Wait Long Long

When HM and I think seafood, we normally think Hua Yu Wee. And if we feel like spending silly money, Sin Huat would be our restaurant of choice, with Melben a close runner-up. So why did we decide on Long Beach, and in particular, the "mothership" at Singapore Tennis Centre? Of all things, we realised belatedly that DBS Visa offers a discount at Long Beach. (For some reason, few of the restaurants we frequent feature on the DBS Visa promotion list...) Anyway, since we had not been to any of the Long Beach restaurants for, oh, at least ten years, we thought why not. Then, HM wanted to be close to the sea but still have the option of staying dry should it rain, weather not being too clement these days, so the Singapore Tennis Centre it was.

But first we had to survive the journey there. KKN had quite unrealistically budgeted just 15 minutes for us to get to the East Coast, from Claymore Hill, on a Saturday night no less. Of course we had to fight the hordes along the East Coast Parkway service road as well. Needless to say, we kept poor ES waiting, holding down our reservation. There was many a threat to make KKN pay for the crab.

Eventually, we got there and ordered:

you tiao (dough fritters) with cuttlefish paste

This seemed a promising start - the you tiao was crispy and light.

mussels in sambal sauce

Now, this was tasty but not spectacular. It went well with the man tou (fried buns) though.

butter crayfish

This was a disaster as far as we were concerned. Usually, the crayfish is lightly dusted with some flour, to ensure that it stays dry before deep frying. This particular version was rather heavily battered, the result of which was it soaked up way too much oil and was way too soggy. Eeewww....

Everything else was quite run of the mill, nothing special really.

sauteed mushrooms with spinach

steamed Sri Lankan crab

steamed ni lo hong (nile tilapia) garnished with soy bean crumbs

To be fair to Long Beach, we hadn't ordered any of their zhao pai (signature) dishes. (Yes, yes, it is very odd for us to go to a seafood restaurant that specialises in chilli crab and black pepper crab when one of us, KKN, cannot eat chilli and another, HM, is a purist who must eat her crabs "uncontaminated".) Still, the food was pretty mediocre, not exactly bad but certainly not good enough. By HM's standards, it was a entry level seafood experience for ang mo tourists. We also found the cavernous hall with its beer garden feel rather depressing. Guess we won't be rushing back there anytime soon.

talk about hard sell, eh what?