Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Big Eater

In case you thought that this blog has gone off on a "domestic" tangent altogether, I thought I'll write about a pretty good crab restaurant that my CEB and I chanced upon a couple of weeks ago. Or rather, one that my CEB had heard about and thought would satisfy his peckish wife who was demanding to go to somewhere different for dinner instead of the usual haunts.

The name of the restaurant sounded pretty awful - like a direct translation of a pretty decent Chinese word/phrase to English without thought to how it would turn out in a different language. And the location of the restaurant, near some large factory building and among a row of shophouses with extremely limited parking (we had to park at the back of the restaurant at the residential area) wasn't the most, well, asthetically pleasing.

All that aside, we had a good enough experience there which prompted talk of going back for a second time. As per the pic above, the restaurant menu has a page devoted to listing just its specialities to make for easy ordering.

My CEB ordered the Hokkien Noodles which turned out to be unlike the yellow/white noodles that we were expecting. While the dish was not easy on the eye - coiled wet worm-like noodles heaped in very dark looking liquid, the aroma wafting from the dish sent both of us digging in without second thoughts. We agreed this dish was yummy - not too salty despite the sauce, but tasty and wet as good hokkien mee should be. I would definitely recommend this dish to folks going to the restaurant.

I was debating between 2 of the chef's recommendation - the Claypot Herbal Mutton or the salted egg crabs. My CEB was pretty firm about not trying the latter, having had an unpleasant experience at another restaurant before with this dish but when the server told us they were out of the mutton soup, my CEB surprised me by ordering a crab cooked in salted egg (My CEB seems to be less fixed in his ways and more open to trying, and to giving in since the EE course).

The Slog Reviews: The salted egg crab was not the least bit too salty and the dressing (salted egg) surprisingly did not detract from the sweetness of the crab which was as fresh and "meat-packed" as the one we had in Malacca. This dish was extremely well done - the salted flavor of the sauce was a subtle contrast and brought out the full flavor of thecrab's natural flavor. A must try!

The total bill came to about SGD50+ for the noodles and the crab (abt 900gm) which was lower than what we had expected (too much of eating in Malaysia I guess!).

Address: No. 34 Jalan Pari Burong (Upper Changi Road) Singapore 488700.
Tel: +65 6245-7268