Hey Hive!
Last month, my cousin came down from Malaysia for a visit here in Singapore and we went to check out a new restaurant in the Suntec City mall!
Source: servcorp
Suntec City is probably one of the biggest malls in Singapore since it spans across multiple office towers and also houses the biggest convention halls in the country. It's where all the huge conventions like Anime Festival Asia, Gamescom and other events take place. It's also where Sean goes to play DDR every week so he's very familiar with this place.
Anyway, he told me about this new restaurant/cafe that opened up and since I brought my cousin around town, we decided to check it out!
The curious thing about this restaurant was that it's actually by BYD, the Chinese electric car company that's been competing with Tesla recently. So right beside their car showroom is actually a cafe!
The cafe itself looks really nice, with a warm and inviting vibe and lots of natural wood furnishings. It also looked quite spacious with quite a few seats even though it was a relatively small space.
Anyway, the reason why Sean was raving about this place was because of this particular set meal they have which includes a starter, main and drink/dessert all for just SGD$9.90! I think the dishes change every week or so, but it was a pretty good deal especially for such a prime location.
Granted, this set meal deal was just for members but it's totally free to sign up as a member so it sounded like a really good deal! My cousin and I were early and thankfully there wasn't much of a crowd so we could take our time trying to figure out their system.
Other than the set meal, they also had a regular menu which features mostly Western cuisine, or Western-Asian fusions. The other dishes actually looked pretty decent but they were quite a bit pricier. I guess these prices were more like the regular restaurant prices which is why their set meal is such a bargain.
After we got the free membership, we were shown to a table and could order through their ordering website which was pretty useful. They had a QR code on the table which you could scan with your phone to choose the dishes. But the unique thing was that you could order individually and join them up in a group order for the table, so you could see what everyone else orders. I wished I had screenshotted it but unfortunately I didn't.
It was funny since we could see the cars from where we were eating. You wouldn't think that it would be very appetising eating next to a car showroom so we were hoping the food was good.
After my brother arrived, we finalised our group order and after about 10 minutes or so, were served our first course which is the salad. There were two options for salad and I decided to try the Inari Takuan Salad, which comes with Mesclun salad, red radish, cherry tomato, inari, pickled takuan and ponzu dressing.
I didn't know what half those words meant at the time but apparently mesclun is just a blend of different greens like baby spinach, collard greens, Swiss chard or other leafy vegetables. Takuan is a Korean radish and inari is actually a Japanese sushi made of fried tofu with rice. I'm not sure why it's in the name since there wasn't any rice but okay.
Overall, it was still pretty good for a salad, and the dressing was nice with just a subtle tang so it wasn't bad.
For the main dish my cousin and I decided to each order one beef and chicken so we could share and try a bit of both since we couldn't decide between the two. I ordered my Argetinian ribeye medium rare and it came with roasted potatoes, butter poached broccoli and carrot with black pepper sauce.
It looked really delicious! It was also quite a small portion but for the price I guess I couldn't complain. I was surprised they even offered a ribeye steak on this set meal.
The steak was cooked perfectly, tender and with a little pink in the middle and was nicely complemented by the black pepper sauce. It paired really well with the vegetables as well and was so delicious! I was trying my best not to scarf the whole thing down and to savour every bite.
My cousin ordered the Roasted Chicken with Citrus Shoyu Sauce which also looked really good.
This one was a Roasted boneless chicken leg and came with mashed potato, butter poached broccoli and carrot with citrus shoyu sauce. It tasted like an elevated version of what I imagine Orange Chicken to taste like. It was actually really delicious too! We split both dishes into half so we could share but we could tell that the chicken portion was bigger than the beef. They were both good dishes though.
For dessert you could either get a soft drink or a Chocolate brownie garnished with pistachio nuts, which was what I ordered since the drink didn't seem that worth it and I don't drink sodas anyway.
The brownie was actually quite rich. It was a little on the drier side but still had some moisture to it. The pistachio nuts did complement it quite well but the texture was a little hard. It felt like it was frozen or kept in the fridge for some time but still alright I guess.
After we finished our meal we hung around chatting for a while. Thankfully it wasn't super crowded so we could stay as long as we liked. We all grew up together and hadn't seen each other for a while so we had a nice time catching up.
Overall, we had a very delicious meal and even though none of us were super full from it since the portions were a little small it was still good, especially considering the ambience and the deal we got on the set meals.
This was the bill in the end and after service charge and GST it was still pretty reasonable for what we had, considering it's a restaurant in town. Any other place and it probably would've been that price for each person.
I have no idea how they have such a good deal but if you're ever in the area for a light meal and want a good deal, definitely check out the BYD cafe!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
