated. The pot kept the congee hot the whole time, and despite the duanting thus of having to finish the entire pot alone, I did it. This congee alone makes this place go to my 'like' list. Especially when I'm sick, or having a bad stomach, or on a rainy day. I love congee during any of those scenarios. Oh wait. I love congee any time actually.

Claypot mushroom and tofu

The claypot mushroom and tofu that tricked us into going in the restaurant in the first place is very normal braised tofu and mushroom with some veggies. It wasn't amazing, but wasn't bad either. The Caipo egg was done nicely. A good brown to the outside, salty preserved radish mixed into the egg. What can possibly go wrong with caipo egg right?

Caipo egg

The three egg spinach ended up with a small unexpected topping that I had to clear before the hubby can eat. They sprinkled silverfish on top. So I picked off all of them before he tucked in. We always liked this rendition of spinach so it was finished off quite quickly.

Three egg spinach

I subsequently dragged my colleague to the Chinatown Point branch because I wanted to eat congee for lunch. We tried the ginger onion frog leg, which was overcooked and a little too tough. But the sauce was very nice to go along with congee. This time round we went for the congee with more stuff cooked into them. Very nice!!

Onion ginger frog leg

A wasn't into congee so he opted for hotplate noodles. The mushroom pork noodles actually looked not bad.

Mushroom pork noodle

I'm biased because of the congee consistency. But subsequently went to the Junction 8 branch with the hubby and found all the vegetarian options disappeared from the menu. Whether it was a branch specific menu, or was it a general reduction in menu across all branches, I haven't checked it out. Lynn rarely have congee craving, she's more a fried rice kind of gal. So I haven't been back to AOne despite me liking it so much. Moreover, there are more tempting things at Chinatown Point such as Laiyulai, haaa. That said, I will still love to go back there to enjoy their thick yummy congee. Maybe alone.

Laiyulai Three-Sauce Simmer Pot (来御来三汁焖锅)

I love it when a random find restaurant ends up being delicious. And this was one of those times. Lynn and I were going to have dinner at Chinatown Point because I wanted to get something from Daiso. She was having one of her monster bugs and had been sick for weeks, so heaty food such as Korean BBQ is out. I suggested a long list ranging from Din Tai Fung to Genki, all supposedly lighter food, and she rejected every single one of them. Then she said there's a new Chinese food shop that smells fabulous. I know which shop she was talking about since I've been attracted by that smell before. So in we went to try it out.

Their concept is very cute. Three sauces doesn't mean they dump three sauces into your dish one shot. It's a simmer pot concept, as opposed to a hotpot. You start with stew instead of a broth. That is the first sauce. Then after finishing the stew, you request the staff to add broth, transforming the pot into a hotpot. So here's where they 'cheat' a little in the name. The second sauce is the hotpot in which you cook more meats or veggies. The third sauce is the soup you drink. So sauce 2 and 3 are essentially the same thing. Haaaa. But never mind the cheating. The food is GOOD!!!

So let me walk you through the process the way we went through it. First, we start with an empty deep pan:

Then they came along an added a lump of fat. Lynn initially thought it was lard, but upon asking, we were told it was 药材油 (Herb oil). I don't know how that is made but it sounds good for me. Lol!!

Then came along the veggies. Every pot by default comes with this base of veggies, no matter what dishes you ordered. This mixture comprise of carrots, corns, LOTS of onions, LOTS of garlic, celery, capsicum, lotus root and sweet potato. Because it's our first time, we didn't realize how big the pot will be. This pot is best shared comfortably among 3 pax. 4 pax can order more things to add on. For 2, it's leaning heavily on 'too much'.

With the veggies as a base, the staff then layer your order on top. We went for the combination pot, and chose our own dishes. Minimum of 3, which explains why it's a little too much for 2 pax. The variety is pretty good, we were spoilt for choice. We took chicken wings, fish and pork chop in the end. The fish was a parallax error on my part. I meant to tick bullfrog but apparently missed. Oops! So at this point, they cover the pot and let the whole thing stew slowly.

