Su Korean Cuisine

Farewell meetings and dinners are usually bittersweet affairs where affected parties are more or less torn between feelings of delight for having great friends and feelings of sadness of having to leave the hard earned connections behind to reach for the future. Nonetheless, its always wonderful to have a good meal with all these people who have been a big part of my life. The location was introduced by Emma who recommended the place to no end for its value for money and supposedly good food.

Location: 14 Scotts Road, Far East Plaza, #01.21

Contact: 62350420

Price Range: $30 per head

Namecard

Interior

The Chosen Menu

The interior is nothing to shout about but comfortable to be in with its soft lighting and open ambiance. The air conditioning is very powerful though, probably to diminish the discomfort of having a hot stove in front of you but unfortunately, we opted for the kitchen to cook for us, which made us end up feeling extremely cold.

Refillable Korean Side Dishes

These dishes are refillable and comes in small portions. Each refill is random and contains different sample dishes to excite your taste buds. Each is nicely done but some, like the bean sprouts and kimchi ended up being the main attractions in this selection. The problem with the refills is, it came too slowly and the serving staff had alot of problems attending to our needs. Their frustration is apparent as they struggled to keep pace with our speed of eating and the small but heavy bowls did not help their job one bit. Add the fact that the set menu for 8 is a first for them as nobody has ordered it before and you got a huge headache in terms of service.

Seafood Pancake with Spring Onion

This is very good. Fragrant, crispy and strangely juicy (its not because of the oil though), this dish gained sounds of "Oooo's" and "yums" from the all members of the group. Who would have figured beaten eggs with prawns, squid and fish cake thrown into the mix along with spring onions could make a pancake taste this good. Its available on ala carte and very much worth a try.

BBQ Beef?

BBQ Beef Short Rib?

The '?' you see behind both names are not there by accident. They are there because i can't tell which is which since they taste almost exactly the same. If not for the slight beef taste each dish contained, this could have been venison or pork and we wouldn't have been any the wiser. That said, both dishes tasted mediocre despite the tender and chewy beef pieces. Not recommended.

BBQ Chicken and BBQ Pork Collar

After tasting these 2, i'm beginning to feel they marinated everything and cooked everything in the exact same way because it sure doesn't taste any different from each other. Both were sweet, spicy and even had almost the same texture with the small difference of chicken meat being tougher and harder (that's not good by the way).

Authentic Ginseng Chicken Soup

Another mediocre dish. This started out with much promise as we noticed on ala carte, its costs between $3-5 for a refill of the ginseng stock. A sign of good things to come? Sadly, that is not to be. The ginseng soup tastes like it was only just prepared and was very bland, with only slight hints that ginseng had been used in the soup. The chicken was nothing spectacular but tore easily as it was very tender but not recommended.

Boiled Sliced Pork With Cabbage

Simple as this dish may seem, it actually tastes pretty good. The pork was firm and springy which contrasted with the cold crunchiness of the cabbage which is further enhanced by the sour balachan chilli. Nicely done but too bad about the portion size though, which was rather small.

Sauteed Vermicelli with Pork

Another nicely done dish. The vermicelli packed lots of taste and was very pleasing to consume with aromatic sesame sprinkled all over it and traces of pork spread throughout the dish. I can't quite describe why its good but it is, try it to find out.

Stone Bowl Rice

Served in a piping hot stone bowl and mixed by the customers themselves, this is an interesting and authentic Korean dish. As you can see, the bowl consists of a lone egg surrounded by bean sprouts, carrots, cabbage, sliced mushrooms, rice and minced pork. The trick is to mix the dish quickly before serving. So is this any good? For me, i liked it but i liked the cold rice version better, where everything was cold and somehow, it tasted better. This is still decent though.

Seafood and Vegetable in Claypot

Another simple yet nicely done dish. The seafood was fresh and added a dimension of sweetness to the seafood broth which tasted like seafood soup without too much salt like other offerings elsewhere. The ingredients include, mushrooms, fresh prawns, carrots, shittakes, bean curd and even scallops which we fought to have. There were even some clams thrown in for good measure. Good stuff.

Sauteed Crab Korean Style

First impressions was that the crab was small and subsequent tastes did not improve upon that impression. The sauce it was cooked in is a form of chilli which resembles kimchi and turned out overly salty. The crab meat was also minimal and not sweet nor firm which points questions at its freshness. This is something i won't try again.

Seafood Fried Rice

Simplicity is the best policy and this is apparent when this dish came out very well done yet again. Generous servings of squid and shrimp were given with its fragrant and very tasty egg fried rice. On a side note however, i myself can actually do a one up on their fried rice so maybe they should hire me instead?

