This place is fairly well known because it was featured in an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “A Cook’s Tour”, early in his career. He did also name it as one of the places to eat before you die, and he certainly did that quite a few times before his untimely death. Musings on celebrity chef demises aside, this is quite a standout tze char, for quite a few reasons. One is their beyond unassuming setting. It borders on the unappealing, how the restaurant has been left to its own devices in terms of their interior/exterior condition. No one is asking for A/C or robot waiters (more on their service in a minute), but i think relatively clean floors and upgraded toilet infrastructure would go a long way to making this a more pleasant experience for diners, without losing its undeniable charm. Now, onto the service. Our dinner here for 5 took about 3 and 1/2 hours. Now, i’m a fan of long dinners and great conversation (helped by copious amounts of beer, this is probably a business strategy) but i was not expecting this. We probably had about 7-8 dishes in total and it was a minimum of 15-20 minutes between each dish. We also had to clear some dishes ourselves and grab our own drinks, which could be a reflection of the difficulty in finding help, or just a lack of caring in general. There was a half naked uncle sitting in there watching channel 8, and i’m not entirely sure what his role was there beyond perhaps providing some ambience. Finally, the food. I will say, everything that i ate was pretty good! The standouts were the prawns which are butterflied and covered with so much garlic that they would vaporize nosferatu on sight but also deshelled so they were really easy to eat, and tasty to boot. The famous crab bee hoon lived up to its Bourdain-inspired hype. I’m not a huge fan of frogs legs but these were pretty good, i do wish they used a different brand of chicken essence but thats just personal bias :) In all, i would say that if you’re coming here be prepared to wait. Its a great meal and a great time, but you’re going to have to hunker down and really enjoy the company of the people you’re with, which luckily we did. Also a major consideration is that we didnt pay for our meal, our gracious host did. I have heard that this place is stunningly expensive for the setting so be prepared to pay as well, but if you want to eat somewhere that Tony Bourdain considered to be the pinnacle of Singapore tze char cuisine, i guess this is it. RIP chef.

They always says," never judge the book by it's cover." This plain coffeeshop serve one of the best crab beehoon I have eaten. The crab is fresh and delicious and the beehoon has full of flavour. Paired with veg & otah, it completes the meal. Another must try, gong-gong with the spicy sauce, superb! Be warn, the book did not state the price... 😀