They returned about 10 minutes later, and added the sauce of your choice. They have several options. Original, which is not spicy. Then they have 香辣 (fragrant spicy), in three different levels of spicy. Then they have 麻辣 (numb spicy), also in three different levels of spicy. I was leaning towards original, in light of Lynn's cough, but she insisted the 麻辣 probably will help clear her airways. So we took the lowest level spicy of the 麻辣 sauce. After adding the sauce, they stir up everything nice and thorough, and then cover the pot again. So we waited some more. Then it's finally time to eat!

By this time the veggies were nice and tender. The sweet potato!!! It's to-die-for!! All the other veggies were nice too. The onions were translucent and sweet. Much later we discovered that the garlic were awesome too. Our meat choices were nice, though subsequent visits I discovered others that are nicer. The wings are chopped so there are small bits of bones that are quite annoying. So I would recommend the thigh meat instead. The pork chop had cartilage in them that didn't quite soften in that short period of time, so pork belly is actually nicer. The fish had a lot of pin bones so it was quite troublesome to eat but that's my mistake so I can't complain.

The sauce went really well with rice. The 麻辣 is really quite spicy. We were sniffling in no time. I would recommend the 香辣 more. Now I usually order the medium 香辣, and it's more comfortable to eat than the 麻辣. Even the original is yummy, I've tried that before too.

After we finished the bulk of our stew, we asked for the soup. The broth mix up with the remaining sauce and the resultant soup is pretty yummy. And we ordered beef and lamb (because we didn't know how big everything is going to be that first time) to cook in the hotpot. Subsequent visits we found that the luncheon meat and pork belly slices for the hotpot are delish!

I've brought everyone back here already. Colleagues, hubby etc. Yes, their sauces and broth are vegetarian friendly. So we ordered the vegetarian pot with mushrooms and beancurd skins etc. The hubby liked it too! Oh and did I mention? Their pig ear starter is something worth trying too!

Layulai Three-Sauce Simmer Pot

Chinatown Point

133 New Bridge Road
#02-38
Singapore 059413
Tel: 6444 4115

Tunglok Signatures (Vivocity)

Ok... Here's to catching up... *flex fingers*

It was my aunt's birthday, and the family decided we'll have dinner at Tunglok Signatures. I'm guessing the decision was made based on cousin's Amex discount. Back then I hadn't applied for that card yet. So for our 20 pax, that was a 20% discount under the Palate membership. I wasn't part of the decision making team for the food ordering. I simply go and sit and eat. But I believe we ordered some kind of set menu, as is the norm for my family.

Tunglok Signatures does serve up some 'attas' items that aren't found in the Tunglok Seafood restaurants. It's like a levelled up Tunglok if you will. But if you're looking for the usual favourites, they still carry quite a fair bit of those in their menu. The sharks fin soup was served in individual portions. I'm not a huge advocate of sharks fin, and will never order it by myself. But the family loves it, and I think it was part of the set menu. Their's was made more spectacular by the little sprinkling of flammable substance at the side of the bowl. Immediately prior to serving it to each guest, the waitress light up the substance. So each guest get a piping hot bowl of sharks fin with a little not-so-useful-at-keeping-the-soup-hot, more-for-asthetics flame at the side of the bowl. It turned out to be a little dangerous for the kiddos and we had to turn each plate until the flame is away from each kid. Fireworks aside, the soup was rich, warm and yummy.

Sharks fin soup

Next atas item. Bamboo clams. I looooovvvvee bamboo clams. This is an advance order item, something I learnt on a second visit when it wasn't available by the time I arrived at the restaurant. Steamed with a generous sprinkling of garlic and glass noodles and yummy sauce. I loved loved loved it. I think I even managed to snag an extra because there was only 9 pax on our table, not counting my 3 year old nephew.

Bamboo clam

Next is the fish. This is the most deconstructed fish I've ever seen in a Chinese restaurant. Garoupa, served two ways. One side is little nuggets of garoupa deep fried into golden perfection. Those were GOOD. We even managed to cheat one nephew into thinking it was chicken nugget and he ate them. He NEVER eats fish. The other side are fish slices stir fried with a variety of vegetables such as asparagus and peppers. I love these veggies, so that side suits me fine too. Overall, I like this dish.

