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 TipsFirst 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 RestaurantBlock 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!
Another lady (she looked nicer, did I mention younger too?) took our orders. We were pondering over what to order, partly because Krystal couldn't really eat spicy food. We already knew that crab bee hoon was the order of the day, but what would accompany it? Finally settled for dua tao (some kind of mussels or clams) and luo han chye (mixed vegetables).
The luo han chye was a really small plate. Can't believe we paid like $8 for such a little amount of vegetables! It did taste nice though, no complaints about that.
Next up was the dua tao. The sauce was a little spicy but nothing we couldn't handle. The clams were abit rubbery though, not sure if the texture is meant to be like that or if it was overcooked?
And finally at long last the crab bee hoon came. This was served by the grumpy aunty. Surprisingly this time she suddenly became very nice! She told us to let her know if we wanted to add soup. Later she even added extra bee hoon for us at no extra charge! Wonder if it's because of what I told her in chinese... Now what exactly did I say? Haha.
