Sunday, September 24, 2006

Spring Court, China Town, Singapore

Spring Court at 52 Upper Cross Street is supposedly the oldest Chinese restaurant in Singapore. They are celebrating their 77th anniversary this year and as such had a promotion going on where you can get a peking duck for 0.77SGD. The catch being you have to spend more than 70SGD on other items. So we decided to go for the 45SGD per person set menu and safely exceeded that amount for the two of us to enjoy the Peking duck.

We started with the braised shark's fins and crabmeat soup. There wasn't much real shark's fins in here, don't expect to see any combs of it and the soup was slightly too starchy. These negative points were compensated by the generous chunks of crabmeat which I did find rather delectable.

The Peking duck was not carved at table-side due to space constraints but I did spy them carving away at a small table a distance away. This was slightly above average peking duck, the skin was crispy but a little too greasy, the sauce was generic but the cucumber and spring-onions were quite fresh and crispy. The pancakes were made in advance and were served at room temperature.

Braised mushroom, broccoli and abalone came next. The sauce was rather rich but only a tad bit too salty. The broccoli was fresh and crunchy, the mushroom quite succulent and juicy but the winner in this trio was clearly the abalone which was reconstituted from its dried form into delicious, tender goodness.

Fried soft-shell crab in black pepper was next. This tasted like any good old deep fried dish. Salty, crunchy and a little greasy. I do wished they had more mayonnaise on the side instead of just those two squiggly lines. I guess I could have requested for more mayonnaise but just really couldn't be bothered.

The seafood dish of the night was steam scallops in spicy sauce. The spicy sauce tasted abit like XO sauce which reminded me of the ones I had at Owen's Seafood. Pretty ok dish, the scallops were fresh and sweet but nothing mind-blowing really.

The last course before dessert looked like it came out from the dimsum trolley. But to be fair to it, the glutinuous rice was very soft without being mushy and the salted egg-yolk, Chinese sausage and chicken filling balanced out pretty well.

Despite the large dallop of coconut cream (tasted like it came from a can or packet instead of fresh), this dessert of honeydew sago was unremarkable. It wasn't bad but it definitely was not spectacular either.

All in all, Spring Court delivers average to slightly above average fare. The 0.77SGD Peking duck may be a bit of a gimmick but it still tasted quite good. However, I was slightly disappointed because I expected a little bit more from Singapore's Oldest Chinese restaurant.

D

5 comments:

Lord Dianabol said...

Dogma versus karma - will tradition ever stand the test of time?

Food looks good anyway. Hell, everything on this blog looks good.

Anonymous said...

i heard of yong chun yuan. the place quite famous huh? the food pics look really yummy! i'm drooling already :)

by the way just wondering, hv u been to any korean restaurants and posted the review here?

Anonymous said...

oh i just saw it LOL. u went to ju shin jung. haha..my bad! hv u tried auntie kim's? heard its quite good.

D said...

The pictures may look pretty but the food at Spring Court was really only so so though.

Yes, Auntie Kim's on Upper Thomson is one of the better Korean places in Singapore too. They even have a sister shop that does Korean cakes. Prices there are quite similar to Ju Shin Jeng. I know Korean food may seem pricy in Singapore but it's actually slightly cheaper than in Seoul (sans the alcohol). I was surprised to find out that Seoul is more expensive a city to live in than New York. Hope that helps.
Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Dun waste time and money there at Spring Court lah. Its one of the oldest retaurant but certainly not one of the best(at most average). If you consider their price....then its way down at the bottom. Tried once and vowed never to return kind of feeling. Well from one of my friend words " felt cheated".