The first is, of course, the soup base, and the second, without doubt, is the quality of ingredients. Well, there's always a third...if you're a lazy bitch and wants someone to peel your prawns for you.
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With four soups to choose from — we tried the tomato and chicken last night — and all house-made from scratch, we found ourselves a legit rendition opened by dear friends (level of biasness notwithstanding and unimportant either because legit) at a coffee shop along Jalan Besar. The tomato one started off mild but comes full circle with good well-rounded umami after some help from the seafood while the chicken soup is clean and with subtle sweetness towards the end of the palate.
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For ingredients, you start with a base set of either seafood which is the one seen here or a combination of seafood and meat or the vegetarian option which is cutely named Empress' Garden. There are three ways to cook them...you either cook them in the soup or you can also grill and steam them. And if you steam them, the flavours of the ingredients all go back into the soup. So much win.
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Aside from the base set, other ingredients — more meat, more seafood, cheese-stuffed balls, luncheon meat, vegetables, et al — can be ordered ala carte. But there's this holy trifecta of bacon-wrapped enoki + cheese that is a must. It will be the answer to all your prayers. Ok, that's all.