was looking for a place for my birthday dinner with family. comparing the set menus between cherry garden at oriental & peach blossom at marina mandarin, cherry garden’s came up tops PLUS they have 15% discount on set menus. we had not gone to cherry gardens for many years & the last we were there the weekend ala carte buffet lunch was pretty good, the ambience was good too, we chose the S$88pax menu with 15% discount.

there was a small dish (like japanese kobachi) of jelly fish with sliced top shell. they called it amuse bouche but hardly qualified,,haha.

the first course roast combination of roast duck, roast pork & char siew was very average or perhaps below average,

the second course sweet & sour seafood soup was an excellent dish, just slightly sour, enough of trademark peppery taste, and a very tasty soup & pleasant to the eye as well, much better than most places, and something i would enjoy though its not my favourite soup like most lie tong were.

the third course of braised abalone with deep-fried beancurd was par excellence. the abalone was tasty & had great bite, and the braising sauce was super, like all in good braising dishes abalones, sea cucumber of goose webs. the beancurd was excellent as well.:chopstick:

the next 2 courses though were very average for this quality of restaurant. individual serving & prawns in 2 ways did not make it fine dining (the deep-fried prawn was done wasabi prawn style but with sweet & sauce) and they did not come out better than or as good as a good zi char stall. i think a wasabi prawn like the excellent ones i just had at tunglok signature would be far better. & the fish fritter with tofu hardly fit the fine palate. kok sen zi char would do better for these 2 dishes.

the black sesame crabmeat fried rice was an interesting dish & quite nice & tasty.

the dessert, the usual 杨支甘露 served with lime sorbet, was good.

overall rather surprisingly, my recent excellent dinner tunglok signature @ central was so much better than this – taste-wise the sea cucumber was superb & as good if not better than the abalone here, and all the other dishes were better!

overall the food, ambience etc was quite pleasant & enjoyable, the service though was very average for this class of restaurants, made worse by the attitude of the restaurant manager. we asked for carpark redemption and was first told only valet parking could be redeemed. we don’t usually valet park however it was jam packed that evening & we did valet park (S$15). the server came back with our valet parking chip which was signed over & i asked “so is parking free?” first she said “you pay S$15″ but when i asked her to ask the manager she came back after some time & said it was free. as she obviously had difficulty speaking & understanding english as we were leaving the restaurant i asked a second time the reception lady (maybe filipino). she understood but she had no idea so i asked her to call the restaurant manager. it was a small place & i could see the manager taking an inordinately long time to come over after adjusting table cloth etc for an empty table (quite unnecessarily). and when he came, he flashed an artificial smile and made an incredibly senseless comment “ö…did you dine at the restaurant?” when he was the one who helped usher us in when we arrived. he was no help at all, the staff were good in attitude poor in training & the manager needed to take lessons from his staff on service attitude & how to nicely reassure customers & make warm friendly buddy gesture. hope it was one off..anyway it mattered not as customer would just vote with their feet.

I went to daiso at ion orchard to pick up something on 8.10.2013. thought i would try out some stalls at food opera at B4. I tried the bakchormee the other time i was here so decided to give the teochew fishball noodle a shot. i ordered meepok tar. its S$5, I guess they have to pay for rent so ok. the fishballs looked great & they were good & 6 of them, quite satisfying.

even though i am low in carbo preference, still a good chilli noodles is what makes it shiok! otherwise might as well eat fishball soup? anyhow the noodles were much below par, just a little overdone which was ok still fairly qq, but made it unpalatable was the heavy mix of sweet sauce. somehow it managed to taste like yongtaufu! it was way off xin lu’s S$3 fishball noodles (former margaret drive now at mei chin food centre) and of course nothing like the jalan tua kong stall at 6th avenue. won’t do this stall again but the bakchormee stall here was ok, will try that again next time.

See my full reviews & photos at = http://chefquak.com/2013/10/07/restaurant-week-6pax-lunch-summer-palace-regent-hotel-on-7oct2013/
6 of us decided to go for the S$40++pax restaurant week lunch at summer palace at regent hotel on 7.10.2013.

i don’t do restaurant week lunch these days as the offers are not great at dining city ‘star’ restaurants (often worse than credit card like UOB offers & more restrictive in menu than cheaper set lunches). also many ‘star’ restaurants do not provide menu so it is a “trust me” deal, when there are so many other good deals to pick & choose from?

anyhow summer palace provided the menu which looked fine. & we checked at the restaurant the usual lunch menu started at S$68++pax & the restaurant week menu looked better by comparison.

we had trio of dimsum. the mango puff was ok, har gao with birds nest was good consistent with good dimsum restaurant but bird nest was too small a helping to be relevant. the puffy char siew pao was good too sweet like a char siew soh (the reason i don’t take char siew soh) whereas HK Timhowan’s version was a crispy not puffy dough & less sweet & much better.

the sliced fish century egg tan chai soup was quite strange as 1 of my friends observed. it was quite tasty (though no better than a good lie tong), a bit heavy & confusing in taste & kind of poor in presentation for fine dining.

