Thai Village Restaurant and Seafood Paradise
Location: Singapore
Author: My Husband
Singapore offers a veritable cornucopia of restaurant types as well as cuisines for all foodies. From the hot and humid heartland coffee shops serving 3-dollar meals to the sophisticated and stratospherically priced Les Ami, from the traditional Nonya pastries at Bengawan Solo to Russian food, you can find it all here.
To say that foodies are spoilt for choice in Singapore is… well, like saying that Australia is an island. Thus, in order to sample as much of the food on offer as you can in four days, you’re going to have to forgo “proper” meals and just eat whenever and wherever you see anything interesting. And that’s sort of what we did. I say “sort of” because my Aunt actually made reservations at restaurants that she knew we would want to visit; so we had to do our whenever and wherever eating in between these restaurant meals.
Suffice it to say, the frequency with which we ate did not do any favours for our waistline, but that’s what post-vacation diets are meant to deal with, right? So, after making a resolution to go on a diet after our vacation, we set about to “eat for the moment” in Singapore; in between meals, we snacked on roasted meats at Bee Cheng Hiang, Nonya kuehs at Bengawan Solo, Durian puffs at Prima deli, deep-fried shrimp-paste-flavoured chicken wings at Crystal Jade kitchen, curry puffs at Old Chang Kee, coffee and toast at Toast Box/Ya Kun/Ah Mei, Hokkien prawn noodles/Char Kway Teow at Thye Hong, and some others that I’d already forgotten. And you know what? 99% of everything we ate was delicious! Truly a foodie paradise, Singapore is.
Rojak is a must have for me at…. Food Republic!!
Of course, it is customary for me to have ice desserts when I’m in town, so here are snapshots of some ice kachang and chendol from… Food Republic!! (I don’t think I will ever tire of Food Republics).
Ice kachang. Shaved ice, red bean paste, agar agar, atap chee, all doused in colourful syrups.
Chendol. Coconut milk, shaved ice, gula melaka, red bean paste, agar agar.
The other snacks, we forgot to take pictures of until they were already halfway eaten. So we’ll cover those on our next trip. 
Instead, on this post, we will share some photos of meals from two restaurants that we like.
The first set of photos is from a dinner at the Thai Village Restaurant. Thai Village is known for their Thai-style Teochew (朝州) cooking. What is Thai-style Teochew you ask? Well, as most ethnic Chinese people in Thailand are of Teochew extraction, they have – over time – fused Teochew cooking techniques with Thai ones, creating a fusion cuisine that is very tasty. My wife and I like this style of cuisine very much, and we decided to host a small Thai-Teochew dinner for some of our family members; since we were up for eating anything on the menu, we left the ordering to the foodies in our group.
We went to the Thai Village location at the Goodwood Park Hotel.
Trio of …errr…Thai-teochew amuse bouches. To the left, peanuts. In the middle, a mint/chilli chutney that is tart and spicy. To the right, pickled spicy vegetables, or a-cha.
Thai-Teochew style soup. Very tasty, this.
Deep-fried breaded tofu. We’ve never had this before, but it turned out to be only so-so. The crispy exterior was delightful, as was the silky soft texture of the tofu. But it was severely lacking in seasoning.
Crab tung hoon. The glass noodle soaked up lots of crab flavours and seasoning, and was lip-smackingly good. The crabs were caught in local waters, and were meaty enough, but there was this bitter after-taste to them. This dish, while good, could be improved by using Sri Lankan crabs in its preparation.
Pan-fried fish (生鱼) slices. The fish slices were finished in a sweet soy sauce that really complemented the inherent sweetness of the fish.
Veggies prepared in consommé with fluffy egg whites, century eggs, and wolfberries. I didn’t have much of this, so I will just leave it at: taste like veggies.
Abalone Rice. Perfectly steamed rice over which slices of abalone and a thick brown sauce was poured. The brown sauce was infused with the aroma and flavours of the abalone, and the shellfish slices were beautifully tender. The rice soaked up all these delicious flavours, and my wife had the lion’s share of this dish.
The second set of photos is from a lunch we had at the Seafood Paradise Restaurant located at the Singapore Flyer. The Singapore Flyer is a slightly larger version of the London Eye, which is essentially a very large ferris wheel. I’ve never been up in it, but I’ve been told the view from up above is very good.
Singapore Flyer. Up up and away. It costs about $30 for a half-hour ride.
A flyer pod coming in for a “landing”. Singapore Flyer offers a dinner package where you, along with five friends (or strangers), can dine in one of these pods over the course of 1 hr. at dusk. If it weren’t for the close proximity to strangers, might be a good date location.
The very modern interior of the restaurant. Nice to see more seafood places creating more modern looks for their restaurant. The old school East Coast seafood restaurants were, for the most part, pretty dumpy. There weren’t many tables occupied during lunch @ Seafood Paradise. It was just our group of four and a group of businessmen at the next table.
View outside the window. The restaurant is situated right next to the Singapore River. In the background, the Sands Integrated Resort & Casino that will open its doors in early 2010.
”Golden Sand” prawns. These were fresh prawns fried in a batter made with salted egg yolks. The crispy, luxurious and yolky batter went perfectly with the sweetness of the prawns. This was a WOW dish, and we ordered a second plate!
Braised tofu with mushrooms, prawns, and pork floss. This was a very nicely executed dish, with the tofu soaking up all the flavours in the brown sauce. The tofu itself is silky smooth, and very tasty.
Deep fried shrimp-meat “cake”. Shrimp is processed into a paste, seasoned, and then hand-formed into a cylindrical shape. The cylinder is then deep-fried and served. This is a dish that would taste good in small portions. If you have too much, you will find it very heavy. We didn’t finish this dish.
Abalone salad. Slices of abalone over a very tangy, very refreshing green salad. We really liked this dish. Abalone is always good. The cold, crunchy and tart salad was perfect accompaniment for the shellfish.
Deep-fried Chinese buns, or mantou (馒头). These were the perfect vehicle for getting the sauce from the next dish into our tummies. We ordered a second plate of these little beauties.
Singapore Chilli Crabs. This was what we came here for. After the watery chilli sauce at Palm Beach earlier this year, I told my foodie Aunt that I wanted to go somewhere where they could make a thick chilli sauce for the crab. Seafood Paradise really came through with the thick and very tasty sauce; however, we did have to ask for the thicker sauce to be made when we placed our order. The meat on the Sri Lankan crabs was firm and sweet – I’d eat these over Dungeness crabs any day.
Finally, a trio of desserts to finish our meals with.
Next post – the best buffet in Singapore (and the best buffet I’ve ever eaten at period.)