Garoupa served two ways

I probably missed a whole lot of dishes in my photos, because I'm sure we ate more dishes than these. But really, those three were my favourites. The noodle actually wasn't amazing, but it was served so prettily that it warranted a photo. Bamboo pith noodle soup. The broth is sadly one dimensional, the noodles unimpressive, and shrimps soaked in soda to an artificial crunch. I hate 'fake' shrimps.

Bamboo pith noodle soup

The most amazing thing about Tunglok Signatures, is actually the birthday service. We brought our own cake. But the cake was displayed beautifully on this huuuge plate, with meaningful writings on it. And to amaze us further, a few of the waitresses actually came to our table, and read that entire writing out in celebration for the birthday girl. And the next amazing thing was served alongside our cake. Their longevity buns. Instead of the usual pink lotus paste buns served at the beginning of the meal, theirs were yellow buns served at the end. Which puzzled me. Until I bit into one. OMG!! IT WAS 流沙包 (salted egg yolk custard bun)!!!! AND ITS VERY VERY YUMMY!!! The older folks weren't keen on it, and the helpers were too full to eat it. I managed to conquer and wolfed down 4 all by myself. YUM YUM YUM!!

Cake presentation and longevity buns

I was duly impressed. Both by their food and their service. And I brought my hubby's family back to celebrate my FIL's birthday subsequently. Lynn brought her mum there for birthday celebration after my rave reviews too. And she, too, was very impressed. And now that I get the Amex card, Lynn and I can go and eat at 50% off. I think we'll be frequenting this place alot alot of times...


Tunglok Signatures
VivoCity #01-57
1 HarbourFront Walk
Singapore 098585
Tel : +65 6376 9555

Lele Pot

We are always up for trying new things at lunch. Once, on the way to another place for lunch, we walked pass Lele Pot. Upon checking out their set lunch menus, we decided, why not? The set lunch were going at less than $10. Seemed like a decent deal for hot pot. You choose a set you wan, then choose your soup base and your carbo.

Set lunch menu

I got the beef set (of course!) with herbal soup and tang hoon (glass noodles). Granted, the set comes cheap for a reason. It's a big plate of mostly veggies, with three beef meatballs, a few thin slices of beef, and imitation crabsticks. The mini pot of soup took forever to boil, from that little canister of (candle?) fire. That said, the soup was a nice, rich, herbal soup, which I really liked. The thinly sliced beef cooked very fast, so they remain nice and tender. For a $10 lunch? Not bad at all.

Beef set

On rainy days they can get pretty crowded since everyone want hotpot on rainy days. And be warned, you come out smelling like hotpot. This joint is opened by a Mediacorp actor, so while you eat you can look at the photographs of himself with all the (more famous) actors. Even several overseas celebrities.


Lele Pot
58 Seng Poh Road

#01-23 

Singapore 160058 

Tel: 6222 9442

Lenu (Vivocity)

It was a Friday night after our weekly swimming session, and we arrived at Vivocity pretty late (for a Friday) at 8 plus pm. Took a while to find a parking lot, and found that almost every eatery had long queues. We initially wanted to go for steamboat at Jpot but was informed of a roughly 45 minutes wait. Post-swimming, not good. We were ravenous.

So we roamed, and spotted the pretty empty Lenu. JP said it is pretty good, so we decided, why not? I was so hungry I really could eat anything at the moment. So we got a table immediately, browsed through the menu briefly, and off the few of them went to off to place order at the counter while I did the lazy girl thing and just waited at the table.

The rest returned with our drinks and starters, that they grabbed off the fridge at the counter. We munched on the cold starters while waiting for our noodles. Cold marinated cucumbers (凉拌黄瓜) was cold and crunchy, perfectly seasoned. The pickled cherry tomatoes I liked less, but that's because I personally don't like pickled stuff. The rest of them liked it anyhow.

凉拌黄瓜

For noodles I opted for the one with everything. Mixed beef brisket, shank, tendon with thin noodles. Nice rich beef broth, with tender beef pieces. The noodles were springy, just the way I like. Only problem? Serving may be a little too small for a post-swim dinner. But the hot soupy noodles really hits the spot, after a cold swim. Plus it was a rainy night too, hence the whole package was ideal.

Mixed beef brisket, shank, tendon with thin noodles

I liked Lenu for the lack of crowd, but still decent food. It's not lavish like some of my meals can be, but still satisfying. Great for those wanna-treat-yourself-but-not-too-expensive meals.

