Sinma Seafood Restaurant

Frog chronicles part 1

Since I'm going overseas soon, I figured that I better eat whatever local delights I can before its too late. So.... I started my search for good frog legs to eat. Terence said we should try this place called Sinma since his friend recommended it. So we ended up at Sinma Seafood Restaurant to check it out!

The restaurant has 2 shops located opposite each other so it's quite common to see their workers shuffling between the 2 shops to serve food and drinks. Once again we were stumped when ordering food because the waitresses are all from China. Couldn't really understand what she was saying, especially when she was trying to recommend some dishes to us. Thankfully menu had english so we just point and ordered from there.

First up was the sambal (a type of chilli paste) potato leaves. It is stir fried with garlic and hae bee (dried little shrimp). Dish was quite spicy but I loved the taste. Potato leaves have a nicer texture than kang kong, though that's my personal preference. Its less stringy and slightly softer. Love it man!
Next up was the special made tofu. This dish was really good man. The skin outside was crispy and the tofu inside was soft and silky. It was topped off with this minced meat and hae bee mixture, and drenched in sauce. Very tasty and great to eat with rice! Just thinking about it now is making me drool.

And last but not least was the chicken essence frog legs. Wah this was heavenly man! In fact the soup tasted just like turtle soup that I always crave! Very strong herbs taste and very rich. In hokkien they always say "jiak por" (add heat i think). Frog legs are great la, so soft and tender.... Why must they be so expensive???? =(

At the end of the meal we were super satisfied la, can't imagine we ate so much for supper. I was even contemplating having a second bowl of rice! Supper was a little pricey as the frog legs costs $24 but I guess it was worth it. Terence almost ordered fish la, that would have just killed me financially. Thankfully I stopped him and ordered the tofu instead. I think this is a good place to visit! Must try!

Sinma Seafood Restaurant
Geylang Lor 3 (It's the 2 corner coffee shops)
Opening Hours: I think they open from 6pm to 3am
website

Rabbit Brand Seafood Restaurant

One must always plan ahead when it comes to supper. Need to map out the feasting route for the days ahead and be focused on the task at hand. Tough work right? Haha. Anyway, saw Rabbit Brand Seafood Restaurant quite a few times when driving past joo chiat, and found out that they serve supper till 3am! So I had to mark it down as one of the places to try out. Apparently Krystal likes this place so this time round supper was a bigger group. Krystal and her dad (uncle Steven) came along with Terence and myself.

This restaurant has it's own website which I was viewing prior to going for supper, gee was pretty surprised that they offer cheap meals. They even have their set dinners for one person which costs from $5.50 and onwards. How's that for a cheap seafood dinner?

Above is the mini buddha jump over the wall. Priced at a reasonable $8.50 it comes with abalone, sharks fin and some other delectable goodies. I've never eaten buddha jump over the wall before but this wasn't thick or starchy.

This is the braised sharks fin with bamboo fungus soup. Also not thick or starchy, and had quite a lot of bamboo fungus, sharks fin, crab and mushrooms. Decent stuff for a reasonable price of $5.50!

Crispy fried shishamo is battered and deep fried till it was very crispy yet juicy when you bite in. Shishamo is basically a type of fish with it's belly full of roe. Went well with the chilli dip.

Hot and spicy sea cucumber didn't really have much sea cucumber actually, just a lot of celery. But where can you really find sea cucumber dishes for $6? And it was not bad too. Chilli was quite spicy.

This dish above is what they call spicy skinny lobster. It's like bigger than a cray fish but smaller than a lobster. Not much meat inside even though it looks quite big. This is really spicy, very peppery but shiok. I bet anyone can eat one serving or more by themselves though, since there was not much meat.

Salt and pepper soft shell crabs were also nicely deep fried. Crispy on the outside but soft and juicy on the inside. Served with a mayonaise dip.

This last dish was a bit disappointing though. Fried mian xian (mee sua) was tasty, but didn't have any ingredients at all except for the green and red peppers! And it was kinda pricey for this too. The only thing that sorta spoiled the supper I must say. Everything else was pretty good.

Rabbit Brand Seafood Restaurant has dinner set menus as well as supper specials. Good for cheap seafood dinners or those hunger pangs in the wee hours of the morning. Do note that supper specials starts after 10pm. If you're feeling richer you can also check out the ala carte menu for more pricey stuff.

