I tried to make a dinner reservation several days before the weekend but it was already fully booked. Landed on lunch instead.

The signboard was prominent at the building facade. Took the elevator to level 2 and the restaurant will be on the right. The reservation list was written on the board and the wait staff + patrons could see it at a glance.

We were ushered to our seats quickly and was asked what drinks we would like. It was our first visit and we had no idea there was a choice for free flow of drinks until we ordered a coke and barley. I noticed it after looking though the ipad menu and informed the staff to cancel my barley and ordered the sour plum juice.$16$26 (1portion)fish $12 (1portion) | assorted mushrooms $9 (0.5portion)$6 (0.5portion)$10 (1portion)chicken $5 (0.5portion) | shitake $3 (0.5portion) | golden $3 (0.5portion) | kelp $3 (0.5portion)

The ingredients which I personally thought it was exceptional were the beef and shrimp ball. The beef was marbled beautifully with the fats and it literally melted in your mouth. The shrimp ball was bouncy and it ain't those supermarket type that tastes flour. I could taste the shrimp in every bite.

In general, we paid: -
$16 for soup base
$8 for the 'salad bar' which had 3 choices of fruits, a pickles and seaweed.
$6 for the free flow drinks
$90 for the food

The soup base was no doubt excellent. Food presentation and freshness checked. In my humble opinion, most important factor in hotpot is the soup base. I am willing to pay for a good soup but to pay at the tagged price for mushrooms and veggies was not something I would do. The salad bar had limited choices which i do not think it is worth $4ea. I would hope the restaurant will consider a single price for veggies & shrooms option and go ala carte for the meat.

Both my husband and I could eat quite a fair bit in hotpot session, I guess the ala carte style wasn't suitable for us.

It was Father's Day, glad we managed to get a seat for 2 pretty quickly. We were seated at 8.10pm and started with our food selection. I guessed it has been awhile from my last visit, they now have a new soup base - sichuan hotpot. I especially love hotpot and has tried hotpots of many places, you would have guess how excited i was and of course we chose that as one of our soup base (the other was the pork bone soup).

The steamboat buffet came with free flow of coke, sprite and chinese tea. Our drinks came fairly quickly and next came with our steamboat ingredients. We prompted a wait staff for our soup and she didn't really seem to bother. We asked another wait staff and she told us we gotta wait awhile for the sichuan soup base.

Hence we waited... and waited.... and waited... Until 8.35pm it was not served to us yet, our steamboat ingredients were already exposed to the air for almost 30minutes. I signaled a senior staff and asked how long more we would need to wait. She came back to our table and advised it will be here soon.

To wait for almost 30min for the soup base totally drained out my patience. I demanded her to give a time frame and i got 5min for an answer. True enough it came within 5min. We could finally start our steamboat at 8.40pm.

To highlight how Crystal Jade steamboat works, steamboat session starts at 8.00pm and end at 10.00pm. By the time the soup base came to us we were left with slightly over an hour for our food. To make the situation worse, they handed you the bill at 9.30pm, asking for immediate payment as they are closing the cashier.

It was a total disappointment in the speed of service and sensitivity of the staff.

Did i mention the sichuan hotpot is not spicy at all? In fact there was a tinge of sweetness, i felt i was having sukiyaki if not for the seeds in the soup that made my lips numb.

YEA!: lobster bisque soup spaghetti

NAY.: long queue

I passed by this cafe on a shopping trip and saw a long queue. As a typical Singaporean, long queue meant good food hence I suggested this place to my friends for our last gathering. The food display was also a pulling factor, everything looked so good. Anyway, one friend arrived earlier, 6.40pm - and we got ourselves a table at 7.20pm.

On a flip of the menu, there was only 1-page of main course that you could choose from - and that was a variety of omu rice and spaghetti. I had the Lobster Bisque Soup Spaghetti and my friends had the Tomato Cream Omu Rice. The manager who jotted our order was thoughtful to inform us that the pancake would need 30mins to prepare.

Okay, a little drama began when we were ushered to our seats. 4 of us were allocated to this sofa seating, with low sofa and armchairs and table. It would be nice if we were just there for a coffee but we meant to have dinner and desserts - the low table and seats were just not comfortable. We signaled a wait staff and told her our preference to sit at a proper table (for 4) which they had just cleared. She told us 'No' and couldn't tell us why when we prompted her. Another wait staff came and gave us some funny explanations which we couldn't understand. We murmured among ourselves and that somehow got the attention of the manager and she helped us with our request.

My spaghetti was al dente, complemented with a rich savory base. Prawns were crunchy and cooked just right.

We requested our double pancake to be served right after our main course arrived hence we did not wait for long after dinner. It was served with a little butter cream on the pancake with a mini jar of maple syrup by the side. Pancake was spongy but it did not wow me - and it somehow reminded me of the fast food chain hotcakes.

It aint easy to stand out among the stalls of selling the same stuff, and Li Xin did it.

Many people would not have 'meekia' (angel hair like noodles) with soup base as the soup may linger this starchy taste. But not in Li Xin. The soup was clear with a light fishball flavour. Noodles was tangy. Each serving accompanied with 6 big, round fishballs. You could taste the fish literally in every bite. Personally i liked to add some chilli padi into the soup to spice it up.

Doong Ji is located along the busy East Coast Road, you can find public parking along the road but it would be hard to get a lot during lunch peak hour as there are many well-known eateries along the shophouses.

We worked in Katong area and would take a bus here to lunch. This day, Christmas Eve, I brought my husband ("finally!", he said) to try it out.

The restaurant was of a small scale, but you would not feel 'congested' as tables were well spaced out. The pretty wall decals and warm lightings made you feel at home, more so when the big lcd TV played the latest Kpop MVs. Chopsticks and spoons were neatly placed in a box on each table. Washroom was available in the restaurant too.

The weekday set lunch cost $8.90, featuring their popular dishes such as bibimbap, kimchi soup + rice, beef soup + rice, etc. Unfortunately set lunch was unavailable on the Christmas Eve and it was not make known when the wait staff handed over the menu to us.

I had my usual - Tofu Soup (seafood). The soup was served piping hot, boiling in fact. Generous amount of round tofu, squid and prawns. Soup base had a tad of kimchi flavour, non-spicy. We also shared a plate of fried squid which came with the mayonaise dip, and my, it was good to share for 4-6pax. The quantity was too much for us and after 3,4 pieces i got tired of it. Batter was too thick to my liking and was kind of bland.

YEA! : nice ambience, good food, reasonable price.

NAY. : wait staff could have been more meticulous