Foodie Paradise

Jumbo Seafood

The Riverwalk
20 Upper Circular Road #B1-48
The Riverwalk Singapore 058416
Tel: 6534-3435
Fax: 6536-3836

Business Hours: Lunch 12.00pm - 2.30pm
Dinner 6.00pm - midnight

Other Outlets

Ratings: 3.5/5.0

First up: Scallop Wrapped in Yam Ring

Among all the dishes that I had at Jumbo, I love this dish the most. Part of the reason may be due to my weakness for anything that is fried and anything that has yam in it. Basically the outer part of each piece is actually fried yam, with a fresh scallop embedded in the middle of it. The scallops served were fresh, and the fried yam was very nicely fried. This will make a very lovely starter dish.

Next: Donut with Seafood Paste

Somehow I’ve a problem with this dish being called a “donut with seafood paste”. I just simply can’t associate fried floor fritters with donuts, but never mind about it.

Essentially, it’s fried floor fritters stuffed with cuttlefish paste. Even though this is one of the recommended dishes in the restaurant, personally, there’s nothing spectacular about this dish. I feel that the fried fritters were not crispy enough. It’s not a dish that makes me feel like grabbing piece after piece. Actually the day before I had actually went with some colleagues to some places near Changi and we had ordered fried fritters with cuttlefish paste too. That place was a 24-hour hawker centre thus the dishes there were definitely much cheaper than those at Jumbo. Though the fried fritters were not as nicely served as those at Jumbo, at least they were crispy and it made me feel like snatching another piece of fritters from my colleague.

Fried Hong Kong Noodles

Hor Fun

Both the Hor Fun and Fried Hong Kong noodles tasted okay. Personally, I prefer the Fried Hong Kong Noodles to the Hor Fun. When I first took a bite out of both dishes, I actually felt that both dishes tasted really delicious. However, after a few more mouthful of them, I began to feel that they actually tasted pretty normal. Both dishes don’t leave a lasting taste, despite the fact that they look really delicious and tasted very delicious at first. One redeeming point about both dishes is that at least the ingredients used were reasonably fresh.

Lastly: Black Pepper Crab

I love the flavouring used for the Black Pepper Crab. It’s a well-done dish as the Black Pepper Crab didn’t turn out dry and the taste of fresh crab was still pretty well-maintained despite all those cooking.

However, I’ve a major complaint about it. The waitress actually told us that the crab we had weighed 1.1 kg, which I found it really hard to believe. There was little meat in the crab, and it wasn’t succulent enough. That was my first time at Jumbo Seafood. Usually, I’ll frequent another seafood restaurant in East Coast which I felt had better food. The crabs that we ordered there were also around 1 kg, and yet the crab that were served to us were usually way much bigger, and it always feel really good biting the thick layer of crab meat off. Somehow at Jumbo, I kept having this feeling that there’re more shells than crab meat while eating it. Probably there are a high percentage of tourists dining at that particular Jumbo Seafood. Hence, the crab that was served to us was a tat over-weighed.

On the whole, I love the atmosphere and the variety of the dishes served at Jumbo. However, due to the “crab incident” and also the fact that the dishes there weren’t exceptionally fantastic as compared to some other seafood, I had only rated this restaurant 3.5/5.0

It’s simply the best Wife’s Biscuits around in Singapore.

The Wife’s Biscuits is from "恒香“，or "Heng Xiang", located at Great World City, Floor B1. "Heng Xiang" is actually this shop in Hong Kong, Yuen Long that sells the most famous Lao Po Bing in Hong Kong, the country where Lao Po Bing is originated. I will rate those that I’d tasted in HK 4.5/5.0.

The Wife’s Biscuit in Singapore pales in comparison as compared to its HK’s counterpart. Nevertheless, I guess it should be the best Wife’s Biscuits that you can taste around in Singapore. For any chinese pastry, the outer crispy layer of the biscuit, or its "skin" is the most important. For "Heng Xiang", the outer crispy layer of the biscuit is just right and very aromatic. The paste is delicious. The entire Wife’s biscuit seem to melt in your mouth after the first bite, and its simply so irresistable that it makes you feel like eating the entire box of it.

However, the only fault that I can find in it is that it doesn’t taste as nice if you consume it the next day, though it’s still as delicious. I remembered packing back boxes of these Lao Po Bing from HK, and they tasted just as great even after a week.

Besides its Lao Po Bing, many of the HK traditional pastry that it sells taste equally great too. The other item that I simply love from the shop is its egg tart! It’s also one of the best egg tarts I’ve ever tasted in Singapore, besides the one I ate at the "Dim Sum" restaurant, "Hong Xin" in Chinatown. Thus do try both the Wife Biscuits and its egg tarts if you ever pass by that shop!

Walking through Zion Road brought back a lot of childhood memories for me. I hadn’t been to that area for so long. Thankfully, my old school building has not been torn down, even though my primary school had already vacated that site for such a long time. I wondered what the building is currently used for now. It seems as if it was only yesterday where I had to go for the Friday Mass in the church next to my school, and the lovely hymns we used to sing. I always found those Masses boring then, and was always so happy when it’s time to start singing the hymns…..

Alright, back to the actual theme of this blog, i.e. FOOD.

Compared to Chomp Chomp Food Centre, Zion Road Hawker Centre is more spacious, hence offering a better eating ambience. Today was my first visit to the place, and on the whole, I like the experience of eating there.

