| Decent Dining with a Weird Ambience
Since previous reviewers have commented a lot on the options, I'll just add a few cents worth.
1. Ambience: the ambience is absolutely weird. My first time to Ah Hoi's Kitchen, it is a pool-side cafe turned Chinese restaurant. There are no white tablecloths, wooden chairs or chinese -anything anywhere! Instead, expect a high ceiling, metal pool-side chairs with a cushion and a glass cafe-like table. In the centre of this astoundingly disorientating set-up are a few tanks for their "live seafood". So the whole ambience is a little bewildering. We really almost thought we had ended up at the wrong place.
2. Price: Now, Ah Hoi's Kitchen has a Flash-Your-Age on your birthday promotion and so my dad's 60th birthday was a good time to pounce on the offer: 60% off! And that is 60% off everything. None of that whole Shangri-La business where there are set-menus and a million restrictions. Here its just a straight up 60% off everything. (including the wine)
3. If you stick to the normal dishes, everything is averagely priced at between $8 to $18, which is reasonable by hotel standards. However, given the liberty of the 60%, we went all out for lobsters, prawns and pork ribs. The bill for 6 of us, including wine and desserts was $670. After the discount, we paid just about $331. Now that's a deal.
4. Food:
a. Fish: Fresh, Usual Variety
b. Lobsters: Steamed with Garlic. The best way to have fresh big lobsters
c. Shark's Fin Soup - Beware: Tiny pieces of Shark's fin and the abalone (stated in the menu) is absent. Otherwise, its a usual starchy chinese soup. At the usual price of $18 per bowl, it's not exactly the top-grade i was expecting but still a little disappointing.
d. Champagne Pork Ribs: soft and tender. Worth the $30 bucks we spent on them.
e. The winner of the night: Lobster BeeHoon. At $35 per bowl, you might want to think twice. But the flavour is excellent and the star of my dinner.
Other stuff we ordered: Spinach with garlic (usual, good value), Honey Chicken (not-bad, good value), Grilled Prawns (so-so)
Desserts:
Desserts are actually very expensive at $10 per offering. Sharing is recommended because the portions are pretty huge! All looked quite nice to me.
Service:
I didn't really realize Ah Hoi was a member of the Singapore Service Star. Something must be wrong somewhere because their service is mediocre at best. No stars at all. We celebrated my dad's birthday with well, a birthday cake! But the wind of absolutely too strong to light the candles and the staff did nothing to aid with that at all.
Here's a funny story: We then had to cup the candles with plates and rush through singing the birthday song to get to the ALL-IMPORTANT blowing out the candles. So yes, while you get a huge discount on your birthday, it is also the worst place to blow out your candles, or attempt the light them.
I'm going to put the full original price we would have paid, but we got a 60% disc on it.
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