Pu Tien Restaurant has been quite impressive in the Singapore Food scene. They have expanded from their original branch at Kitchener road to five other outlets within a couple of years. The other Pu Tien restaurants are strategically located in popular shopping malls like Marina Square, Tampines Mall, VivoCity, Jurong Point, and there’s even a Pu Tien Buffet restaurant at City Square Mall.

I have been wanting to drop by Pu Tien restaurant for dinner ever since I heard that they are a very affordable place for a good Chinese dinner. When I eat out with my friends, we tend to stick with Western food, or check out other cuisines. like the usual Japanese, Italian or French food.

I’m not sure if it’s the same case for you, with the exception of Dim Sum, I usually only have Chinese food and zichar dinner with my family, but not my friends. All this is about to change with our dinner at Pu Tien Restaurant.

Why don’t we have the Deep Fried Duck with Yam ($15)? One of my friends suggested.

It was a good choice. Held within the shattering crisp of the yam, was the most incredibly moist and welcoming duck meat. It’s a brilliant idea to coat a layer of yam around the duck.

The Deep Fried Chicken with Garlic ($12 for half chix) was golden and crispy to the tooth, with the meat retaining the moisture and sweetness even though it was deep-fried. The portion was a little small though.

“Brad, you need to check out Pu Tien restaurant soon. They have one of the best sweet and sour pork in Singapore!”

Ever since then, I have been waiting from the start of forever to go Pu Tien restaurant just for their sweet & sour pork. I could hear the drum-roll when I stretched out to grab a piece of the pork. It smelt good, and there’s lychee too! Emotions took over as I ignored my friends and concentrated on what’s supposedly the ‘best sweet & sour pork’

I wasn’t sure if it’s because I had too much expectations of it, but Pu Tien’s Sweet & Sour Pork ($10 for S, $15 for M) wasn’t what I was looking for. It was not bad, slightly better than most of the sweet & sour pork that I’ve had before, but it was definitely not the best.

Half mee sua, half bee hoon, apparently Pu Tien restaurant’s Fried noodle mee sua ($6) had an identity crisis. We were left wondering about a few possibilities: a) we ordered bee hoon instead of mee sua, b) the waitress took down a wrong order and got us the bee hoon instead, and c) the mee sua was supposed to taste like bee hoon. Not that it mattered actually. We enjoyed the moist and wet mee sua that came with a good mixture of ingredients

Pu Tien restaurant is a good place for families. The prices are slightly higher than what you’d pay for zichar, but it is still very affordable for a meal in a restaurant. If you are looking for a Chinese restaurant for a simple family dinner, Pu Tien restaurant may be just the one.

Restaurant Review
Pu Tien Restaurant
1 Jurong West Central 2
#02-34 Jurong Point Shopping Centre
Tel: +65 6795 2338

Seng Kee Black Herbal Chicken Soup is located just opposite Kembangan MRT station. I happened to chance upon this zi-char restaurant because my friends had cravings for their mee-sua.

So another venture into the east side of Singapore for LIC, as i stay in the west and the east is so far away. But there are simple too much good food in the area, so you will be seeing more food from the east in the future!

The zi-char store has all of its seat on the street, its rather cooling but when bad weather comes then it will be very difficult as i don’t think there are much shelter from rain.

The store has quite a few selections of fish available for customers to choose, and with the method of cooking the fish. But we didn’t have any fish because we ordered crab already.

Mee Sua ($3.50)

The rendition of Mee sua at Seng Kee comes in a stronger flavour than the normal ones, with ingredients like pig kidneys, mushroom in it. The mee sua is smooth and silky to the mouth.

We had 5 bowls for each of us, and i saw most tables ordering this dish and at $3.50 its definitely worth a try.

Egg Omelette ($8)

$8 for an egg omelette dish at a zi-char store might be a tad too expensive, if I’m not wrong egg dishes usually are about 6 bucks? Nevertheless, the egg omelette is quite good and we finish it very fast.

Crab Bee Hoon ($38)

The crab bee hoon is usually done in soup, but here at Seng Kee they do it “dry”. We were quite shocked at the size of the crab when it came because usually crabs at zi-char stores goes in the region of $30 for 1kg?

But the one that we had is $38, and the small crab that we had is definitely not 1kg. I felt ripped off as the price tag is certainly too expensive for the size of the crab.

The bee hoon is not bad though, as it absorbs all the essence of the crab and all the juicy wet part is at the bottom of the bee hoon.

Total bill including drinks for 5 person comes up to $76.80. At initial look, for a zi-char store and considering we had 5 person, its definitely not expensive. But, looking at the amount of food that we had, the crab bee hoon was definitely over-priced.

I’m not too sure about their other dishes as i have not tried them and it will not be fair to judge base on this experience. But their mee sua is worth a try, do give their crab bee hoon a miss.

Seng Kee Black Herbal Chicken Soup
467 Changi Road