had early 7pax birthday dinner for brother and sister @ fragrant garden teochew restaurant on 13.6.2019. ^^

food was good as always, especially the teochew streamed halibut, claypot pomfret soup, and very flavourful orh nee..

duck was below par, orh lua quite “pang” not the best. teochew fried kuay teow mediocre not enuf wokhae, garlic kailan non-descript, pig trotters jelly so so

pig trotter jelly was competent, i guess what people said “mai hiam buay pai” lol!

meat was soft, jelly was good enough not very flavourful…

the claypot pomfret soup the best, unfailingly.

very tasty soup, sweet chinese cabbage, and pomfret very fresh, firm and sweet. i like this better than steamed pomfret, and better than the very tasty teochew steamed halibut!

not cheap obviously S$100/kg and 0.98kg.

teochew steamed halibut the next best dish, super delicious!

teoche steam has sour plum, salted vegetable, delivering excellent tangy sweet taste.

and halibut was sweet, delicate, firm white fish. the dish was just superb!

braised duck was much, much below par! wet and not tasty not “pang”.

wife said far below the braised duck i made. in fact now we decided not to order braised duck in restaurants, doesn’t make sense.

i find it strange that roast duck are uniformly better in restaurants c/w hawkers/coffeshop, whereas braised duck are almost equally uniformly better at hawker than at restaurants

example –

• hup seng braised duck at sin min road
• chinatown braised duck at commonwealth crescent

far superior to this!

oyster omelette was good enough competent, did not stand out.

beng thin’s crispy version beats this hands down.

likewise many hawker stalls oyster omelette better!

fried kailan quite nice, some wok hae but kind of pedestrian for me.

i have taken very good fried kailan elsewhere.

teochew fried kuay teow below expectation, can’t say below par but i expected it to be much more fragrant with good wok hae. not quite this evening.

orh nee here very good, one of the best for me.

not too sweet, and have everything, the right texture, flavours, ingredients.

brother and sis and sil, bil had a great time.

youngest daughter was able to join us so we had 7pax.

a truly enjoyable family dinner.

c.h.e.f andy

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