daughter wanted to buy dinner for family + close family friends at ban leong wah hoe to celebrate an occasion. we went there for a 7pax dinner on 18.10.2015. ^^

i looked up hungrygowhere & openrice. the latest 7 reviews in hungrygowhere 2015 & 2014 were all bad. mostly about the bad service but also about lousy food & non transparency. only a single good review going back to mar2014 on hungrygowhere. for openrice it’s going back to 2013.

i noticed also the absence of pricing in the menu. i think that is quite an unacceptable practice today in zi char, restaurant or hawker centre, haha! so that’s why so many comments about non transparency.

we found the service ok actually, no nasty lady boss. service was ok & kind of expected for a zi char place.

but the place was quite crowded, so people were coming. youngest daughter managed to find street parking on the next street from casuarina road.

food though was quite poor. quite below the standards of the usual zi char places like –

• two chefs
• keng eng kee
• kok sen
• whampoa keng fish head steamboat

butter prawns was poor. quite dry. maybe should have ordered cereal prawns instead. the breadcrumbs were the tasty bits so that said much about the prawns.

chilli crab?

ok i guess. the sauce was quite tasty like any chilli crab, not spicy at all (i prefer spicy!)

crabs were good though, firm & meaty! ^^

this crab made me appreciate my friend alan’s homecooked crabs even more. his chilli crab sauce had more intense & lingering crustaceans flavours whereas this sauce was mostly sauce just some crab taste.

alan’s crabs themselves though were not as good, not so “solid”. it could be that the sauce flavours were more intense because he used a lot of crabs (6 crabs!).

anyway ban leong wah hoe’s chilli crab sauce was still nice, and great with the toasted “mantou” buns.

prawn past chicken or har jeon gai was tasty, nice flavours.

but the breading was not great, hard & crusty. actually our friend (my daughter’s guests for the evening) does a much better fried chicken, and so does my helper.

dou miao was mediocre, i think quite poor. i can do a better fried dish with more wok hae anytime.

the tofu dish was almost not edible, hopeless dish! chunky roasted pork (& a quite bad roast pork to boot!). not sure how to comment on this.

basically quite poor for zi char.

mee sua with quails eggs was supposed to be a singature dish??

it was ok, edible, but i won’t even say competent.

2 crabs were S$120. not cheap but i supposed ok. dinner for 7pax was S$222 or thereabout, so like S$32pax..

a very far cry from my recent zi char dinner at whampoa keng fish head steamboat, which also cost S$33pax

i guess sometimes it depends on whether we order the correct dishes. still, based on this quite poor experience, this is a place where i have no interest to try again.

c.h.e.f andy