Kyomomoyama 京桃山

My family and I usually dine here every month or so, and when we arrived at the front door, there was something off about the restaurant.  It seems the management and name had recently changed (though the decor is identical) so all the more we were curious to sample the food.

The lunch menu has a 6-8 $6.00 set meals and also quite a range of larger set meals from $8-14.  2 of us ordered the sashimi set ($12) which comes with 9 fish slices, pickles, chawan mushi, fruit, soup and free flow of rice.  The 3rd person in the party got a $6 sushi set - which consisted of 7 fish/prawn sushi pieces and 1 egg sushi - and topped up $2.30 for a soup and chawan moshi. Compared to the supermarket sushi, I thought this was excellent value.

The food did not disappoint.  Everything was pretty satisfactory and we ate everything on our plates with the exception of the miso soup.  Unlike the typical soup, this was completely clear without much of a miso flavor... not sure if that was the intention or if the process got messed up along the way. That said, the overall quality is an improvement from my past visits to the establishment that previously occupied that space. It is certainly a mark above Sakae and the like.

Tables are large and the restaurant was quiet and not particularly busy for lunch.  As always the view overlooking Clarke Quay is very open.  It's a nice place to bring a friend for lunch and very easy on the pocket too.  We wondered if it is making money... but so long as its around, I'll be keeping up the monthly lunch visits (or make that bi-monthly perhaps...)

I've been to Kyomomoyama a couple of times and the last visit was impressive enough for me to sign up an account here to write a review about it.
It's no secret that Kyomomoyama's one of the most economical restaurants you can find at Clarke Quay, with their 6.00++ set lunches and 10.00++ dinners. Their food generally ranges from above average to good, though it's nothing to write home about.

However, the real stars here are the ambience and the service. Located at Central, Kyomomoyama's zen theme restaurant somehow manages to blend together the great riverside view, the simple elegance of their zen decor, and the friendly overtures of its staff into one very inviting and hospitable atmosphere for its customers.

When I went there with a friend for dinner yesterday, the restaurant just introduced its all-you-can-eat sushi dinner for $12.80++. It was a quiet night with maybe half the tables filled, so we were lucky enough to get a table near the windows overlooking the Singapore river. All the diners were quietly conversing with one another, and you could feel neither of the din of the crowd outside along Clarke Quay, nor the hustle and bustle of people chatting raucously and children running around as commonly seen in family restaurants.

The chef set about preparing the sushi platter for us using fresh ingredients kept on ice on a table at the entrance to the restaurant. When the food came, it was served on a long sushi platter and the individual sushi pieces looked rather visually appealing. The rice for the sushi rolls is rather ho-hum, but there's no questioning the freshness of the ingredients, the effort put in by the chef, or the friendly service attitude of the staff. Each of the waitresses we spoke with looked genuinely pleased to serve us, and they get things done reasonably fast.

When we were leaving the restaurant, the waitresses and the chef were there at the entrance waving and saying farewell to all their customers. 

It was great service at a great price-point. I'll certainly recommend this restaurant to anyone who prizes privacy and overall dining experience over just the taste of the food.

Visited this place this evening for dinner after meeting a friend nearby. It was not my first visit here as I did come for the lunch set meal about 1 year ago.

The restaurant is having a dinner set meal promotion ($10 per set) where you can pick from a list of about 12-15 set meals that included katsu or fish with rice or soba etc. So my friend and I ordered a Tori Teriyaki Chicken set ($10) and a Tori Katsu Gozen (Chicken cutlet that comes with Steamed Egg, 3 slices of Sashimi, Mixed Vegetables Salad and Tuna and also an ice-cream)($15.80).

Generally, the food was fine and quite ok, considering the price we are paying for. Both the teriyaki and gozen chicken were quite nicely done. The vegetables for the salad were quite bitter and the steamed egg was rather "watery". Other than that, everything was quite ok.

We ordered the green tea set ($1.20 per head) and the serving was free-flow. One comment was that the green tea served here was good, strong flavoured and fragrance, unlike any tea green we have consumed in other places.

Service was good. Servers were polite and attentive in clearing used plates and utensils and our tea were regularly refilled automatically without us requesting for it. Maybe it was due to the low patronage (only about 5-6 tables were occupied) and servers were extremely attentive.