First up is the “Mohamed Sultan Road Hot and Cold Cheng Tng“. I’d heard reviews about the great Cheng Tng that this stall sells, so for my first trip to Zion Road Hawker Centre, it’s definitely a must for me to give it a try.

Ratings: 3.0/5.0

I didn’t find the cheng tng sold by this stall especially nice, considering the rave reviews that I’d heard about it. The lychee taste in the chng teng was too strong, which I felt it wasn’t appropriate for a cheng tng. The taste of the cheng tng was just right, in the sense it wasn’t too sweet or too bland, which is one of its plus points. Other than that, this dessert didn’t leave much of any impact. I prefer the cheng tng sold at the hawker centre opposite my place, and one of the dessert stall at Newton Circle instead.

The second dish…carrot cake from Goh Teochew Chye Thow Kway. Actually, I found it quite unbelieving that I actually had fried carrot cake two days in the row…oh well.

Ratings: 3.5/5.0

The carrot cake that I ate today was crispier and tastier than the one I had at Chomp Chomp yesterday. It’s pretty delicious, but not the must-try at Zion Road Hawker Centre.

“Foo Kee Famouns Deep Fried”:

Ratings: 4.0/5.0

I’m really excited to introduce this stall at Zion Road, simply because it sells the vegetable fritters that I’d been looking for ever since the stall owners of the stall that sold vegetable fritters at the market near my place retired!

The vegetable fritter tasted great! Haha, I do have a weakness for fried food. Besides the vegetable fritters, the yam roll (?? actually I forgot what it’s called, but it definitely had yam in it) tasted great too. Oh, yam is also another weakness of mine.

However, the fried tou fu that this stall sells was just average, otherwise, it may had gotten a higher rating. Besides that, I think the oil used to fry this stuff had been used for some time, thus the food would have tasted better if the oil used were changed more frequently.

The irony: this stall used to be from Chomp Chomp. Haha, looks like some of Chomp Chomp’s best stalls had moved!

Haiz, I still miss the vegetable fritters that I used to have…

The food from “Hao Pei”:

Ratings: 4.5/5.0

The Hor Fun and the Hokkien Mee tasted really great! Both dishes, especially the Hokkien Mee, had the authentic taste that was missing from most Hokkien Mee nowadays. According to my mum, a plate of delicious hor fun need to be cooked with the thick kind of “guo tiao“. Actually, I only tasted some of the Hokkien Mee and probably one mouthful of the Hor Fun. My parents loved them a great deal and finished them up before I could attack much of it! It’s definitely a must-try at Zion Road Hawker Centre.

On the whole: 4.0/5.0

~Sanz

Chomp Chomp Food Centre at Serangoon Garden is probably one of the most popular food centres around in Singapore. The signature dish there is probably the barbequed seafood.

However, I wasn’t exactly in the mood of any barbequed food today, thus I decided to try the other food stalls there.

The first stall I tried was the “Adam Road Big Prawn Mee”. The stall owner was pretty nice. Seeing that my family of three was sharing the two bowls of noodles, he automatically offered us another bowl so that it’ll be easier for us to share our food.

Ratings: 3.0/5.0

A bowl of prawn mee costs around $4/$5, slightly towards the expensive side. However, for the pig tail noodles that I ordered from the stall, there were actually quite a few pig tails in the food, so I guess that makes up for the slightly more expensive price?

The pig tails and the pork ribs were slight tough, which I attributed to the fact that it’s probably because they’d used “frozen foodstuff” for their food. By sight, the prawn noodles looked really delicious, especially with its thick brown soup. However, upon tasting, the soup was actually just average. The most important factor in rating a bowl of prawn noodles was probably the “prawn taste” in its soup, which sad to say, was pretty much missing.

On the whole, the prawn noodles were pretty ok, in comparison to those “foodcourt food”. I actually had higher expectations for the noodles, since I had thought that the stall was kind of famous. There’re definitely better prawn noodles around Singapore that I’ve eaten before, so I’m only giving 3 stars for it.

The next dish that I tried was the Fried Carrot Cake, from Stall 24.

Ratings: 3.0/5.0

When I first tasted this plate of fried carrot cake, I felt that it was pretty delicious. It was pretty well-fried, and the taste was alright. However, the carrot cake used was probably mass-produced stuff, so it basically tasted like the usual fried carrot cake that you can find in most places, except that for this stall, the technique of frying and probably the use of the flavourings were better, thus it does taste better than most of the fried carrot cake outside. Other than that, the carrot cake was pretty average.

Seeing that there seem to be many people ordering from Stall 23, “Zhong Zhong Zhu Rou Zhou Tong Xin Fen”, my mum decided to order the Century Egg Congee from it.

Ratings: 3.0/5.0

This stall actually had a “healthier choice” sticker on it. The congee was pretty nicely brewed, and the stall seems to be pretty generous with its “you tiao“. However, I doubt it fitted well with the healthier choice logo on its stall. The congee was MSG-laden, and too much flavouring was used, hence giving the congee a strong taste. If you like food with lots of artificial taste in it, you’ll probably like the congee.

Amazingly, I’d given 3 stars for all the food there, thus the overall ratings for today’s blog entry is 3.0 stars out of 5.0.

~Sanz