Worst CNY reunion dinner
I’m referring to the food. My family had our reunion dinner at Lai Wah Restaurant in Bendemeer Road. What a mistake that turned out to be. You would think that this restaurant, whose original chef together with 3 other chefs invented the now must-have Lunar New Year dish “yu sheng” would have some kind of standard, even if they are in a run-down HDB block. Yes, you thought yu sheng was invented in Hong Kong. Yu sheng is in fact an original Singapore dish.
We had previously eaten at their other branch (now closed) located along Jalan Besar more than 10 years ago and the food was great. Expecting that their Bendemeer branch would not disappoint too much, we were prepared to tolerate a rather grubby 1970s environment and narrow interiors of the restaurant. We were greatly disappointed, therefore I was really surprised to see today’s Sunday Times giving them a 4-star ranking.
The dinner was an 8-course menu for 10 persons. We were only 9 persons and even then we hardly had our fill with the small portions. For the king prawn and pork rib dishes, each person had 1 king prawn and 1 piece of pork rib. The fish was not terribly fresh, the e-fu noodles were dry as bone and had nothing else but noodles. The dessert was longan almond tofu which consisted of 2 pieces of longan and a tablespoon of tofu in a half-filled dessert bowl. If the food had been outstanding or even good instead of hovering between ‘ok’ and ‘lousy’, we would have accepted the small portions.
Granted that the reporter’s menu was different from the reunion dinner menu we had, I can’t say we will be going back there again.
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