Lao Si Chuan

I love this place. Period. We saw it before when we went for chicken rice, just next door. But Lao Si Chuan doesn't seem to be opened for lunch. So we were curious and returned for dinner one fine day when a few of us happened to stay back for dinner, and wanted to try something new. It was YJ, XP and me. They both don't take very spicy stuff, so it's an interesting group to have dinner at a Sichaun restaurant. Still, we managed to order not too spicy stuff.

YJ loves stir-fried potato, and so do I. So we ordered the 青椒土豆丝, which is stir-fried julienned potatoes and capsicum. The potato were cooked until just tender, with a wee bit of crunch left. Perfect. Next was something I requested, because I love beef. 水煮牛肉. I love love love love this dish. It means water-boiled beef. A misnomer actually, since it gives people the idea that it'll be something very clear and light, and this red bowl of goodness is anything but. Essentially it's tender beef slices, bean sprouts, soy bean noodles and glass noodles in a bowl of spicy and numbing (麻辣) broth, with it's accompanying layer of oil. The beef is oh-so-tender. And the bean sprouts and the noodles really soak up the fragrant goodness of the broth. We ordered it to be slightly spicy (微辣), which I recommend. Even if you have high tolerance for spicy food, because of the very hot (temperature) broth, it can be quite unenjoyable to be sweating buckets from both the heat and the spice. And this level of spice is manageable. Even YJ could handle it, after washing off the chilli oil with a bowl of water.

青椒土豆丝

水煮牛肉

zoom in on the beef in the 水煮牛肉

鱼香肉丝,  literally translated to fish fragrance pork shreds. Another misnomer. There's no fish in this dish. Apparently the fermented chilli used in this dish resembles fish taste, hence the name for this Sichuan dish. I actually don't remember it very distinctly, so taken I was to the beef. Really, I spend the entire time digging to ensure every last bit of beef, sprout, and noodles are out of the broth and in my tummy. Although care had to be taken to avoid the ambush of the Sichuan peppers.

鱼香肉丝

On a separate visit, I fell in love with another dish. 酸辣土豆丝. Stir-fried julienned potatoes again, but this time in vinegar and dried chilli to give a fiery and sour treat. Very appetizing. Very spicy. Very shiok. Love. I painstakingly picked every single dried chilli to the side, so that not one shred of potato goes to waste.

酸辣土豆丝

We also liked the 陈皮鸡, orange peel chicken. Deep fried chicken pieces subsequently stir fried with orange peel and a sweet and sour sauce. We liked it. Perfect crisp, perfect balance of sweet and sour, goes super well with rice.

陈皮鸡

This next dish was a miss. 芋香鸭方. Crispy fried yam with duck. Over-fried. Too dry, can't taste the yam, can't find the duck because it was deep-fried to nothingness. Don't waste your time on this.

芋香鸭方

We also liked their 辣子鸡丁, which is chicken cubes stir fried with an insane amount of chilli and Sichuan peppers. It wasn't quite as bad as the one at Old Chengdu, because we ordered a medium spicy version. But because of the less spicy, we were able to enjoy it more. Moreover I think it was more fragrant than Old Chengdu's one too. And the best part? The cost. The average for each person is typically less than $20 each time I went. I love this place. Really. I think I've said that a million times in this post alone. Love it. 

But note the slow service. The waitress's attention are quite hard to catch. And their air-conditioning is on the weaker side. So be prepared for a very hot meal.

Lao Si Chuan

249 Outram Road

Singapore 169048
Tel: 6561 1518

Mouth Restaurant

It's somewhere near Mother's Day and I brought my mama to Plaza Singapura to try out Bijin nabe and the queue was too long to wait so I had to find another place to feed my hungry mama. Mama then chose this Mouth Restaurant seeing that they offer dim sum buffet for less than $30/pax, the receptionist uncle was quite friendly so we thought we can give this place a try.

After being seated, and we were given a order chit for ordering and I later saw the most ridiculous thing on earth, each person will be limited to 2 orders of Har gow (Prawn Dumplings)! I thought I read wrongly and double confirmed with the waitress, who sloppily reaffirmed it. We then decided that we'll just order ala carte, who will want a dim sum buffet that only let u order 2 har gows?! 

