The Place - Tung Lok Seafood on Level 11 of Orchard Central Mall next to Somerset MRT is fast becoming one of my favourite Chinese restaurants. Besides its convenient location, I like its unpretentious interior unlike Chinois or the Humble House which call for a definite dress code and busy menus that take time to decipher.

The Service - The staff here are experienced so you won't get orders mixed up and unlike the seafood restaurants at East Coast Park, there are no pushy waitresses promoting off-menu 'catch of the day' items at non-transparent prices. Here you get class without the crass service. The staff are pleasant, polite, proactive and service-oriented. Having reunion meal on weeknight ahead of the CNY Eve means we are not restricted to the set menus and having our meals within 2 hour time bands to fit in 3 dinner seatings per night.

The Prices - Usual menu price applies for a la carte orders, with most dishes priced between $18 to $28 per portion. Early birds also have a choice of both regular set menus and special CNY set menus. If you are planning to order mainly live seafood cooked to order, then the set menus offer better value. If you have shallower budgets like us, then pick several a la carte items for a no less satisfying meal.

The Food - Tung Lok's kitchens deliver consistently high standards and this restaurant is no exception. All the seafood dishes we had that night were fresh and delicious.

The yusheng here thankfully did not have too much of the glaringly coloured pickled ginger & the salmon sashimi for the yusheng are sliced more generously than other Chinese restaurants like Lei Garden and Crystal Jade. Here are my top picks from the a la carte menu:

* Live prawns steamed with garlic. The prawns were very plump and fresh, deveined and halved for easy eating, and cooked just right. Minced garlic and a drizzle of superior soya sauce enhanced the flavour.

.* Garoupa fillet with wine which was a wholesome dish, fish was very fresh, with honshimeji mushrooms and black fungus providing textural contrast. The wine based broth was flavorsome and we finished every drop.

.* Sauteed scallops and broccoli with XO sauce. The scallops were plump and juicy; the premium XO sauce lent a mildly spicy kick to the dish without overwhelming the fresh flavor of the scallops. Broccoli was cooked just right - slightly crunchy* Yam ring - attractively plated and tasted as good as it looked. The yam was crispy on the surface and creamily melt-in-the-mouth smooth beneath, enveloping a mound of sauteed celery, carrot, baby corn, sugar snap peas, straw mushrooms, lean chicken chunks,shelled shrimps and cashew nuts. Yummy.

.We had seafood noodles to round off our meal, this was delicious without being too greasy. A nice gesture was the offer of complimentary dessert - honeydew sago.

The Place - No frills, unpretentious Cantonese restaurant at a quiet corner of B1 United Square helmed by former hotel chef Mr Yip from HK. Rather crowded at meal times so be prepared to wait for one of the 15 or so tables if you arrive without reservation. There is a private dining room with chandelier but it is always unoccupied when we visit.

The Service - Mrs Yip leads the table crew and doubles up as the cashier. Service is brisk & efficient, if rather impersonal as the restaurant is usually crowded & staff are kept busy, on their toes. Dont expect special attention unless you're a regular.

The Food - Hearty Cantonese cooking with something to suit every palate and pocket. Menu includes crowd favourites like sweet sour pork, spinach with trio of eggs, shrimp paste chicken, sam loh sliced fish hofun, and banquet offerings like buddha jumps over the wall, pen cai casserole, roast chicken, live seafood. Set menus are available. The dishes we ordered were well executed:

* yusheng - ingredients were fresh but the crackers, pickles tasted mass produced rather than made in house.
* sweet sour fish - tasty and popular with the kids.
* spinach in superior stock - generous portion and stock used for poaching the vegetables was flavorsome & free of MSG.
* eggplant & tofu casserole - tasty but much too greasy, could have used more salted fish in the gravy. Goes very well with rice.
* roast chicken (half ) - excellent, on par with the versions served at hotel restaurants like Summer Palace & Shang Palace.
* wasabe prawns - very fresh and crunchy prawns with light touch of wasabe mayo that makes this dish ok for kids too
* sliced garoupa with ham & mushroom - a dish usually found at high end restaurants. Fish was thickly sliced.
* braised sea cucumber with conpoy stuffed melon - another dish usually found only at high end restaurants. Perhaps cost of ingredients are high close to CNY so the pieces of sea cucumber were a little small.

The Prices - Very reasonable for a restaurant. Pleasantly surprised that prices for small portions start at $8++ to $10++ comparable to zichar stalls in kopitiam. Low prices possibly to draw repeat customers as it is the new kid on the block at Newton/Novena area.

Marina Bay is becoming a hip & happening zone, perhaps already surpassing Orchard Road. Thankfully it is still possible to find restaurants that serve hearty, satisfying meals at down to earth prices on New Year's Eve. This new branch of the popular Paradise Inn chain of Chinese family restaurants is indeed a welcome addition to the plethora of predominantly Western restaurants in Marina Square.

We beat the dinner crowds to order four dishes to go with rice to share among the four of us. The dishes arrived within 10-15 minutes of placing our orders. We liked the restaurant's crew for not pressing us to order the higher priced seafood dishes and for regularly topping up our glasses of Chinese tea.

The double boiled pork rib with winter melon soup ($15.90++ per pot, enough for 5-6 servings). The soup was hearty, flavorful and not too salty to be drunk on its own. The pork ribs were cooked till tender and the meat fell off the bone easily. We asked for a plate of sliced red chilli with soya sauce to go with the pork ribs. I liked the soft melon and wished there were more of the gourd in the soup.