the 1/2 baby lobster in superior sauce (those small 300g ones), which ought to be the centre-piece attraction, was kind of disappointing to me taste-wise. the meat texture was also not bouncy like usual live lobsters & the superior sauce not flavourful enough.

the 烧肉面线 - mian sian was ok not as tasty as chui huay lim. the roast pork however was a disaster. hard & tasteless. i thought it was a poor dish for such a classy restaurant.

the trio of dessert was very average. the osmanthus jelly was ok but harder jelly not as soft & tasty as HK Timhowan’s or the ones they served at the Lantau Big Buddha vegetarian kitchen. the aloe vera & mango were just ok, average.

water & cashew nuts were free. they charged S$2.50pax for chinese tea, quite fair. 4 of us took the poh lei tea. ambience was great, service professional, but the food standard was kind of below par c/w majestic or even tunglok! there was a 1/2lobster but overall taste wise this specially discounted S$40++pax menu gave less satisfaction than a similar priced 6-course lunch set at majestic. of the menu dishes, actually the dimsum were better items (except for dessert) so maybe dimsum here but it sure would be ex.

one last thing, because it was restaurant week, they gave only 1 complimentary parking coupon for 6pax. there were 3 of us who parked at the hotel & my friends kindly let me have the coupon & i noticed on leaving the carpark that the charge was S$10.75 or something! goodness!

See my full reviews & photos at = https://chefquak.com/2016/05/07/much-below-par-crab-beehoon-soup-uncle-leong-jurong-east-on-6may2016/
i arranged a 5pax lunch with my OPS primary school buddies at uncle leong jurong east on 6.5.2016. ^^
i had quite many excellent crab beehoon soup at uncle leong jurong east last year (2015).
& recently a OPS primary school buddy bought a very good lunch at red house, so i wanted to let them try the crab beehoon soup at uncle leong.
price of crab has gone up from S$63/kg to S$68/kg. adding soup still S$5.
higher price is ok, but somehow the soup was not as intense & flavourful as every of the previous times i had???
if you look at the 2 past photos above, the soup previously all had a deeper yellow colour. just by the look, it appeared more delicious than what we had today!
also, as one friend mentioned immediately, the crab was not as “strong” ie the meat texture is not as firm, and i felt also not sweet as a very fresh good crab should taste.
recently i made a 6-course dinner including crab beehoon soup for a very good friend’s birthday.
the crab beehoon soup i made using 2x250g small crab was very nice. i commented that uncle leong’s was much better, but if i were to c/w what we had today, i think mine was better both for the soup & the crab. my crabs were tiny but very sweet!
the cereal prawns was still good.
however for comparison, i just had cereal prawns at red house 2 days back for another friend’s 7pax bjrthday dinner, and red house cereal prawns were so much better.
the seafood pot was still very good.
many good ingredients including fish maw, sea cucumbers etc.
this hotpot tofu was the worst dish. no comparison at all with any zi char tofu dish say the likes of kok sen etc
i used to think this was the best 3-egg tofu.
my taste buds must be different today, but while it was still pretty ok, i thought the recent 3-egg spinach at red house was better.
when we first tried the crab, immediately we told the server it was not so good.
i did not really expect anything, it was not so good but it was not like “bad”. anyhow the server arranged a complimentary longan sea coconut dessert for us.
the lunch came to S$176nett for 5pax like S$35pax. it was really quite below my expectations, much below par.
the last many times i came in 2015, i used a $51 for S$100 voucher so those meals were first super nice & second like super value-for-money. this time no discounts, but i was ok if only the food were as good, but they were not….

See my full reviews & photos at = https://chefquak.com/2016/04/26/just-average-zi-char-jin-wee-siglap-on-25apr2016/
5 of us went to jin wee @ siglap for dinner.
it’s a regular zi char eating house.
menu likewise pretty standard zi char fare.
we were looking at the lie tong 例汤 S$12 & the fish maw soup S$25. a friend decided on the fish maw soup.
soup was quite good. quite chokeful of ingredients, good amount of crabmeat & very tasty.
not as good as the fish maw soup at beng thin, but maybe not that far off.
seemed expensive at S$25 at a zi char place like this, but what’s important is it’s good la..
the crispy pork is popular here, we ordered the larger serving at S$15.
crispy pork was good, & the sweet sour sauce was well done too, a competent sauce not too sweet & good with the pork. sweet & sour not my favourite though.
overall i like loo’s curry pork chop better.
the fried bean curd with minced pork was quite tasty too.
felt expensive to me at S$15 for a simple dish with cheap ingredients, but maybe it was not exorbitant.
the sambal kang kong was nice if quite standard fare anywhere.
the dinner came to S$71 including drinks (we had 4 barleys + 1 tea) for 5pax, so about S$14pax. we ordered not much food though just 3 dishes + soup.
i thought the prices were just a bit expensive but it was quite ok dinner overall.