We then proceed to order spinach with salted egg, Squid ink Rice roll with Trio sauce, Salted yolk prawns and Steamed Glutinous rice in Lotus Leaf wrap

Spinach

Spinach tastes insincere, it tastes like they just cooked and threw the spinach in the metal pot and pour some egg sauce into it and heat up, if i need to say anything about it, the spinach is well cooked.

Squid ink rice roll with trio sauce

Squid ink rice roll tastes not bad, but it's drenched in sauce so its more like eating the sauce rather than rice roll. Sounds special but tastes mediocre.

Salted yolk prawn

Salted yolk prawn was nice, the crust is quite crispy and rich but we both grew sick of it from eating just one prawn.

Glutinous rice in lotus leaf wrap

That's just your regular glutinous rice in lotus leaf wrap, after the prawn we cannot down the glutinous rice anymore and we did not finish it.

Overall dining experience was just bad, it's not just the food, its the service crew there as well, they seem like they are on auto-zombie mode and the waitress in charge of our table, her sloppy attitude is worse than the food there.

Mouth Restaurant

Plaza Singapura
#02-01
Tel: 63377446

Good Chance Popiah

I frequented this place as a child, way before it stands at its current location. I think it used to be at Telok Ayer Street - that's what their website said and I have to believe them. A 7 years old little girl doesn't fully understand addresses and just eat where her parents drove her. Subsequently they moved, and my parents didn't know where they moved to, so we stopped patronising them.

Then in the recent years, I started working at the Outram Park area and found their (somewhat) new location at Silat Ave. Told my parents about it and we visited them once in 2010 maybe. We found the menu to be much more expensive than we remembered. To be fair, yes, food prices are rising and they have to adapt. But truth be told, it's also more expensive than other places of similar food types. Yet it's still the nice D-I-Y popiah I had when I was young. But parents never mentioned wanting to go back again, and I forgot all about it.

Recently, when we were pondering where to go for lunch, we walked pass Good Chance and thought, why not? So the few of us popped in and ordered a small popiah set, a hokkien mee, and a prawn paste chicken. The popiah set comes with the usual assortment of popiah fillings, served in a deconstructed manner. We were supposed to assemble everything ourselves. Sweet sauce, chilli, minced garlic, coriander, omelette strips, ground peanuts, lettuce, bean sprouts, popiah skins (chinese crepes if you will), and the main filling of stir fried Jicama (I learnt a new word today. We call it Mang Kwang in dialect. It's official English name is apparently Jicama, but also goes by Mexican Turnip.)

The set comes with only 6 pieces of skin, but the filling is more than enough for that, so we had to purchase additional skins at $1 apiece. The trick is not to overfill your popiah, since the skins are actually quite thin, and breaks easily if over filled. The filling used to be their star, but it's not as delicious as I remember. It felt a little MSG laden this time round. The hokkien noodles were forgettable. The boys didn't care much for it. And the prawn paste chicken was less-liked than Ka Soh's.

Thin popiah skins

Popiah fillings

Stir fried Jicama and carrots

My wrapped popiah

Prawn paste chicken wings

We left filling less than satisfied, both volume and yum wise. The hokkien mee and chicken costed a little more than other places serving similar foods, and wasn't even as nice. The popiah's standard definitely had dropped. And we all decided we will probably never be back.

Old Chengdu Sichuan Cuisine Restaurant 老成都川菜馆

Chinese New Year was around the corner, and XP suggested that we should have a lab lunch together. And being the Sichuanese, he proposed a Sichuan restaurant he had tried before. It's near enough to our workplace, and we're all game for Sichuan food. To tell the truth, I'm gamed for most food actually. Haha...

So 8 of us trooped over for a predictably chilli-laden lunch. Ironically, XP is not much of a chilli person, despite his hometown. But he assured the other none chilli eaters that they have non-spicy options. He pretty much decided the menu for us for the day, the only input from me being 担担面, because I really like noodles, and 回锅肉, because I've long heard about this Sichuan dish but never tried it before.

