Been meaning to try this Western grill restaurant but never got myself to go down to Bugis. Until yesterday.

Arrived before 12pm and the place was already half packed. Staff got us a table quickly and informed us the wait could be up to 20 mins. Nice move. By the way, service throughout was polite and efficient. Kudos to their well trained staff.

We ordered sirloins and butterscotch beers (root beer floats) and while waiting we got complementary buns to nibble on.

The place is huge and I like the decor which is a mix of greenery with old style US grill house complete with a barrel at the door.

Steaks arrived, cooked medium as per our order. Tender, juicy and flavourful, it went well by itself or with the beef sauce provided. My sautéed brussel sprouts were a little cold but nonetheless crunchy to bite into. My baked potato also could have had a little
more sour cream.

Nonetheless, one of my better steak experiences this year, especially at this price point. The steaks were $23.90 each and the root beers were $9.90 for two. With today’s inflation, that a steal.

Recommended for those craving steaks and go easy on the wallet.

Good mixian. The rice noodles were fresh and silky. Word of advice: for the uninitiated, don’t go for their Hellish levels of spice. Just wade in from the light end. Chicken wing was a bit bland on the outside and being grilled, it’s not crispy enough. Special offer set cost $15.80 without the wings. So a bit on the pricey side.

Normal plate of Wantan mee. I like the al dente noodles and it goes well the chilli sauce. Wantan was quite normal and smallish in size. Soup lacked the umami of Wantan mee soup used to boil wantans. Char Siew was too dry.

Damn good traditional rojak. Look at the amount of ground peanut they heap over the mountain of dough fritters, jicama, cucumbers, jelly fish and fried bean puffs.you can choose to add cuttlefish fish or century eggs which I did not. This plate of rojak cost $7. Value for money if you compare with other stalls.

Ordered Australian Sirloin, medium. The slab of meat that was served was well done on one end and had bits of almost raw beef at the other. And as a first for me, my steak had the funky taste of lamb, even though I was certain it’s a piece of beef.

Service was fantastic though. And my daughters swear their pizza and pasta (Burpple One for One) were excellent. Maybe I should stick to drinks, finger food and pasta next time I come. Price wise, nothing to complain about.

Ordered roast duck drumstick rice with added roast pork and braised egg - $9.00! A lot more expensive than my usual stall at West Coast Square market.

Duck meat was rather dry and skin not crispy due to the length of time past after leaving the oven. Roast pork skin was also not very crispy and a bit darker than others. Braised egg was normal.

All in, quite the normal roast meat stall.

A plate of Penang Char Kway Teow with lots of wok heat. It came with a few slices of fish cakes, Chinese sausages, two shrimps and egg.

At first whiff, the wok heat was unmistakable. Some charred bits of noodles and fish cakes could also be found. But I find the overall dish to be rather bland and could do with a little more seasoning. Also it was not fried with lard oil so maybe another reason for blandness.

Por tip- Don’t order with extra cockles. Theirs tend to be so tiny, such that an additional order of cockle only means more small cockles that tend to be over cooked.

Ordered $4 portion of mee kia soup. Learnt that they were fresh out of fish cakes so I’ll have to make do with two extra fishballs.

The clear soup was traditional Teochew fishball noodles soup. Noodles we cooked right but had a slight alkaline taste, probably from the water used to boil noodles. I like their fishballs which were bouncy and nice salty flavour. The fish dumpling was tasteless and it’s presence did nothing for the noodles.

Maybe the dry version will be better but this bowl of noodles was not impressive. No lard, no veg, no pork and no fish cakes.

By the time I reached at opening time 6.30pm, there was already 5 in the queue in front of me and an unknown number of customers who had pre-ordered. For the record, you can pre-order from 4pm but they only start to pack at around 6.30pm.

And so I waited for my turn. And waited and waited until 7.45pm! By then the queue behind me was about 13 customers long.

The rice was fluffy and nice, the roast chicken drumstick moist and tender. The chicken gizzard was quite normal though I did enjoy its crunchiness.

A bowl of soup was provided free and the clear soup tasted of chicken and ginger. The fried chicken wings were crispy from the coated batter which had little to no taste but the meat inside was well marinated and full of flavour. My only complaint besides the long wait was the chilli sauce which was not spicy nor tangy enough.

But will I go all the way to Toa Payoh again and brave another one hour wait? Maybe not.

Read somewhere this is a father and son outfit where the father delivers a wetter version and the son fries a dryer version with wok heat. Curiosity piqued, I went to try for myself.

Upon arrival at 12 noon, there was an aunty and a gentleman in front of me in the queue. Son was helming the wok today (damn I prefer wetter version) Ordered $5 portion. And that’s when I found out not only you do not get to choose the dryer or wetter version, you also cannot choose to add cockles or fish cake or sausage. No customisation. Only chilli or without.

Got my plate within 7 minutes. Sure enough, it was the dry version and plenty of wok heat. In fact a couple of charred bits of noodles could also be found. The portion was decent enough for $5 but the number of cockles give was pathetic. They really should remover the word cockles from their signboard. Noodles were not too sweet, which I liked .

Pro tip: grab one of the spoons before you start eating. Towards the middle, the spoon is handier than chopsticks cause the noodles were all pretty chopped up from the frying. Spooning mouthfuls was more satisfying than trying to grasp at bits with a pair of chopsticks.

For lovers of “white” Wantan Mee instead of the ubiquitous black or red versions, you don’t have that many choices over on this side of the Singapore/Malaysian borders. Soi 19 is therefore one option even though it is not your usual Chinese version of Wantan Mee.

For one thing, Soi 19’s wantan mee consists of lean dark char siew and grilled sausages. And they do not have the option to add chilli sauce into the noodles, as with most Thai Wantan Mee.

The plate I got at this Soi 19 outlet met my expectations of the brand. Not exactly like what you can get from the Pratunam stall where Soi 19’s name came from, but good enough to keep diehard fans like me satisfied without making a trip to Thailand. Noodles we al dente and the wantans crispy but meat a bit dry.

I also ordered fish cakes which were rather greasy and desiccated. Maybe I should stick to more wantans. And perhaps there is a reason why the crowds brave long queues at the borders during weekends. For legit white Wantan mee.

First of all, the name of this stall is Ipoh Eastern Traditional Claypot Chicken Rice. But there is nothing traditional about their claypot rice as I will explain later.

There’s a lot going on at this stall. They serve Cai Fan, Claypot Rice and sets with claypot rice and double boiled soup and Claypot Bak Kut Teh. I ordered their traditional Claypot chicken rice for $6.

As mentioned before, this is not your traditional Claypot rice because traditionally, you boil rice in a claypot, add chicken and other meat before it’s cooked and then drizzle dark soy sauce over the rice and even add an egg and Mui Hiong salted fish. In this case, the rice is pre-cooked and piles onto a hot claypot, pre-cooked chicken and Chinese sausages are added together with salted fish. The difference is between the two ways to cook claypot rice is the amount of burnt crispy rice. As you can imagine, there is little burnt rice here.

That said, I do like the flavours, especially after you stir in the salted fish. The chicken is very juicy and tender, the Chinese sausage sweet and savoury.

Portion is enough for an adult and waiting time was only 5 minutes.

Not fantastic but good enough such that my interest is piqued and I will come back to try their Bak Kut Teh and double boiled soups.