Lobster porridge
The live lobster in the porridge here is both a blessing and a bane.
Orchid Live Seafood has pretensions far exceeding its humble neighbourhood location in Seletar. It offers live seafood, bamboo clams, abalone as well as expensive birds’ nest on its menu, certainly not food for a weekend family outing!
Anyway, the family went for dinner one Sunday evening and since lobster porridge was a speciality, I ordered it.
It was absolutely delicious. Each one got at least one perfectly cooked medium-sized lobster in its shell, sliced into half. You dig out the flesh and place it into the hot Teochew style porridge, which is better described as rice in soup.
And what a porridge! Obviously the lobsters had been cooked in the broth, lending their sweetness to the pot, a definite blessing.
The bane was that the restaurant gave us too many lobsters. There were two platters full, two kilograms in all, allowing each of us at least one and half lobsters each. The cost? A whopping $180 just for that dish alone.
With the bamboo clams and the cold crabs, the total bill came to $436.40 for a family dinner, though they did later remove the corkage charge of $10 and the $12 cost of the dessert, candied yam or orh nee (delicious, by the way).
Since there were 11 of us, some would say the cost of $40/head was fairly reasonable for such a meal, but I felt that the restaurant had given us too much lobster. I would have been happy with just one lobster half in my porridge and should have specified this to the waiter taking our orders.
That complaint aside, it was a good meal, barring a few misses.
The cold crabs, though small, were sweet and chockfull with roe ($60). The bamboo clams came steamed with garlic in its shell, a well-loved treatment for the crunchy shellfish, and were of a size that befitted its $8 price tag a clam.
Bamboo clams
While their famed Steven chicken ($24), named after its chef, was just fried chicken, it alone was worth the visit. The chicken parts were actually drummettes, meat pulled back from a tiny drumstick to expose the bone and deep-fried to a satisfying crunch, yet with flesh that was moist and juicy.
What was disappointing was the patin fish ($35). A whole freshwater fish steamed in seasoned soya sauce, it should have been a highlight with its rich omega three fats, but it was overcooked and possibly, not so fresh. I needed to baste its flesh lavishly with the sauce for it to taste of anything.
Patin fish
Similarly, while the idea behind the top shell tofu salad ($12) was good, there was far too little shellfish to merit having its name in the title! It was tossed in a Thai type dressing with lots of onions in the mix.
Still the family loved the meal and were impressed with the expensive inclusions of crab, clams and lobster.
Myself, I felt we should have kept to the set menus, one of which offered nine courses that included possibly more modest servings of the lobster porridge, the chicken and the patin fish at a more reasonable cost of $368 per table of eight to 10 people.
Ratings - Food: 4/5; Ambience: 3/5; Service: 3/5; Value for money: 3/5
16 Jln Kelulut
Tel: 6484 2495