Rabbit Brand Seafood Restaurant
325/327 Joo Chiat Road S(427582)
Tel: 6348 8772
Opening Hours: 6pm to 3am
website

Mother's Day part 2

Ok I blogged about mother's day half way because I didn't mention what we had for dinner. It's quite a SOP that when we need a seafood fix, we will always head down to Roland Restaurant at Marine Parade. So no surprises that day when we ended up at Roland's for dinner. It was quite packed so lucky we made reservations. =)

Anyway the restaurant owner Roland is my dad's long time friend since army days some 30+ years ago? So my dad has been patronizing his restaurant since the days when it was still located by the beach, then over to the indoor stadium, and now finally to marine parade. Those days it was still called Palm Beach though. Dad always prefers to go to Roland's because service is good, it's value for money and food is of better quality. Might not be the best, but it's my bench mark for seafood. Was quite disappointed when I went to certain places like Jumbo a while back. Maybe they were too busy or something but food served was kinda cold and a tad bit too salty for my taste buds.

Once again my photography skills kinda suck so pardon the lousy pics. I did learn something about food photography yesterday though! Should try it out the next time. The link is below:

The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips

First dish is one of my all time favourites! Yu Char Kuay or Cruellers they call it. Basically it's deep fried dough fritters stuffed with squid paste. Very crispy and yummy! Goes well with the chilli sauce.


Then we had a standard vegetable dish which is stir-fried baby kailan with garlic. Its something we can never replicate in our home kitchen because we don't have a big enough fire to get the same taste and texture. The veg is moist and crunchy so it wasn't over cooked.

One of Roland's signature dishes is this homemade tofu(beancurd) with ginko nut. The homemade tofu is very smooth and soft, and is seasoned with something to make it tastier than normal tofu. The challenging part of making this dish is probably when they fry the tofu, they have to be careful not to break them since it's so soft n delicate. The dish is topped off with ginko nuts, veg and sauce.

Next up was steamed prawns with garlic. Uncles and aunties always tell me, the way to tell if a prawn is fresh is to eat it steamed, and the shell must be on. They always say it's the best way to eat prawns so you can savour the flavours and texture of the meat. Well if that was any indicator to go by then at least we didn't murder the prawns by deep frying them with cereal or something, though we did have them with garlic. The prawns were good! Fresh and succulent with that garlic-ky oomph! I like prawns a lot, and last time whenever my family goes to a restaurant and orders prawns, I'm sure to whack a good portion of it. Haha =X I guess it's partly because my mom never cooks prawns except for on rare occasions once in a blue moon. So prawns were like a delicacy for me. Of course nowadays I don't horde the prawns anymore la, must make sure everyone gets a fair share. See so nice right? Haha

Another one of my BIG BIG favourites is the Black Pepper Crab! These things make me go crazy last time man. It's a must have for me whenever I eat seafood. Even better I can have both black pepper and chilli crab! Hahaha greedy guts ya? I love the spicy-ness of this dish. I have a liking for spicy stuff so I guess this really hits the spot. The crab meat is done just right. Not soft and mushy nor hard and rubbery, just nice in between. Man I'm starting to drool.....

This final dish we ate is something pretty new to their menu. You may not be able to get it every time you patronize Rolands Restaurant so you gotta ask them first. It's their version of Crab Bee Hoon. I think we only knew that they had this dish like one or two years back, but once you've tasted it you'll think it's shiok shiok shiok! A rich broth simmered with the crabs, very tasty and probably high in cholesterol but well worth it. It's served in a claypot but they'll dish it out for you into individual portions if you like. I prefer to remove all the crab meat from the shell and just dunk it into the soup and slurp it up with the noodles n roe.

Roland serves both seafood and traditional chinese cuisine. You can even have dim sum during lunch time. Dim sum is made fresh so quality is guaranteed. Try out their specialties like USA Duck, Chilli Crab, Steamed Tofu with salted egg, Asparagus with lingzhi mushroom etc. More details at their website.

Roland Restaurant
Block 89, Marine Parade Central, #06-750 S(440089)
Operating Hours:
Lunch: 1130-1430(last order)
Dinner: 1800-2230(last order)
Sundays and public holidays opens earlier at 1100
Website: http://www.rolandrestaurant.com.sg/index.html

What a way to end mother's day man. Good food for the whole day! Luckily I had a 2hr session of tennis before dinner. Well that's it from me now. Laterz!