Thai Thai is a gorgeous, classy restaurant tucked away in the Mandarin Gallery that I discovered one day entirely by accident. It is adorned in regal purple, with colourful pillows and elegant chandeliers.
Adorned in soft pastel tones, comfy high-backed seats, crisp white tablecloths, and with a warm light descending from ornate chandeliers, this intimate restaurant is more akin to a king’s palatial tearoom. Source: Time Out
I couldn’t have described it better myself. Service is extremely attentive, among the best I’ve experienced in Singapore. They also happen to have delicious Thai food, the kind that will be featured in recurring dreams afterward (I should know).
Pandan chicken is well-seasoned and very tender. Fantastic with the sweet Thai sauce.
The menu called this “Shrimp with coconut strips” but it did not prepare us for what came out. It was more like shrimp cake, with coconut strands in the batter, but after frying, there was no fragrance from the coconut at all, which was a little disappointing. The shrimp cake was executed well but the batter itself was just average.
Traditional duck in red curry is the dish that I dreamed about after my first visit, and was the object of my return visit. The first time we had it, the duck was tender and succulent. There were also many ingredients in the curry that surprised and delighted us, like pineapples and grapes for a sweet taste. The second time we ordered this dish, the duck was tough to chew and the vegetables in the curry were under-cooked. The curry paste itself was good, but overall the dish was a bit disappointing.
Pad thai came with truly enormous prawns, that were less appetizing in real life than in photos. The pad thai itself was very well executed though, with a harmonious blend of sweet and sour.
Custard with roasted pumpkin and ice cream was a unique dessert that initially surprised my taste buds, but after I got used to the custard-pumpkin combination, I really liked it. The ice cream, on the other hand, was supposedly vanilla but had a very bizarre after taste that made me think there had been an herb of some sort mixed into the vanilla.
Thai iced tea here is the best I’ve ever had. It is vaguely like bubble tea in that it’s black tea with milk and sugar syrup, but it is so much better than that.
This is a rather pricey joint if you have frequent Thai cravings like me, but I would definitely want to come back to try more of their menu. In future, I might only come for dinners as I have reason to suspect their chef skills are better for dinner than for lunch.
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Skyland de Shanghai (上海新天地) across from Pacific Mall is my new favourite Shanghainese restaurant. The food here reminds me of Zhejiang (浙江) Province, the food of my childhood. Heck, it was the food of my parents’ childhoods. I had driven by this place many times and even heard it recommended to me, but for some reason, I never tried it. Dinner last night left me wondering, “Why didn’t I come here sooner?”
The interior is modern and well-lit. The tables are quite close together but the semi-circle dividers give an illusion of spaciousness.
The menu was varied with bright, bold pictures of mouthwatering dishes. We started with a “dessert” as an appetizer, gui hua tang ou (steamed lotus root stuffed with sweet sticky rice).
This steamed dessert was soft and sticky with sugary juices, and the sweet glutinous rice complemented the slightly crispier lotus root. I have always wondered what dessert in Chinese culture really is, but now I know why I had such a hard time figuring it out. For most families, there is no distinction between courses, everything is set on the table pretty much at once. Sure, you have bigger dishes and smaller dishes, hot dishes and cold dishes, but the distinction is not as clear as in Western tradition. For example, here is a dessert that looks deceptively like an appetizer. Who would have thought of lotus root being a dessert? It comes down to a fundamental difference in technology: Chinese chefs don’t bake. Baking is very much a Western technology, and Canton baked desserts have been influenced that way. Traditional Chinese desserts are made much in the same way that all dishes are made, on the stove.
Next up was ban li shao ji (chicken with chestnuts stew).
This was every good as bit as it looks. Braised chicken with chestnuts is a common family dish in the Shanghai area. It’s an exceedingly simple recipe – just soy bean paste and salt – but the chestnuts add something very subtle and unique to the sauce.
The highlight of the evening, however, was the Shanghai special hot pot.
In this pot contained an elaborate combination of: dan jiao (pork in egg wrapper dumplings), pork in tofu wrapper, Lion’s Head meatballs, fen si (vermicelli), fish balls, dried ham (salted and air-dried as opposed to smoked) and various Chinese vegetables. It was glorious.
Another unique dish was belly pork in a fermented beancurd sauce. Fermented beancurd (or dou fu ru) is not as strange as it might sound. It is not pungent at all, instead it is very flavourful.
Belly pork is pork that has a lot of fat, and it is usually cut in big chunks with the skin still on it. Although this is probably not a dieter’s dream, the skin, fat, and meat goes really well together, especially in a dish like this that would need to be cooked for a long time until a lot of fat has melted into the sauce.
On the side, we also had a bowl of bok choy fried rice.
For dessert, we had lan gua bing (fried pumpkin pancakes).
They are made with glutinous flour and covered in sesame seeds, fried until golden brown. These were melt-in-your-mouth good, the best I’ve ever had.
Service could have been more attentive but no worse than a typical Chinese restaurant of this size. The prices are very reasonable (although a little higher than some of the other restaurants in Scarborough). There are a lot of unique, home-grown Shanghai dishes on the menu that I have not seen elsewhere. I would definitely come back, and next time, I’m bringing more people so I can try more dishes.
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