Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant (Chinatown)

For pictures and the full review, click here! Otherwise, read on...

Type of Institution: Vegan

I love the deco at Eight Treasures - very traditional Chinese furnishings. The service is also attentive but not obsequious (which is an important factor for me). I've been to Eight Treasures twice, but I'm just going to review the second time that I've been here. The menu is really quite long - you can come here at least 5 times and not have to try the same thing again. All in all, all the food I tried was nice - nothing was bad, nothing was exceptional, but they were all pretty good. Take note that since the restaurant is Buddhist, it doesn't use any garlic or onion, both of which I am partial to.

Mock Lemon Chicken

Best dish we tried tonight. As my companion said, the dish was excellent on its own merits, regardless of whether it achieved the texture of chicken or not. That being said, the texture - achieved through the use of soy protein, though the waitress did not seem keen to elaborate - did approximate that of tender chicken, and it was infused with a delicate lemon flavour, and drizzled with a mayo-like sauce.

Dou Miao with Golden Mushrooms

Cooked perfectly and the vegetables and mushrooms were nested in a flavourful broth. I love dou miao - definitely my favourite Chinese vegetable!

Fried Olive Rice

Quite satisfactory - the olives imparted a nice flavour and the rice was fried with a myriad of ingredients such as peas and grilled corn and what appeared to be a mock meat that gave the rice a denser quality.

Black Pepper Monkey Head Mushrooms

I am a huge fan of monkey head mushrooms - its dense, meaty texture is so unlike any other mushrooms that I have tried. However, they are difficult to be cooked to perfection, and I found Eight Treasures' monkey head mushrooms to be satisfactory but lacking in some respects. (For sure, I was comparing it to Naive's monkey head mushrooms, which by the way are absolutely perfect.) More importantly, the black pepper sauce was boring. It wasn't even in the least spicy (and I'm not one of those crazy Singaporeans who can eat a hell lot of chilli)...

Sambal Kang Kong

Again, the dish was not spicy enough. Surely when I order sambal kang kong I expect my tongue to burn a little bit.

Conclusion: Will not make it a point to travel here just for the food, but will definitely visit again if I am in the area - all the food was nice but I wasn't blown away.

For pictures, click here!

When I last dined at Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant, something caught my eye – Buddha Jump Over the Wall, which is a Chinese Cuisine delicacy dish!  So, on our next visit, we ordered this specialty dish - Vegetarian Version Buddha Jump Over the Wall. The dish looks presentable and the pricing for this dish is reasonable ($15/$25/$25).  We ordered the $15 Buddha Jump Over the Wall which is more than enough for 2 pax. 

It consists of broccoli, mock abalone, mock shark’s fin, wolfberries, mushroom, mock sea cucumber, angelica root (I think). What I loooove most was the mock sea cucumber, the chewy texture was just right and it tastes so delectable after soaking up the rich broth.  It paired beautifully with their special brown rice - which consist of barely too and very delicious.



As I am not a big fan of mock meat, I picked the 8 Treasures Herbal Soup that uses many different types of herbs and mushrooms This is a big pot for a small eater and both of us just could not finish it. The waitress was so proactive that she suggested packing it up for us to take back home.

Black Pepper Mock Chicken Chop @ S$7+

 

 

I would say that this restuarant serves better food than those expensive chain vege restuarant. Both food & prices are all right! :) Well done.

I discovered a new vegetarian restaurant at chinatown.

I read some bloggers who are vegetarian writing abt this restaurant thus i went down to try their food.

Located just beside the buddha relic temple, their location is quite ideal.

The restuarant itself comprises of 3 storeys high. The menu is classified into different categories such as chef's speciality, asian and western food.

The popular items are also high-lighted. I asked for recommendations and they recommended me the stri-fried monkey head mushrooms with asparagus and brocolli. I also ordered a bowl of brown rice to go along with it.

The dish arrived shortly. The monkeyhead mushrooms was served with bright green brocolli and asparagus. In the first bite, it taste salty. After a few bite, i can assure that the dish was too salty. The brocolli and asparagus were well-blanched but the main star, monkey head mushrooms were a let-down.

The rice( brown rice, white rice and barley0 were a little hard. Perhaps it was left it on the table for too long. The rice was nothing special and in fact taste more than white rice.

I feedback the saltiness of the monkey-head mushrooms to the captain. I hope they will take some action.

The svc here needs a little improvement. Although they are quite efficent and friendly, but it's still inappropriate to chat loudly among themselves when the customer is having lunch. On top of that, i even spotted a staff picking her mouth without covering her mouth.