Great Cze Chars: One Ocean Seafood Restaurant

Another cze char place with a twist...

Last week, I featured Kian Seng, a cze char place which is quite extraordinary for the cooking, but also interesting use of ingredients. Today's feature is on One Ocean...a rather large cze char chain with several outlets throughout the island. The one I went to is in tucked in an industrial building in Toa Payoh, and is rather more like a restaurant than a regular cze char place in a coffee shop. The dining area is air conditioned though they do have tables in the non air conditioned area as well.

The restaurant is also part of many kitchens who use the unique ingredients offered by Unilever Food Solutions.

We started with Double Boiled Sharks Fin with Pumpkin and Pork Ribs Soup (pre-order at least 1 day required), where they use the Knorr Concentrated Scallop Bullion.

The broth was clear, and tasted very nice and savoury. A tad saltish, but very fragrant and nice on the palate. The pork ribs were a bit tough, but still nice enough to eat. There were some strands of sharks fin, but a bit precious, in my opinion. The taste of the soup was very nice, but I felt the ingredients were not quite commensurate with the $28 a bowl asking price.

Next, we had the Golden Mashed Potato Roll

Very interesting dish. Beautiful to look at, even nicer in the mouth.Though the potato outer covering has the texture and taste of a hash brown, it is totally ungreasy, and a wonderful potato flavour. The stuffing complemented very well, as did the pumpkin like sauce.

The Italiana Scallops was next

Another very tasty dish...the scallops were small, but fresh, very sweet and succulent. The french beans and mushrooms were sauteed just right in the Knorr Italiana Herb Paste as a sauce...the beans remainding crunchy, but thoroughly cooked...and the mushrooms were nice and tender. Even the potato crust like fan which I guess is meant as a decoration tasted wonderful with the sauce and the vegetables and scallops.

Next we had a wonderful beancurd dish...Milk Cabbage and Beancurd Skin with Scallop Broth

The beancurd was very good. Fragrant, crispy, light and airy, layered. Topped with dried, deep fried scallops for extra oomph. And a magnificent sauce to mop it all up.

Next up, yet another beautiful dish...in fact, my favourite in this tasting...the Salted Egg Golden Flake Prawns

Salted egg yolk encrusted prawns are not new. And many of them are fabulous. But the twist in One Ocean's offering is the salted egg yolk are mixed with the Knorr Mashed potato flakes which seemed to either fried or lightly toasted. Not greasy at all, but the flakes provided a crunch and mouthfeel which elevated the already magnificent dish to another level. The prawns themselves were fresh, and had crunch and balanced well with the deep, rather heavy flavours of the salted egg yolk. This dish is worth the visit!

Crabs were next...the Italiana Crabs

The crabs were also nice, but after the excellence of the prawns, they did not shine as much. The crabs were nice...sweet, fresh, firm flesh. The Italiana sauce goes very well with the crabs.

Overall, excellent place to dine. The food was cooked magnificently, interesting use of ingredients and flavours to highlite. Recommended.

Thanks to Debbie at Ate Consulting and the fine folks at Unilever and One Ocean for hosting.

One Ocean Seafood Restaurant
1002 Toa Payoh Industrial Park #01-1407
Other outlets
Ocean Seafood Woodlands, Blk 892C Woodlands Drive 50 #01-02
Ocean Seafood Ang Mo Kio, Blk 107 Ang Mo Kio Ave 4
Ocean Seafood Serangoon, Blk 151 Serangoon North Ave 2
Ocean Seafood Hougang, Blk 435A Hougang Ave 8
Ocean Seafood Tanjong Pagar, Blk 7 Tanjong Pagar Plaza

Crystal Jade Restaurant, Singapore

This may come as a surprise to you, but today, just like almost every other day, we had lunch. And this time, we had it in Crystal Jade, Great World City, Singapore, Asia, Earth. As usual, it was full and there was a queue, lucky for us, the queue was not too long and we only had to wait 15 minutes. We didn't really mind the wait that much as this was one of our favourite restaurants and we visit it very often.

After the wait, we entered the restaurant and sat down at a table in a corner. We began ordering our usual stuff but only to have it returned to us as we were later than usual and most of the items sold out.

First came the Preserved Egg with Meat Congee. It was good.


I espcially liked the you tiao. Crunchy, crisp smothered by the creamy like congee. This also was counterpoint to the slightly salty lean meat burried deep within.



Next came the roast pork, my grandma's favourite.



See that strip in the middle of the meat? Thats fat, not as a layer, but marbelled within the meat. Awesome! Juicy!



The crust was very crispy and adds to the overall pleasure when consuming this dish.

As we ate the roasted meat, the Glutinous Rice Dumpling arrived.



It contained salted egg yolk, dried scallops, roast pork, yam and yellow bean held in place by the glutinous rice.



A plate of Deep Fried Beancurd Skin soon landed onto our table as the plates of some of the other dishes which we had finished took off.



There was a total of 6 halves available. Inside it contained shrimps that tasted fabulous.



The last to come was the Salad Prawn sprinkled with Sesame Seeds. The large shelled prawns were coated with mayonaise.



This photo is not that great. This is because the colour of the mayonaise was too similar to the colour of the plate hence fooling the camera's metering system, causing the picture to be overexposed. The prawns were very fresh, and had a firm, crunchy bite.




Crystal Jade Kitchen
1 Kim Seng Promenade
Great World City #03-30
Singapore 237994