First dish was 夫妻肺片. Beef slices and beef innards braised in a spicy Sichuan pepper sauce. Very appetizing. I liked it. But poor YJ accidentally bit a Sichuan pepper. Her whole face turned red, and her hot chrysanthemum tea did not help at all. I hurriedly gave her my iced lime juice to quench the fire. Second was my 回锅肉, literally translated as 'return to the pot meat'. It really is pork belly that's cooked once, fried maybe? And it is then returned to the pot and stir fried with its accompaniments. Oily, sinful, spicy and delicious. Yum!

夫妻非片 - braised beef slices and innards

回锅肉 - return to the pot pork

My 担担面 arrived next. Springy Sichuanese mince meat noodles in a spicy broth. It's not fiery, just a mild spicy. Could taste a little of the numbing sensation from the peppers. Nice. But I will come to regret it, as you will see later. But at this point I was so happy with my decision to get this instead of white rice.

担担面 - Sichuan mince meat noodles

蟹黄豆花 came next. Translated: crab roe beancurd. It's a soup of supposed crab roe, but I thought it tasted, and felt, like salted egg yolks, with pieces of silky tofu floating throughout. Thick, and powdery - I really think there's a lot of salted egg yolk in it. It was fragrant, not spicy at all, and warms the belly. It's a must order. Here I started to wish I had white rice to go with the soup, but hang on, I'm still happy with my noodles.

蟹黄豆花 - crab roe beancurd

Then came the first star of the meal. 辣子鸡丁 - chilli chicken. As you can see, there's more chilli than chicken. This. One. Is. Impossibly. Fiery. I ate the first piece without thinking. Crispy, spicy and yummy. Instinctively I took a second piece. And found myself pausing to think about my tongue. It's numbing, and burning. Never felt that before. Hmmm... (I have a pretty high chilli threshold). Then I reached for a third piece, and felt the fire really bursting on my tongue. And my spicy noodles offered me no solace from the heat. I had to turn to my lime juice. Lots of it. Here, I gave in and ordered that white rice. No way I could eat more chicken without it. And I want more of the chicken. It's that good! Love-hate relationship, I called it. Love its yumminess, but almost couldn't stand the heat. E even tried eating the chilli, a stunt that he thoroughly regretted after. After my rice arrived, I was able to enjoy a lot more of the chicken. To show you just how much the chicken is, look at the amount of chilli left after we picked through and cleared all the chicken pieces. It was like treasure hunting, I'm telling you.

辣子鸡丁 - chilli chicken (before digging in)

辣子鸡丁 - chilli chicken (after we picked out ALL the chicken)

The next star arrived soon after. 沸腾水煮鱼 - 'water boiled fish'. A seemingly harmless sounding name. Look at the amount of chilli and pepper floating on the surface. And mind you, that's oil, not soup. But no worries, it doesn't feel greasy at all. And the fish is oh-so-fresh. Even J, who's not a fan of fish because she minds the fishiness, loved it. I joked that maybe the spiciness drowned the fishiness. But that's really not true, because despite the alarming amount of chilli and peppers, the fish itself is surprisingly mild. Soft and flaky, the pieces break easily under an over-strong grip with your chopsticks. Good chopsticks skills, or help from the spoon, is required. Oh, and it comes in one size only. Ginormous. Look at how big it is compared to our soup bowl! Definitely needs a group of friends to finish it. There are fresh bamboo shoot slices and beansprouts at the bottom of the oil sea. You need to fish for them. Don't waste them, they are crisp and delicious, albeit spicier than the fish because they absorbed a lot of the heat from the chillies.

沸腾水煮鱼

We also ordered 莴笋, translated as lettuce by Google Translate. This was recommended to us by the server when we asked for more unique vegetable. For the world of me I couldn't relate the greens in front of me to the lettuce I know, but upon some googling, it really did appear to be the shoot (or stem if you will) of some form of lettuce. It's tender, but still had a crunch, and I really liked it. I think J and I pretty much polished off the whole plate because the rest didn't seem to care for it.

莴笋

Last was our 锅贴 - panfried dumplings. Their rendition are pretty large. I needed two bites to go through each. But it was sooo juicy. When I bit into mine, the juices spitted out onto my plate. Skin was a little on the thick side, but since this restaurant wasn't meant to be a dim sum place, I think it's already pretty good.

