Shen Ji Seafood Garden

S and I tried this place earlier this year - we had a craving for crab and I did a quick search on ieatishootipost and feeling unadventurous, we decided to try this place at Holland V.

Service was seriously bad - it took forever for us to get any service despite us trying to get the attention of at least 3 different service staff.

The XO Crab Bee Hoon S$22 was pretty impressive when it turned up -


$22 for a whole crab and noodles - a one meal dish. Very worth it and the perfect serving size for two females, we had just this and a poh piah :) The crab had two good sized pincers and were very meaty. The soup was also quite tasty. The rest of the tze char looked pretty good too.

Worth a try if you try not to be too bothered by the really bad service.


Shen Ji Seafood Garden
Blk 40 Holland Drive #01-39
Tel : 63411737

Kopi Tiam 咖啡店

Ended up eating here by default - Auds was already here before we met for dinner and was too lazy to move elsewhere ;)

We really wanted to try the Curry Fish Head but looking at the curry fish head at the table nearby, we decided it was going to be too much for two people to share. So we ordered two things to share instead, Char Kway Teow -


and Carrot Cake.


The carrot cake was actually really good, quite a few prawns hidden in there. The char kway teow was quite yummy too, and not overly oily.

Each dish cost about $15 (sorry can't remember the actual price), which is not cheap compared to hawker centres but pretty reasonably priced considering this restaurant is in a hotel.

My two grouses about this place is that it was surprisingly crowded and noisy, and the staff can't seem to cope - took forever to get their attention.


Kopi Tiam 咖啡店
2 Stamford Road
2F Swissotel The Stamford
Tel: 6431 6156

Seng Kee Black Chicken Herbal Soup

Came here for dinner with sister and brother-in-law one evening. I was thinking parking would be a pain in the ass but it turns out there's parking available right across the road - but I wasn't driving so I didn't have to worry about it in any case :D

Despite the fact that this place is called Seng Kee Black Chicken Herbal Soup, most of the other dishes here are really good too. We were here for a normal dinner so ordered the more common home-style dishes.

The Steamed Promfret $28 was a decent size and quite fresh -


Ok, so you can't really see the size of the fish under all that stuff but it was a decent size :D All that stuff was kiam chye (salted vegetable), tau cheou (fermented soy bean) and chilli - might sound like an odd combination but it went brilliantly with the fish.

The Tofu with Chicken Floss $7 was also good -


The tofu was really soft and the chicken floss were a nice touch.

Something I loved when I was a kid was liver - yes, I was a weird kid :D. Used to eat it for dinner but haven't had it yonks! The Claypot Liver $9 came looking like this -


But I couldn't decide if it looks better all mixed up, like this -


So I put both photos up :) Yep, there's kidney in this too which I neatly avoided, but the liver was cooked to perfect doneness.

We also tried the La La $8 -


And Fried Long Beans $8 -


Which were both not bad.

Great food at very cheap prices, and ambience too - al fresco dining :D This place is always crowded, which speaks well of the quality of food. Come and try!!


Seng Kee Black Chicken Herbal Soup
467 Changi Road
Tel: 67464089
Operating Hours : 5 pm - 4 am

Different Taste Cafe and Restaurant (Frankel Avenue)

One reason why I think I make a lousy food blogger (besides the fact that I'm so slow at updating this blog :P) - is that I'm not the kind to order lots of dishes at restaurants. The size of my stomach has shrunk considerably with age, and also so as not to have any wastage of food, I tend to just order enough food. Which makes me a lousy food blogger coz for you it means a review of a limited number of dishes for each restaurant...

So I normally jump at the chance to try out a place with a group of people where we can order a whole heap of dishes :D

We came here for dinner one evening, and ordered a whole lot of food for four people. Lost the receipt so no prices will be listed, but the prices are around the prices of other tze char places. Sorry!

One of the more famous dishes here is the Curry Fish Head -


It was not bad - fish was fleshy and fresh, lots of ingredients in the curry (I love ladies' fingers and pineapple in fish head curry) and it had the right amount of spicy and sour.

Another childhood favourite tze char dish of mine is Prawn Roll (Hae Zo) -


Nothing to rave about here, it was just ok.

The Sweet & Sour Pork Rib was similarly decent -


The Crispy Chicken in Thai Chilli Sauce was a dish recommended by the waiter -


which turned out to be reasonably good.

I normally don't order egg dishes at restaurants coz it just seems silly to pay such a premium for something as simple as egg, but I'm always happy when someone else orders it and I get to share in it too :D We ordered Egg Fu Yong - yay, egg!


