Monday, August 2, 2010

Xi Men Ding Taiwan Cuisine

Me and my wife were wandering around the Vivocity Shopping Mall looking for some food after our shopping. We were rather familiar with the restaurants in Vivocity. One of the newer restaurants that were opened is this one that serves Taiwanese Cuisine.

The restaurant looks ok and the food picture looks ok too. We had been to Taiwan and decided to give this restaurant a try since both of us love taiwanese food. Table was easily available as there wasnt much of a crowd.

Looking thru the menu, the items were mostly taiwanese style food. We ordered 4 dishes, of which 1 is a snack, 1 is a soup and 2 normal dishes.

Snack: Taiwanese Fried Beancurd (S$7.50)
This dish is a whole beancurd, cut into small pieces and fried. Chilli sauce and a mixture of salt and pepper comes as a dip for the fried beancurd. The fried beancurd itself is tasteless. The texture of the beancurd is coarse, both the crust and the inside.
The salt pepper mixture is for the dipping of the beancurd, but even with that mixture, the taste just doesnt blend in. With a direct comparison with Crystal Jade's salt pepper tofu, this fried beancurd simply does not make the grade.

NOT RECOMMENDED


Soup: Clam Soup (S$6.00)
The soup is ordered based on per pax and it is a lucky thing that we only ordered 1 bowl. The soup taste a tad slight salty and the taste of the clams was simply too strong. There were quite a number of small clams in the soup.

NOT RECOMMENDED


Main Dish: Radish and Egg Pancake (S$10.00)
This is a simple dish. Basically it is chopped radish fried with eggs and nothing could go wrong with this. It must be said that though the taste is also slightly bland, the fried egg is very thick, about 1 inch in thickness. The radish adds a slightly sweet taste to the egg. The egg is fried till golden brown, but while the outer layer of the fried egg is crispy, the inner egg layer is soft.

RECOMMENDED


Main Dish: Sanbei Chicken with Basil (S$17.90)
This is a very common dish in Taiwan and is actually not difficult to cook. This dish is also the signature dish of the restaurant. Though its the signature dish, the dish is actually not much any different from those that you can find from the receipe books. In short, the dish did not create a sanbei chicken dish that is unique to itself. However the taste is still acceptable.

RECOMMENDED


Overall Rating
Presentation: 2.5/5
Taste: 1/5
Value for money: 1/5
This is not a restaurant that I will visit again. It would not be too far fetch to say that if they do not improve on their food, very soon a new food establishment would be opening in that spot instead.

NOT RECOMMENDED

2 comments:

  1. I don't find the Sanbei Chicken is nice ESP when it's supposed to be a Chef Recommendation. It smelt nicer than tasted. The Sanbei Chicken I had in the small shop selling mixed rice in Taipei was much better than this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree and they didnt add in their own unique ingredients to make the dish special to themselves only.

    ReplyDelete

 
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