Dinner at Sek Tong Gai Chinese Restaurant

I actually had the honor of having dinner with Nat and Derrick this night, and another lovely lady whose name / blog eludes me as of now (you really have to pardon me - even for Nat and Derrick, I had to ask them a few times before my bad memory served me well).

The selected venue is none other than a very authentic Cantonese / Chinese restaurant named Sek Tong Gai located at 47 Tanglin Halt Road #01-317 Singapore 141047 and the number to dial is 6474 4547. It looks like a high-class kopitiam, but don't be fooled by the non-descript exterior.

Providing a casual, relaxed ambience for families and friends alike to enjoy a good meal in a non-fussy environment, this clean-cut Chinese restaurant serves everything from soup to seafood, basically a wide range of zichar dishes, and the "menu" comes in the form of an electronic tablet.

Although we agreed that each person should order an item to share, we still relied rather heavily on recommendations of other patrons who'd been here before, and also those of the lady taking our orders. You'd be amazed to know that the service in this humble little restaurant is excellent - the waitress serving us even abode by rules such as no leaning over diners to serve the person next to us, and changing of plates in between courses.

We all had the Herbal Tea (SGD$1.80), believed to be home-brewed of course , since it tastes exactly like it is! I think it is honeysuckle flower - good for keeping us cool in this extremely hot weather.

The first dish that was served was the Chinese Spinach with mini dried scallops and cellophane noodles (more commonly known as "tang hoon"), at SGD$21.00. This seemingly simple dish was immersed in the most tasty broth, the fresh spinach was finely soft, and the cellophane noodles were silky smooth, so this dish passed on all counts - taste, texture and outlook.

Next, we had the Claypot chicken with salted fish (SGD$18.00) - the chicken was not ultra-tender, but the taste was superb in savoury's element. Imagine tiny bits of salted fish and the overture of spring onion orchestrating flavors on top of the saltish gravy the chicken was infused with.

Following this, we had the Soon Hock Fish (SGD$97.00) - cooked in traditional Cantonese style alongside cubes of beancurd, white mushrooms and brinjal. The fish was fresh and saccharine in its sea-worthy manner, and the brinjal was meltingly soft. This was a dish with everything  - meat and vegetables tossed into one.

Finally, the Steamed Pork Ribs (SGD$21.00) - it looked so deceptively plain but was the dish with the most prominent aroma - exactly like heartwarming, homecooked pork ribs cooked with soy bean paste. We couldnt resist them, and I had to admit the gravy was exactly the way my mom would cook it (and I deem my mom a superb cook of Cantonese cuisine!). The only thing was that the ribs were not as tender as I would have loved for them to be.

There were a couple of interesting items such as Honey Baked Eel and Bamboo Clams (the latter was recommended by the lady taking our order) that unfortunately, were unavailable. So each of us spent SGD$42.00 on our dinner, with our stomaches all in happy agreement with this place when we left.