And for a balanced meal, we had a token vegetable dish -


The food here was mediocrely average. Except for the food being served very quickly, service was otherwise pretty bad, and they don't serve free water. Strange that they are so crowded despite it being a weekday night. I guess this is a pretty good alternative for people who stay in the neighbourhood and are looking for tze char food nearby. But I wouldn't make a trip just to eat here.


Different Taste Cafe and Restaurant (Frankel Avenue)
111 Frankel Avenue
Frankel Estate
Tel: 6241 6518

Hooked on Heads

Met up for lunch with Meips and Kenneth and Kenneth suggested this place. Passed by this place a few times and never even noticed it was there!

We ordered one of the Set Lunches $26.80+ which consisted of the omelette (erm, forgot to take a picture), Sambal Kang Kong (which was pretty normal) -


and their famous Fish Head Curry -


I thought the Fish Head Curry was just ok - I had the fish head curry at House of Peranakan at Hotel Meritus Negara just a few weeks before and that was really yummy... in comparison, this one just didn't seem that great. Not that it was bad, just not the best I've had.

What I did love was the Prawn Paste Chicken $8.00+ -


It was so delicious that I ended up eating most of this ;) Very tasty but not overly salty...

We were in the mood for dessert, so we tried the Banana Fritters with Vanilla Ice-cream $5.80+ -


Pretty huh? It's really just glorified goreng pisang :) But not bad...

Would come here again if I was in the area and in the mood for some tze char in air-conditioned comfort.


Hooked on Heads
6 Sin Ming Road
#01-01 Sin Ming Plaza
Tel: 6455 4948

Kelong Seafood & BBQ

I've been coming to Holland Village for years but only ever eaten at this corner coffeeshop once. Met Audrey at Holland V one evening and was craving tze char so we ended up eating here.

Both of us have never had Beef Sheng Mian $8 before so we decided to give it a try -


and it was pretty good! A huge portion that the two of us could not finish - or maybe our stomachs were particularly small that day.

With the display of Wu Xiang staring at us, we just had to order some -


My fav is the prawn cracker thing :)

Reasonably priced food and tastes pretty good too. An option when you're craving tze char in Holland Village...

Ocean Curry Fish Head

Every once in a while, I'll make the trek down to the Raffles Place area for lunch. This was one of those rare occasions when everyone could make it - guess it helped that we started planning this way in advance... impromptu lunches never quite work out with us, does it? :)

This place is apparently quite popular, and thank goodness *someone* got there early and reserved a huge table for the 8 of us (you're the best, Ennie!). Ordering of food was also left to the same person, her being the mother hen of the group...

The star of the meal - the Curry Fish Head :


I seldom get to eat Curry Fish Head so was quite pleased when I found out we were eating this... it was the Chinese-style fish head, that tends to be less spicy and more sour than its Indian counterpart. No complaints about this - tasty and lots of meat. What I also love about curry fish head is eating all the other stuff in the curry - namely pineapple, brinjal, ladies' finger etc.

With that many people, just one Curry Fish Head is definitely not enough.



Some of the other dishes we had were Sweet and Sour Pork...








and Chilli Prawns...







For the vegetarian in the house, and to ensure that we omnivores have a balanced diet, we also ordered Tofu...








Chai Por Omelette...








and Heng Cai (sweet potato leaves).




As usual, I was berated for eating too little... I will remind all present that I was one of the last ones to finish eating (and it was because of my endless picking of the practically bare fish head) AND a few of us (me included) even proceeded to have dessert after lunch. So THERE! :P

P.S. Thanks for the photos, Joni!


Ocean Curry Fish Head
34 Upper Cross Street
#01-170
Tel : 6532 5343

Westlake Restaurant

This place is a real institution - it's been here for yonks, and what they are famous for is the Kong Bak Pau (braised pork with buns). I have vague memories of this place so it's likely I've been here before when I was a kid... but it came up recently during a conversation with an old friend, B (who turns out to be quite the foodie!)... so I figured it was time for a revisit.

The Kong Bak Pau comes in servings of 5 or 10. Apparently if another friend (who lurves the kong bak pau) had joined us, we would have ordered the bigger serving, but since it was just the four of us, and there were other dishes, 5 was quite sufficient...



It cost $11++ for 5 paus. Haven't had Kong Bak Pau in a long time so this quite hit the spot. It wasn't too fatty so I actually ate the whole thing without peeling off the layer of fat... but this is quite filling and I could only manage one.

