Melben Seafood (Ang Mo Kio)

Finally got around to writing this post. Been wanting to do so since the day we ate here, but my neurotic side refused to write things without following chronological order.

It was a belated birthday celebration for L and me, the September babies, as well as E the October baby. Yes, it's stretched across more than a month but September was a bad month and we just couldn't find a common time for all 6 of us to meet. So finally we arranged for dinner. And I said I want crabs. So someone suggested Melben and off we went to Melben.

I had made the assumption that a HDB void deck coffeeshop wouldn't entertain reservations, so I didn't try for a reservation. Thinking that if we reach slightly before dinner time, we may be able to get a seat in a decent amount of time. I was wrong on both counts. They were not the usual void deck coffeeshop but more of a in-between of a coffeeshop and a restaurant, so it seems that they do entertain reservations. And I reached at 5.45, but we only got a table at almost 7pm.

Ok, my main qualms about this place. They really 吊起来买. I can't think a English counterpart for this phrase. Direct translation, it means that one hang oneself up to sell. Generally it means that one makes a big deal of him/herself/one's things to raise the rewards/price. Bad translation, I know. >_< Let's just say they are way too proud.

Queueing for a table was ok. I understand that there's a lot of patrons, and crabs isn't quite something you can rush through. So I dutifully stay in the line for more than an hour. We were given the menu while in the queue, so that we can place order before we get a seat. I was initially impressed. Hey, this means that I can get my food as soon as I sit down right? Wrong. When we placed our order at 6.15pm, all that happened was my order was scribbled onto an order chit, and that chit given to me. Duh. Finally we neared the front of the line at about 6.30pm. So finally, a lady came to get my chit from me at 6.35pm. In return, I got a card saying "Food Waiting time, 6.35 - 8.05", and was told that we placed order at 6.35pm, it means that we are not allowed (seriously??!!) to complain about food not served yet until 1.5 hours later, which is 8.05pm. 1.5 hours wait for my food, are you f***ing kidding me??!!

We got our table 10 minutes or so later, and settled down for our long long wait. Food was eventually served, granted, it was ahead of their cutoff. I believe they had intentionally overestimated the probable time to prevent people from bugging them. But still, it took 50 minutes from my point of order til my first dish was served. I'm not impressed. Yes, it's crowded, but if restaurants like Jumbo or Long Beach can serve up their food within 20 minutes despite their crowds, why can't Melben do the same?

I do not like waiting so long for my food!

Ok, enough about the impossible amount of waiting time. Let's get to the food. First dish that came up, stir fried baby kailan. Normal stir fried vegetables in oyster sauce that you can find in any coffeeshop's tze char stall. This was followed by Gung Pao Chicken - diced chicken fried with spring onion, onions and dried chilli. I found it on the salty side but still manageable. We also ordered a crispy seafood tofu. I think I preferred Ka Soh's.

Stir fried baby kai lan

Gung bao chicken

Fried Seafood tofu

Finally came the star of the night. Crabs. Ok, actually Melben is more well known for their white pepper crab. But I was so craving chilli crabs so we ordered that instead. It's actually pretty good crab. The sauce was a good balance of sweet, salty and sour. The thickness was just right. The crabs themselves were firm. However, another proud thing about Melben: they had a disclaimer in their menu. "No guarantee of the firmness of the crabs". Maybe not quite phrased the same way, but the gist of it is there. So if you get crappy, shrunken crabs, you have no grounds to complain.

Chilli crab

Fried buns to go with the chilli crab

The other signature dish of Melben's is their XO crab bee hoon soup. I do like the soup. It was creamy, with the sweetness from the crabs. But there was ALOT of bee hoon. They told us one serving serves about 4 pax. There were 6 of us, so we ordered additional bee hoon. On a nice note, they actually gave us an extra bowl of soup to go with the extra bee hoon. But the final amount of bee hoon was so much that each of us had to eat two (small) bowls. With all the other food and the buns, we were stuffed.

XO crab bee hoon

Overall, I think their food is decent. But the wait is totally not worth it. If it was a 30 minutes wait, I would say those were fantastic crabs. However, it was almost 2 hours wait in total. I expect ALOT more for 2 hours. As such, I won't return. Not to this branch anyway. They have another outlet in Toa Payoh. I may give that one a chance, and see how bad the wait is.