I like shopping malls. Not just for shopping, but also for the variety of food that comes along with it. With the opening of each new shopping center, there will be so many new restaurants and cafes opening up, and that can only be good news to the Singapore food scene.

With 13 eateries on the Discovery walkway at 313 @ Somerset, and the 313 Food hall, there’s plenty of good food to choose from. Flying Chillies at 313 @ Somerset is situated at the prime spot of the discovery walkway when you entered the mall from the Mrt station. From the causal and contemporary decor, there are no hints that Flying Chillies is a Thai restaurant if you do not look at the menu.

Pad Thai ($12.90) reminds me of the Char kuay teow. There’s the same ingredients like eggs, kuay teow (rice noodle), beansprouts, involved, but pad thai offers a little more in the form of peanut.

Peanuts give pad thai an additional crunch, and it is to pad thai, like what pork lad is to some char kuay teow. I like my pad thai with lots and lots of crunch peanut, plentiful of beansprouts and a squeeze of the lime to complete the taste.

The other dishes that we ordered were not too bad, but the Asparagus with prawn and garlic ($12.90) was downright pathetic. There was hardly any asparagus, plus a few little prawn and that’s it. Please DO NOT order this if you ever check out Flying Chillies Restaurant at 313 @ Somerset.

Maybe it was the pandan leaf, maybe it was the marination, either way the Pandan Leaf Chicken ($12.90) didn’t absorb much fragrance from the pandan leaf. The deep fried chicken was slightly dry, and it was the spicy-sweet Thai sauce that saved it from being a total disaster.

Tom Yam Soup is the first dish that I will immediately think of when anyone mention about the delicious Thai food. Needless to say, a lot of people have been searching for the best tom yam in Singapore.

But I am not a good judge of Tom Yam Soup ($9.90) as I can’t take spicy food very well. I will sweat like mad even if the tom yam soup isn’t that well prepared. See that clear soup in the picture? It’s extremely potent! Taking a small sip of it, I thought that it tasted like ordinary soup initially. Five seconds later, the hot and the sour struck. It came with such intensity that I was caught off-guard and choked. I shouldn’t be telling you about such embarrassing moments, but you have been warned.

The appeal of Flying Chillies at 313 @ Somerset will definitely be the prime location at the discovery walkway. Given the fact that thousands of people walk past it everyday, I wouldn’t write it off completely. If you are a big fan of Thai food, why don’t you check it out and let us know about your experience there?

Restaurant Review
Flying Chillies
313 Orchard Road
#01-29 313 @ Somerset
Tel: +65 6509 6623

// Read my list of Thai Restaurants in Singapore.

Sawatdee Khrab, welcome to the land of smiles. We sailed the seven ocean, and land ahoy at Phuket, the southern tip of the land of smiles; where there are no land boundaries. The beautiful beaches, the awesome weather, the sporty sea activites, oh I heard so much about you.

The poor people, whom we grieved for during the tragedy that happened a few years back; the beaches were ruined, the folks homeless, the kids without food. They are back, slowly but surely, the glory days; the tourists flocked back, the economy picked up and the people are getting back their better life. I’m glad.

The touts and the trout. I always see this as the touts fishing for their trout, after all, it takes two hands to clap; I swindled on you, and of course you are willing to be tricked by me. Two thousand baht! It was the first offer we got, as we walked further away, so did the numbers slowly decreased. Our final bargain, take eight hundred.

Cashew nuts are apparently one of the famous products there, our first stop was inevitably the cashew factories. And they have it in all kinds of flavours; chilli, honey, sugar – you named it, they got it. We also picked up some pork floss; they are so good that you can eat them on its own. Cliché, but true.

They were gifts for others, we take some, and we give some. That’s the beauty of local products, people always buy them, as gifts for family, friends and neighbours.

I wanted to try the authentic Thai food, eat what the Thais eat. And where better than to sit by the roadside stalls at the night market, sipping a bowl of tom yum soup. It was hot, and I’m not those who could hold their chilli, so the sweat glands started to work as I took a sip, and another mouthful of the delightful-spicy soup. Lots of seafood inside the tom yum soup with a sour twist.

The de-constructed oyster omelette. It was definitely a oyster dish, judging from the numbers of the shellfish present on plate. Instead of frying and mixing everything together, they did it the de-constructed way. And there was lots of fried bean sprouts too!

I smelled it from far away – what’s that stuff floating in the air that was so good to the nose? It was Pad thai, their version of our char kuay teow. You couldn’t imagine my delight, finding my favourite food in a foreign land. And the best part was they threw in lots of bean sprouts, our locals one always seemed to scrimp on the cheap bean sprouts. It was good, we finished it almost in a blink.

If you need to know more about my taste bud, I love sweet & sour pork, that’s like my all time favourite zi-char dish. So here I’m, looking for a Thai rendition. Well it wasn’t what I was expecting, you know not those crispy fried pork coated in bright red tomato sauce. But the pork was still tenderly soft, and this plate was just 40 Thai baht. Cheap!

After the fix of the local Thai food, surprisingly, the famous king of burgers, the Ramly burger caught my eyes. They did it differently here, lots of lettuces, and cucumber too! There was however, no eggs, which I wasn’t sure whether was it because I didn’t tell them to do an egg special, or they never had it served with eggs in the first place. Either way, the best part about the ramly burger was definitely the sauce; drizzled with lots of mayonnaise, chilli and barbecued sauce, awesome!

Under the dim flimsy light, we went behind the thin veil for our secret rendezvous. I was a little nervous to be honest, but you were experienced and started slowly. Harder, harder, I urged you on. Deeper, deeper, you thrust into. Oh, surely, this was one of the greatest pleasure in the world. I never knew such joy like this, before. And now I’m hooked.

Read the other stories of The City Kid here.