The Homemade Tofu with Seafood & Pork Floss in Mini Wok ($10.90++ for small) was my favorite dish. The creamy soft tofu had a generous topping of pork floss and was submerged in a concentrated, savoury gravy with lots of diced fresh prawns & some diced fresh scallops. If I am to order just one dish to go with plain rice, it will be this seafood tofu dish, which epitomizes Paradise Inn's winning formula of using staple ingredients like tofu & turning it into a different dish from what/how we usually consume it at home.

The Imperial Pork Rib ($10.90++ for Small) was another well executed, popular 'zi-char' dish. The Small portion contained six pieces
of boneless pork loin (four big & two small pieces) which were very tasty, and was tempted to order a second plate of it for sharing.

The eggplant with minced meat in spicy sauce ($10.90++ for small) was served in a claypot. It was rather salty and greasy. It was prevented from being too 'over the top' when scooped sparingly into a bowl of piping hot plain rice.

We were glad to have chosen Chinese tea to go with what would be our last meal for 2012. We were satiated enough to pass the dessert; anyway the dessert selection was run off the mill and it would be better to save the money for a late night supper. The bill for four of us was just shy of $70, which is less than the average cost per head of a New Year's Eve meal in one of the three swanky hotels above Marina Square.

The Siglap branch of Thai Express is located on the ground floor of a low rise private apartment complex with 10+ parking lots (chargeable) for visitors along the compound's driveway. The restaurant's air conditioning is comparable to cineplex temperatures - welcomed on a sizzling hot afternoon but too chilly for the cloudy day we dropped by. We ordered 1 of the 3 promotional Sanook Sets (choice of tom yum soup, curry or stirfried dish) served with rice, appetizer and dessert, the massamun curry chicken with roti prata that was featured on the table display and the black pepper crayfish/slipper lobster with glass noodles.

The Sanook Set was the best value at $8.90++. The tom yum soup had dory fish chunks, two shelled shrimps and several calamari rings. Taste was ok but nothing special. The 3 pcs of deepfried curry chicken balls were overcooked and tough. The sago and palm seed dessert was almost a reluctant inclusion, looked unappetizing and tasted bland with some sago beads hard and undercooked.

The $12.90++ massamun curry which looked promising in the photo turned out to be the worst of the three items we had ordered. The prata was too oily and not evenly cooked (see photo) and seemed to have been reheated half heartedly in the microwave as it was not crispy at all. The curry was topped by a repulsive layer of oil.

The black pepper crayfish glass noodles ($14.90++) looked unappetizing due to the cook's heavy handed use of black pepper sauce, was rather oily but tasted alright.

The disappointing meal reinforced our impression that Thai Express has expanded too aggressively resulting in a sustained decline in the quality of its cooking. We didn't order any drinks (opting for water) or dessert and had change for our $50 note.

It's not easy to locate Snowman Desserts unless you hang out at NEX pretty often. You won't find a listing on the mall directory. It's actually on level 2 taking over half of the premises of Japanese restaurant MOF, near Watsons. The Korean owner started off at NEX with a branch of Daessiksin, the popular DIY Korean BBQ buffet that grew from a single outlet opposite Novena Church (now moved to United Square) into a chain of several restaurants. The enterprising businessman has turned the NEX shop space into a 3-in-1 restaurant, offering the Korean BBQ buffet for lunch and dinner, and the Ssiksin fried chicken and dessert (Snowman) throughout the day to maximize returns from the rent on his shop unit.

Customers who order the fried chicken and desserts are seated at long tables at the front end of the restaurant, near the walkway in full view of the unending stream of weekend shoppers strolling in the mall. If dining as a couple or small group of three or four pax, you'll be seated with and rubbing elbows with other customers, just like eating at a school tuckshop at recess time.

Prices start at $3.50++ for a cup of soft serve ice cream served with freshly fried churros. Takeaway price for these cups is $3.50nett. The highlight of Snowman's menu is Korean shaved ice or bingsu whose prices range from $10.50++ to $14.00++. We ordered the fruit-based bingsu for dining in at $14++ or $16.48 nett per bowl. Each bowl serves up to two pax. The cheapest bingsu in town is at Tom N Toms Coffee which are priced from $9.50nett with free wifi thrown in. Snowman's price point is on par only if it excludes service charge as there's no free wifi and the makeshift environment lacks the cool, relaxed vibe of a cafe where customers can chill and chat.

The quality of Snowman's bingsu is good - its fine, smooth and velvety texture makes every spoonful a pleasure. Condensed milk is served on the side for the diner to drizzle on top of the bingsu to his/her desired level of sweetness.

We would return only for the melon bingsu $14++ which looked and tasted great (See photos).  The strawberry bingsu $14++ was disappointing as it arrived with the strawberry snowman dropped on the serving tray. We had to send it back for the snowman to be fixed/perched on top of the mound of shaved ice so that the dessert was photo-worthy.  The chef was rather stingy with the strawberries too. The mango bingsu $14++ would have been good had the restaurant used sweet and ripe mangoes. Unfortunately the mango chunks served were so tart that the only way we could eat them up was to dip them into the tiny container of condensed milk. Our feedback to the server was futile; she shrugged her shoulders, looked blankly into space and proceeded to serve other customers.

We felt that Snowman's staff are obviously more used to clearing tables for DIY buffet; they do not look approachable or perhaps they just lack the training to deliver a passable level of customer service. The lady behind the cash register was also mechanical and made no eye contact with customers who were taking turns to settle their bills.