Complimentary Fruit

Looks can be deceiving as these pieces of fruit turned out to be very sweet and satisfying which i'm sure you'll agree that it simply is a huge contrast between the picture and the actual taste.

Bill

The total bill came up to $296.25 for a bittersweet hit and miss farewell dinner.

Overall Score: 6/10 (7/10 if only the good items were ordered)

Last Word:

For a place with lots of service blunders, i've given them a benefit of the doubt since they admitted upfront that this was the first time anyone has ordered the set meal for 8 people. And food wise, like i've said, there are hits and misses on a pretty much 50-50 basis. I do however, recommend trying the hits on their own to see if you like it but deter on ordering via set menus. Try at your own risk because Korean food is an acquired taste and it certainly doesn't come cheap.
To the people who turned up for the meal. Thank you for all the good times we've had and for turning up. Hopefully we'll get together again soon. Cheers and all the best!

Ramen Ten (Century Square)

Bright and eye catching, this Japanese Halal food chain caught my eye many times when i drove past Tampines Century Square and so, one day after work, me and my gf went straight down for dinner hoping to leave satisfied and happy. (Ain't that always the case when eating out?)

Location: Century Square #01-37

Contact: 67897566

Price Range: $17- 20 per head

The Bright and Eye Catching Sign

Take Away Counter

Interior

Random Shot

Interiors are nicely decorated and pleasing to the eye. The green. brown and red combination gives the illusion of elegance amidst normal settings. The plastic chairs did not add to the effect however and the dispersion of seats are minimal which means if the crowds set in, get ready for lots of knocking around and spilled items. The 'cushioned' seats are fared better but are limited.

Menu

Blue Lagoon ($3.90)

Sourish, gassy and overly sweet at the bottom. It doesn't quite fit the bill as a 'refreshment' and at its price, its way too over priced. I suppose its a trend that drinking almost anything outside of home is a way to get closer to poverty, iced water anyone? Oh! A point to note, they do not serve ice water as well. You need to pay $1 for Evian mineral water.

Tom Yam Chicken La Mian ($8.90)

On the menu, this showed 3 chilli's which is supposed to mean it is very spicy since the maximum number of chilli's awarded thus far is 3. My gf was greatly disappointed though since it was not spicy in the least (at least for her) and the stock wasn't much to shout about. The katsu was also not throughly crispy due to it being soaked in the soup and the Ramen was actually soggy which certainly doesn't bode well.

Beef Paper Steamboat Set ($13.90)

Mayo Prawns ($6.50)

The mayo prawns was an additional order and we given a grand total of 4 prawns for the price. That works out to be more then $1.50 per prawn which is very steep since the quality of it was only just passable. The prawns were small and nicely fried in a thin batter which didn't quite add much taste to the dish. The mayo was also of the normal variety but i would have appreciated the Wasabi Mayo prawns which would have been much better. Either way, still over priced for its quantity.

Chicken Karaage

The chicken karaage was actually quite generous and was served piping hot. The meat tasted tender and reminiscent of the seaweed wrapped chicken available at NTUC (thats not really a compliment is it?) and had a general sweetness to the meat that made it quite enjoyable but otherwise, utterly normal.

Beef Pot

The beef set actually came with rice as well and because the first order botched up since they sent me a salmon steamboat instead of my ordered beef steamboat, they made up for it by giving me a huge portion of beef which literally filled the paper steamboat to the brim. Given the choice of Tom Yam soup base or Miso, i picked Miso since Tom Yam to me meant sweating. The beef steamboat is very enjoyable as the portion i had was very generous. There was more then enough to go with the rice and much more left for simple enjoyment. The meat was quite fresh and added much taste to the normally bland miso. Another note on the miso was that it got better the longer the meat was boiled in it. The rice however, lacked any spring or taste but was serviceable to a certain degree.

Bill

The bill for 2 came up to $36.05 with a nice 10% discount for UOB card holders. Quite expensive given the quality of the food and environment.

Overall Score: 6.75/10

Last Word:
I was generally surprised with the fact that this was a halal outlet but quite glad that it was since it means the market has changed to cater more for the masses. The service was pretty good with the manager offering additional meat for my pot and automatically deducting 10% off my bill without me asking for it but i did dislike the fact that the first order or serving was wrong. Interior wise, they should space out and provide better chairs since it feels too cramped at the moment and food wise, i felt everything was mediocre except for the beef steamboat but thats also because of the generous serving so that might change. Either way, i find this too expensive and will probably not return.