Call it a seafood surprise

So the original plan was to eat at Hua Yu Wee, a charming Chinese seafood restaurant located in an old bungalow (the kind that used to qualify as a seaside bungalow till land reclamation took the sea away from it). Then I couldn't get through on the phone to reserve a table and by the time I did at 4:45 pm today, they told me they were fully booked for tonight.

So I called Ponggol Seafood and booked a table there, thinking that they were still located at East Coast Parkway. Except that they were not, which I only found out when I directed the family to what I thought was the restaurant and found the space occupied by --- well, it all looked different.

So after I apologised for screwing up big-time, we ended up at the place we didn't want to eat at: the East Coast Seafood Centre. I hadn't really wanted to eat there because it's always obstreperously crowded on weekends and I didn't want to be shouting over the table all night. Plus I'm always a little doubtful of the quality of food at places that have become bona fide tourist destinations.

As it turned out, the rain seems to have thinned the crowd somewhat (the weather's been very monsoon redux lately), and we got a table at Chin Wah Heng Restaurant haste posthaste.


Besides the availability of bamboo clams, there are plenty of other reasons to eat at Chin Wah Heng:

• We all remarked that the chilli crab sauce and deep-fried baby squid dish were noticeably less sweet than they typically are at other restaurants --- which suggests that the kitchen doesn't season everything liberally with sugar to make it taste good.
• Our plates, heaped with prawn and crab shells and other discards, were cleared often enough to put some hotel wedding banquets to shame.
• The vegetables were not the first dish to arrive.
• The staff were all indefatigably polite, despite my feeble command of Chinese.
• Although one staff member dripped a spot of chilli crab sauce onto my arm, his apology was so overwrought as he speedily fetched wet towelettes for me, you'd've thought he'd thrown up all over me or something.
• They gave us fresh hot water for our teapot without us asking for it, even though we were obviously already done with our meal by then.
  
• I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the spillage incident, but we got a plate of complimentary fruit at the end of our meal.
  

Chin Wah Heng, people. They get the job done.

-----|||||-----
Technorati Tags: Singapore, East Coast Seafood Centre, seafood