The "delicious" review of Wong Ah Yoke in a copy of The Sunday Times a few weeks ago made my family want to visit this store.

It's simply decorated - with dark shades on all the windows, making the restaurant dark and cool, despite it being a hot day outside. In fact, UE Square itself seems very under-populated and just cool and empty.

Reservations are a must. Weekends see the place practically fully occupied.

The food is quite good. Sashimi was fresh, my favourite being the salmon.
The California handroll was also pretty yummy. Their grilled food on sticks is supposedly the attraction, which was not bad. The chicken wings and grilled pork belly was really delicious, very fragrant, with the fat sizzling hot as they served it to the table.

Avoid the tempura though. It was just okay, the flour a little too heavy for my liking.

The good thing was that everything was in small portions. The small bits mean that you can taste more items, without feeling too gorged.

Now, the problem.
There's an operational problem here.
I read the other reviews on HGW, and everyone seemed to complain about the speed.
I tried to figure out what was going on by observation, and I think this is it: there is no one single co-ordinator who can keep the kitchen running.

Waiters taking orders on separate slips of paper simply plop them on the counters, and the overwhelmed chef (seeing how Singaporeans eat, he was rather overwhelmed) just grabs the nearest one. Sometimes the slips get stacked up, and it's very hard to keep track.

Because everything is on separate slips of paper, to check an order, someone has to riffle through the entire stack. No one has the entire list of what has been ordered.

During peak hours, every chef is too busy trying to push out the food that he can't check. It was only when things had calmed down somewhat that I saw the sashimi chef take over and start giving some orders to make some sense of the pile of orders in front of the sushi chef.

The service staff are useless: some aren't very good at English and don't understand you; some look so overwhelmed and get the orders wrong, some just don't have initiative and are "floating" around the restaurant looking lost.

We understood that as a third order, there may be less priority than first orders, but we waited some 45 minutes before anything came by! And the staff told us that the food had been served to us already, when it actually hadn't. When we asked for the bill, it didn't come. But some of the food (which they claimed had been served), came instead!
Smiles and acquiescence alone do not make service, sigh.

The food is yummy, so if maybe you enter the moment the restaurant opens at 11.30am, you'll get something to eat. But come late, and all the operations problems will prevent you from getting served.

Botan is one of those numerous food stalls in that Far East Square / China Square vicinity that many people will just pass by, writing it off as yet another commercialised place.

Surprisingly, the food here is rather good, and the service even better.

Rather reminiscent of an SQ flight, the waitress starts off by bringing hot steamed towels to the table, for dusty travellers to clean their hands.

The menus are a little brow-beaten - some are even falling apart - but that probably is testament to the numbers that come by.

I've been here twice with friends and family, and managed to taste the following:

- Udon Sukiyaki ($20): served with beef slices, Chinese cabbage, mushrooms, and large chunks of tofu. You can also have it changed to chicken or pork if you like (I had mine changed to pork) but the waitress may warn you that it doesn't taste as good with pork. Dish arrives in a LARGE sukiyaki pot which is hot, don't touch! Large enough for two or three mains (we even split ours by six, and each had a small bowl). Really thick, fragrant broth, which is a tad heavy on soy, unless you like it that way. Udon has absorbed bits of the broth, so it isn't just tasteless thick noodles.

- Ladies' Dinner set meal($25? $28? something like that): NOT for anyone on a diet. There's a choice of udon or soba in miso soup, california maki, potato salad, a dish of sashimi, one chawamushi, and fruit and dessert (I think that's it.) Particularly enjoyed the maki - combination of sweet egg, lettuce strips and avocado went well with the crab stick. They serve it with a dab of mayonnaise too. Dessert was ... undescribable. It was sort of a Japanese mochi, when cut open had some sort of frozen pound cake, powdery cream and konnyaku jelly. A little weird for my tastes. And it was as hard as a frozen rock!

- Sashimi bowl ($18-ish): Basically rice, with a huge layer of fresh fish and topped with roe. There was so much roe you couldn't see any of the rice! Shiok. Two different sauces, one of which seemed like it was made from the same root as wasabi.

- Chicken Teriyaki dinner set (S$18): A really safe option. Rice, chicken, miso soup, chawamushi, a side of fish sashimi and fruit. Teriyaki sauce is salty-sweet.

And then, hot towels to complete the meal.
Waitresses are also pretty good about coming by to refill the hot ocha to clean your palate.

In all, quality of food is pretty good, and coupled with efficient service, no wonder I've been there twice this week!