chilly crab

Roland Restaurant was the venue for our get-together dinner on 24apr2013.

Roland had a long history (from 1956 when Lim Choon Ngee & his wife started a seafood restaurant by the Kallang River, later relocated to Bedok Beach – now the reclaimed ECP – and the current location at Block 89, Marine Parade Central managed by their son Roland after they migrated to Christchurch in 1985) and reputation and the food is certain to be good. 🙂 I have always wanted to try but never quite got round to it. I parked my car at Parkway Parade, not by design but turned out to be not a bad option as parking for the evening was only $1.50! The more seasoned among my peers correctly parked at the multi-storey car park where the restaurant itself was located on level 6.

appetizer platter

We had 13 pax for the evening.  Dinner started with the appetizer platter (prawn mayo, small octopus, a seasoned pork dish, haechor & a roll item) which was quite good as expected.

crab meat sharks fin soup

That was followed by a crab meat sharks fin soup – good too if nothing exceptional. Sambal kang kong was next. Roland was a good standard restaurant so all the dishes thus far were good.

crispy roast chicken

Next was the roast chicken. This was nicely done! The skin was crispy & the meat moist, sweet & tender, very nice taken with a dip of 5-spice salt provided. 🙂

deep-fried tiny squid

CH & I thought the deep-fried squid (their signature dish) was par excellence – crispy, crunchy, tasty! 🙂 must say I had not taken it for a really really long time liao (don’t go Long Beach, Jumbo type seafood restaurants often & these days they also do fine dining dishes & deep-fried squid does not feature much).

The chilli crab (top photo) was another of Roland’s signature dish. This was very good too, though these days many restaurants like Long Beach, Jumbo etc do this very well too. 🙂 & of course the deep-fried mantou buns to soak up the chilli crab sauce. yummy! 🙂

The fried rice was also of good standard – “pang” got “wokhae” ie fragrant (my favourite though was the Imperial Treasure dried scallop crab-meat egg-white fried rice, and recently I had a very good one at Xin Cuisine). the deep-fried tiny silver fish I supposed gave it added textured complexity though it didn’t really work for me – too crunchy – I preferred my fried rice simple & fragrant. 🙂

the orh nee yam puree dessert was like totally bland? I guess no lard no taste la 🙂 such a wonderful, fun evening of food, fun & feel good! 🙂

c.h.e.f andy