Asia Grand Restaurant @ Asia Hotel

Asia Grand Restaurant is at Asia Hotel (37 Scotts Road, Tel: 68870010) and it's pretty much an old-style Chinese Restaurant, which one seldom finds anymore. As it's situated in a pretty old and dingy hotel, I think one might not even venture this way very often.

The food here, however, is exceptional, and well worth the pilgrimage.

The set for 10 was I think SGD888+++, and the dishes served were all traditional Chinese favourites like suckling pig and sharks' fin soup, but all done so well, they were worth all the calories.

The first dish of Lo Hei, was unexceptional to me, but that could be because it was only my 7th Lo Hei in as many days.

The sharks' fin soup was a bright orangey hue, because it was cooked with real crab roe. It was loaded with many strands of thick sharks' fin and it was lipsmackingly good. (Now, all you environmentalists out there, don't lynch me okay, I don't go out of my way to order it, but I eat it if it has been ordered so that the poor shark would not have died in vain... alright I know it's a self-serving argument... but I also eat chicken and other meats okay, and foie gras too... so it's not fair to the rest of them if I single out only the shark and not eat its fin).

I was really happy at this stage but then... whoa! The suckling pig was FANTASTIC! It was not like the suckling pig with a layer of fat at the bottom, not at all. It was just a thin crisp of pork crackling, no hint of greasy fat at all. Wow. It's like eating a pork flavoured potato crisp!

This is the abalone with mushroom and spinach. I think the abalone was the smaller slice you see above, and the large slice is a type of mushroom (or maybe it was the other way round). It was really very delicious.

The lobster with garlic and spring onion was great too, very fresh and succulent.

The crispy sang mein (fried crispy noodles with hot gravy over it) with seafood was very generous. It contained prawn, scallop, squid and mushroom.

I didn't take photos of the dessert but it was a glutinous rice ball with sesame filling in almond paste (I love almond paste, it's so light and sweet and it's apparently very good for the skin too!). There was also another plate of pastries - nian gao (brown glutinous rice squares) lightly pan fried (or maybe steamed) and dusted with peanut powder.

I really loved the food here, and i think the prices are reasonable for the quality of the food served. Actually, I think I enjoyed the company a lot more, I lunched with a group of really fun girls, all with a great sense of humour... You know, maybe that was why the food just tasted so wonderful.

This was another one of those meals where I was literally too full to walk out... (then how did I leave, you ask? I rolled out of course!)