锅贴

I really liked this restaurant, and definitely want to bring my friends and family back. I heard that my American boss visited from J's recommendation, and he was apparently served a milder version of the chilli chicken after a failed attempt by the waiter to talk him out of ordering it. It was still almost too much for them to handle. XP found it authentic enough, and that's good enough for me. But do come with big groups, or you can't order too much a variety. And order white rice and lime juice. Remember. My colleagues all got plum juice and they liked it. I hate plums so I can't comment on it. Moreover I personally find that lime juice is a great antidote for chilli.

Grand Shanghai 大上海

I had actually visited this restaurant many many years ago in my late teens, when my dad signed up for Copthorne's hotel membership. He had many complimentary food vouchers from the package, and Lynn and me were tasked with utilizing most of them. Yes, we go that far back, the two of us eating together. Back then we thought that the food was pretty good, but seemed pricey. We didn't pay a single cent of course, using the voucher, but didn't look at the menu either. Anyhow, we never returned.

My return this year was on CM's request. She wanted to go and check out that place as a potential wedding venue. So we lumped it together with her birthday dinner and went there for dinner. This restaurant really takes their Shanghai theme seriously. The decor is old school Shanghai with gold chandeliers and red table clothes and carpet. The food is predominantly Shanghainese. The most Shanghai aspect of the restaurant? It's life band. The band plus the Chinese girl decked out in Cheongsam were belting out old Shanghai classics such as 夜来香，忘不了，上海滩 etc. It does bring you to the old school glamour of the old Shanghai era. At least how it is usually portrayed in movies.

W, G and me arrived first. So while waiting, us hungry trio ordered starters to fill our tummies. We ordered Shanghai 小龙包 (steamed pork dumplings). Their version is a pretty big, soup filled one. However, out of the 4 dumplings in the basket, we managed to break the skin of 3 of them, causing the soup to leak out before we can savor them. I don't think it's our poor skills. Maybe the skin just isn't strong enough for the size of the filling. But the flavor was yummy. We subsequently learnt (with CM's arrival and the 2nd basket) that if we roll the dumpling onto our spoon instead of picking them up, we were safe.

小龙包 － Steamed pork dumplings

We also ordered 锅贴 (pan-fried pork dumplings). Also much larger than the usual bite sized ones, these ones took me about 3-4 bites to finish. It was juicy, and flavorful. And I like. We also liked their appetizer - some marinated tofu which was a little spicy and salty. They even have vegetarian 锅贴 and 蒸饺 for my hubby!

锅贴 - pan fried pork dumpling

Appetizer

素锅贴 - Vegetarian pan fried dumplings

素蒸饺 - Vegetarian steamed dumpling

By the time we went through all the gigantic dumplings, we were not that hungry anymore. So for the dinner proper, we only ordered Peking duck, Prawn with salted egg yolk, and braised tofu made vegetarian. The Peking duck skin carved at our table side and served wrapped in egg crepes and sweet sauce, with prawn crackers on the side. The duck meat was subsequently brought back to the kitchen, chopped, and stir fried with some veggies and pine nuts. It was then served in individual portions on a bed of lettuce. I actually liked both variations of the duck and finished all my servings. I do think, however, that the duck skin could have been crispier. However, G barely touched his stir fried meat, and we had an extra serving anyway thanks to hubby. These were cleared away by the waiters because we really couldn't eat more food.

Peking Duck skin

The prawns were succulent, coated with a generous amount of salted egg yolk. Something we all love, and it went so well with rice. The tofu was so-so, and mainly ordered so that hubby had something to go with rice. The rest of us barely touched it, so as to give him more to eat.

Prawn with salted egg yoke

红烧豆腐 - Braised tofu in Brown sauce

I found the food pretty good, and the ambience nice. The service was ok too. And I liked that they have several vegetarian options, although they didn't really a vegetarian main dish. The dim sum prices are actually reasonable ($6++ for 4 gigantic dumplings). The others are not overly pricey. I think it's a nice place to bring parents for a treat once in the while. But make sure they enjoy Shanghai music. The music does tend to be a little loud and occasionally conversations may be a little difficult.


Grand Shanghai
390 Havelock Road
Level 1 King's Centre
Singapore 169662
Tel no: 68366866