Zen Zen and Brownie Factory: havens in overcrowded CBD during lunchtime?

Lunchtime on a weekday in the CBD can be a harrowing experience...hordes of office workers descent en-masse to fill up their hungry tummies. Raffles Place is particularly stressful. So when Kin found this place tucked in the Basement of OUB Center...where Burger King used to be...she went in for a taste...impressed, I joined her for lunch on another day.



The place is designed like a fast food outlet...queue to order, pay...get a number, and take a table. The food is served in a few minutes.

We took the set lunches...reasonable value $10 to $12 for a soup, main course and drinks.

The soups were rather good...



The clam chowder in the foreground was nicely rich, fragrant, and had actual chunks of clam and potato. Nice tasting too. The mushroom soup in the background was also very nice...chunks of mushrooms. Nice and rich. And best of all, not too salty...in fact erring on being a bit under in the salt department...but I won't complain. I eat too much salt anyway.

The maincourse I selected was the cashew chicken:



A nicely browned, pan fried chicken thigh, smothered with a rather nice brown sauce. A cup of flavoured rice, with one cashew adorning the top. And some boiled vegetables. The meal tasted...healthy...little oil, light on salt. But still managed to be rather tasty. The chicken was quite nicely browned and crisp. The gravy quite good. The rice was well done too...and within the cup, small chips of cashews were found.

Kin had the Basil Chicken Pasta



Not the best...the linguini was over cooked till it was super limp. I am not sure how the chicken was done, probably stir fried, but it retained some of the frozen chicken smell. The vegetables were similar to the cashew chicken. And the pasta sauce...which was to be the main attraction in a pasta dish, was not to be. It was pale, limpid almost, and rather tasteless. I'll avoid this pasta.

Kin had tried their sandwiches in her earlier visit, and she thought they were quite good.

After the meal, we went next door, and had a brownie...this was the Brownie Factory's bestseller:



My neice loves the brownies here. The cake part...if that's what you call it...is rather thick, rich chocholatey. The vanilla ice cream was almost as large as the rather miniscule brownie. And threatened to overpower the taste. Overall, a messy, but very tasty brownie.



Zen Zen and Brownie Factory
Basement 1
1 Raffles Place