We also ordered Xiao Long Bao $6++ -


and Guo Tie $6++ -


B *has* to order both everytime he's here - despite the fact that the owner has told him before that the filling is exactly the same... The xiao long bao surprisingly tastes much better than it looks, and the guo tie was not bad too.

The Long Beans $10++ had these unidentifiable cripsy bits in it that made this dish really good - normally it's dried shrimp, but I'm not entirely sure that's what it was here. I'm not a big fan of long beans but ate quite a bit of this...


The Fried Noodles $4++ were good too!


Good and cheap food in an unassuming environment... the Kong Bak Pau alone is worth a visit!


Westlake Restaurant
4 Queen's Road
#02-139
S260004
Tel : 6474 7283

Hong Kong Street Jen Poo Kee

It's Asian and it's soupy, so that can only mean one thing - I'm having dinner with S :) To satisfy our craving for something hot and soupy, S suggested this place which is just a stone's throw from my house...

And it turns out to be Hong Kong Street Jen Poo Kee - which is not quite the same as the original Hong Kong Street Chun Kee located just across the road from my office. My guess would be a brother, uncle or distant relative decided to open his own stall after having learnt the tricks of the trade from the original chef... many similar stories like that all around the island.

Of course we have to order the Sliced Fish Bee Hoon $10 -


The soup was the milky type, tasty but not overly so, with lots of huge pieces of fresh fish. Just what we were craving!

I nearly always order Hot Plate Tofu $8 when I'm having tze char. My favourite part of this dish is the thin layer of egg that lies between the hot plate and all the other ingredients. With me around, it's a given that there will not be any egg left on the hot plate :)


The one here is not bad. Besides the requisite tofu and veggies, it's also got lots of seafood in it. And yes, I did eat most of the egg...

And with S it's always a balanced meal, so here's the veg we had...


Ok, I'll admit it. It was so long ago that I don't remember what veg it was... and I'm not much use in the kitchen too so I can't identify it to save my life! :)

The food was not too bad - a good option when I'm craving tze char and too lazy to travel very far...


Hong Kong Street Jen Poo Kee
Blk 721 Clementi West Street 2

Lee Heng Restaurant

To me, this place is known as Joe's Tze Char place - I had to drive by again recently to get the proper name of this place :) Joe introduced a bunch of us to this place years ago, and we had dinner here the last few times he was back from Melbourne.

We started with a soup - can't remember what type of soup it was though... Watercress and Pork Rib maybe?


There are a few "standard" tze char dishes that we always end up ordering, and the usual suspects include -

Yam Ring - with all the fried crispy stuff, you can't quite see the yam ring, but that's what I end up eating most coz I'm not terribly fond of yam...


I love Deep Fried Baby Squid (Sotong Kia). The colour looks a bit weird in this picture, but it tastes better than it looks...


Another one of my favourite tze char dishes - Cereal Prawns. Not as good as the last few times I've had it but still pretty decent... I'm one of those weird ones who eats the whole prawn, including the shell :)


The Pai Kuat Wong (Spare Ribs) here is pretty yummy too - oops, picture's a little blurry :P

The Prawn Paste Chicken (Har Jiong Kai) here is not too bad but it's been a long time since I've had REALLY GOOD Har Jiong Kai - does anyone have any place to recommend?

Still one of my favourite tze char places and it would be nice to eat here a little more often than once a year :)


Lee Heng Restaurant
118 Commonwealth Crescent
#01-29
Tel : 6475 9953

Sin Hoi Sin Eating House (Tze Char)

Yay! Eating at somewhere new! Ok, not exactly new, but at least it was somewhere I have not been to in the last 12 months...

Had a craving for tze char and Daphne suggested trying the Tiong Bahru area. Being the first one to reach there, I got to decide where to eat. I ate in one of the tze char restaurants in that area a while back, and I remember the food was not too bad so we ended up eating there. It's really hard to describe the place as it's kinda located in an alleyway between two buildings... but I think it's supposed to be quite famous.

We ordered pai kuat wong (spare ribs), sweet and sour pork, baby kai lan and hotplate tofu. The pai kuat wong was super yummy! Hotplate tofu was my choice - there's something about a sizzling hotplate that makes food extra appealing :) came up to about $12 per person for the four of us.

After that we wanted to check out late nite shopping at Raffles City (opened till 12am for the Great Singapore Sale) but the queue going into the car park was so ridiculous that we ended up going to Bugis Village pasar malam instead. That was the start of retail therapy for the weekend - as mentioned on Daphne's blog, we also did major shopping (4 hours!) on Sunday afternoon at Zouk Flea Market and Far East Level One.

Shopping - my other vice... er, I mean indulgence :)