Tsuru Tsuru Tei is located at Liang Court's basement, near Meidi-ya. As I needed a quick bite before grocery shopping I randomly chose to dine there. I ordered the pork katsu curry udon.

The good: The noodles had bite, the pork was nicely fried and did not immediately turn soggy when immersed in the thick sauce. The serving was substantial and I couldn't finish it, which is good value seeing as it only cost $10.

The bad: The curry sauce tasted as though it had come out of a packet and was less sweet than I had expected japanese curry to be, which can be a good thing if, like me you prefer savory curry.

However I will not be returning for the curry udon as I became extremely thirsty a few hours after the meal, which suggests the gravy contains tons of msg.

We decided to drop in for lunch due to the UOB/Citibank 1 for 1 promo.
We had the $68 set lunch consisting of meat combination platter, fish maw soup, sauteed scallops with celery, tofu with mushrooms, seafood fried rice and vanilla ice cream with pumpkin puree.

Meat combination platter: Soya sauce chicken breast was a little dry, char siew was lean but a tad too sweet for my taste. Mediocre considering this is a Cantonese restaurant

Fish maw soup: I liked this, it was more a 'geng' made from rich duck stock complimented with slivers of bamboo and dried fish maw. The gamey duck stock was rather distinctive which can be offputting if you're not a fan of duck.

Sauteed scallops with celery: The portion of scallops were meagre and were not fresh to boot, overly salted perhaps in an attempt to mask their fishiness. I've had better quality scallops at a cze char. Celery were crunchy though a tad oily.


Tofu with mushrooms: Mediocre dish. We didn't finish it.

Seafood fried rice: Unremarkable. Lack of 'liao' and wok hei, two of the most important aspects I prize in fried rice.

Vanilla ice cream with pumpkin puree: The dollop of vanilla ice cream was served in a glass of pumpkin puree. My palate quickly tired of the puree. The ice cream was nothing exciting.

The bill came up to roughly $100 for 2 pax, which was definitely a rip off given how unsatisfied we were after this meal. For $50 per pax we could have a much better meal in other restaurants at Central.

My family of 3 dined at Chang a few weeks back on a Sunday night. The place was nearly full and since we had not made reservations we had to settle for traditional korean style low table with no chairs which was uncomfortable for my parents. We were there for the food so we decided to compromise with the uncomfortable seating.

We ordered a mixed beef bbq platter and ginseng chicken. The service was harried and patchy. Initially the waitress helped us grill the meat but we felt uncomfortable with her grilling the meat while standing as we were seated on the floor. We politely requested to grill the meat ourselves. The quality of the beef was fine and we found it odd that the platter contained a portion of bone, gristle with very little meat on the bones. There were two dips for the meat, a sesame oil and salt dip and a beanpaste dip.

The ginseng chicken was extremely disappointing. Ginseng chicken is one of the mainstays of korean cuisine. Even the ones we had at crystal jade tasted better than Chang's. There was a lot of flavorless soup which tasted as though the broth had been heavily diluted. The chicken flesh was tasteless, the sweetness had been boiled out of the flesh. We could not finish this dish because it was abysmal.

For korean bbq I would prefer Jang Shou. For ginseng chicken and bibimbap nothing beats the authenic versions we had in korea or my mum's home cooked ginseng chicken.