Zhou's Kitchen: eating at Tung Lok's own home kitchen?

with family

Zhou's Kitchen is touted to be the modelled after the Zhou family kitchen...the very kitchen of Andrew Tjoe, restauranter extraordinaire of Tung Lok. Serving home made like specialities, this is a rather newer concept in the very successful Tung Lok chain...which ranges from the high brow high dining venues like My Humble House, to more regular down to earth places like Zhou's Kitchen.

Housed in house like structure at the former beer brewery, the restaurant oozes with some charm.



The decor was quaint, and simple...rather homely.

Wasabi Prawns, a dish supposedly invented by Tung Lok's Executive Chef Sam Leong



Indeed proved to be one of the better ones around...the other being Peach Garden's wasabi prawns. The very fresh, large prawns were succulent, crunchy, and smothered with the wasabi-mayonaise paste. The wasabi had a small kick, and was not totally creamy as some tend to be.

The Hae Cho, a typical Hokkien/Teochew dish also had a home-made feel:



Rough chopped prawns and meat with chesnuts were wrapped with bean curd skin to form a tube, and deep fried. The skin proved very crispy, and the fillihg was very flavourful and rich tasting.

The house tofu, with spinach



Great tofu - smooth, creamy, fragrant...Maybe because this is one of my favourite dishes, but perhaps the base material of good tofu hass either readily available, or many of the chefs have mastered the art of making great tofu. This dish was excellent...but perhaps its my soft spot for tofu. It was fragrant, smooth, rich, creamy. The spinach provided a nice complement.

We also had pan fried beef



Slices of very tender beef was pan fried with black pepper. Very nicely done. The sauce was beguilling, and provided just the right balance of salt and savoury. The beef had some texture, but was tender enough to almost melt in mouth.

Definitely a good place for a family meal, not expensive, good service, great food.

Zhou's Kitchen
368 Alexandra Road
The Copperdome, Anchorpoint
Tel: 6473 1123
http://www.zhouskitchen.com
Lunch: 11.30am - 3.00pm
Dinner: 6.00pm - 10.30pm
Hi-Tea: 2.30pm - 5.30pm (Sat, Sun & PH)

Paradise Inn: Is this really the taste paradise?

on several occassions, with friends and colleagues



The Paradise Group is a chain of Chinese Restaurants which is raising and keeping the heritage of local Chinese cuisine. Many of the restaurants offer very fine food, and because of convenience, I have eaten at the Funan branch several times...proximity to hifi, computer and camera shops...:-)

This review is an amalgam of some of the highlight dishes I have sampled.

Deep fried cod:



This was a very special dish...the exterior batter created a very crispy, tasty shell, and the insides, the fish is just rightly cooked, hot, steamy and moist and delicious.

Salted egg yolk prawns



The richness of the salted egg yolk complements the fresh, succulent, crunchy prawns. Lovely. Crystal Jade Palace at Paragon does a similar version - in comparison, CJ does the smothering salted egg yolk sauce more finely...the Paradise version you can feel the texture of the sauce, in the CJ version less so. Which is better? Six of one and half a dozen of the other. I will eat either any day.

For a slightly different taste, wasabi prawns



Reputation says that Sam Leong, of Tung Lok created this dish...and indeed Tung Lok serves a wonderful version. As does the always delectable Peach Garden (I prefer the OCBC branch, but the Novena branch is good as well) does a superb version. Compared to these doyens, the Paradise Inn's version is humbled, but only slightly...and is good value for money. The wasabi was pungent, but not overly so...though for my rather extreme tastebuds, I would have opted for a heavier hand at the wasabi.

Khong Bak Pau.



Braised pork belly, served with fluffly steamed buns. Triggers umami sensors! Rich, smothering braising liquid, thick slices of fat pork. Wonderful. Compared to the benchmark standard set by the venerable Westlake Restaurant, this one compares well. Weslake would still get the nod from me, because the braising liquid is more tasty, and the pork rather fatter. But Paradise Inn's version is not to far behind, and not much to choose from.

Ohr Nee...a traditional and typical Teochew dessert of mashed yam, pumpkin and ginko nuts.



Delightfully sinfull, carefully prepared with copious amounts of lard and sugar, to counter the dry-ness and stickiness of mashed yam, and sweetened. Then mixed with mashed pumpkin. Finally add ginko nuts, and optionally first pressing of coconut milk. Gorgeous. The yam and pumpkin mix was smooth, tasty. Only improvement suggestion is a less watery syrup...but ensure the syrup is totally combined with the lard and hold the yam and pumpkin in a suspension.



109 North Bridge Road
#02-10/11 Funan Digitalife Mall
Tel: 6338 4018
http://www.paradisegroup.com.sg/ParadiseInn/index.html
Open daily: 11.30am - 9.30pm