Finally, ambience! Great!!! We were seated at the window seat where we could have a good view on Singapore River/Clarke Quay and it was extremely nice and amazing at night with the lights on and bumper boats with lights sailing through. The restaurant itself was also brightly and nicely decorated with orange lightings (vintage) and fish glass tanks with CNY decorations. The restaurant also played nice and soothing songs and music but again Western/Chinese themes instead of Japanese theme (this was what I commented before which is not consistent with its positioning as a Japanese restaurant!)

Generally, we were quite satisfied overall dining here and for those who are looking for "cheap and acceptable" Japanese food, you may like to consider this place! (but make sure you come at night to enjoy the nice night view)

This place is a hidden find. In fact, most of the restaurants here are great for first dates as it is romantic, quiet and scenic since it is situated next to the Clark Quay River. This restaurant was having a in house promotion for dinner. Selected dinner dishes cost S$10 without GST. This restaurant has an extensive drinks menu. I was spoiled for choices, however the food choices were pretty limited for the in-house promotion. Unless you do not have a budget for food, other dishes are rather pricey. I ordered a Enitama bento with Apple & Aloe Vera for dinner. The food taste average, nothing too fantastic. The drink was good and healthy. 

The customer service was responsive, I didn't have to wait long for my order.

As others had accurately mentioned, there was no queue at this restaurant as compared to others on a Wednesday night. However, we still had to wait for about 10 minutes for the tables to be cleared. And, we got the window seats, how lucky! Except at night, it was pretty much dark and nothing to be seen anyway.

We ordered the set dinners, and it comes with free dessert (one scoop of ice-cream). We had the mixed raw fish set ($23++) and the saba fish set ($15.80++). The set dinner has miso soup, chawan mushi, rice, pickles and the main item, which in our case was the sashimi and the saba fish. Saba fish set also comes with 3 slices of salmon sashimi.

Sashimi set has the thinnest slices of raw fish, served on perilla leave and radish shreds. I found the wasabi here quite potent! The saba fish was average tasting and not oily.

Once you're seated inside, they made sure the tea refills are done every now and then (quite often too!), and they will check every 10 mins or so once you've put down your chopsticks to clear your dishes. Quite efficient in this case.

And Wednesday is Ladies night currently, so for all non-promo items, there is a 20% discount.

Everywhere else had a queue and Kyomomoyama offered the quickest route to having our stomachs filled plus they had a selection of $10++ dinners which sounded like a good offer.

The entire place had a pretty good ambiance and would be comfortable for a small gathering. Tables were wide enough to prevent those times when dishes and everything else gotta be placed edge to edge. There are also window seats, which I'm sure will offer a great view to dine by but there were only 4 tables available.

Service wise, it was almost terrible. Menus were forgotten and we had to request from the wait staff, whom were difficult to get hold off. While making our order, the lady literally had no idea what was I talking about and I had to point my finger at the specific dish in order for her to jot it down. Wait staff should have sufficient knowledge of their own menu, shouldn't they?

On to the food:

Tamago maki ($4.50)
The rice itself was nicely flavoured but the tamago was too plain and soft that I felt was having plain sushi rolls. Even Sakae does better than that. Another let down was how i was served the "end" of the roll. Though they appear to be nicely placed, turn it over and it was the squishy end. Totally unprofessional.

Agedashi tofu($7.80)
Bad. It was covered in too much flour and neither the tentsuyu broth nor the tofu was hot. I tasted hints of ginger in it as well. Why in the world would ginger be inside such a dish? The Japanese stall at le Meridian's food court does it better at half the price.

Ebitama & Oyako don ($10.00 each)
Food court level kind of Japanese fare and I have my doubts about the rice. It just doesn't feel and seem like the usual Japanese rice grains, which are short and sticky. Those that were served feels pretty much like regular rice, which made eating it the normal way(without a spoon) tough.

The biggest mistake of this was the miso soup. "Just awful" is the only way I can describe it.

Chawanmushi ($3 when ordering with a set)
Nothing memorable. The only plus point was the way Kyomomoyama serves it; on a small wooden base. Kinda cute.

In conclusion, it was probably 1 of my worse Japanese dinners ever.

Decided on Kyomomoyama (what a tongue twister!) after wandering around Central and decided that the Waraku queue was simply too long.

Ordered the dinner set of yaki gindara and tenpura gozen. We were lucky that there was a 20% discount promotion today for all items, so I ended up paying lesser than the original 28 bucks. The set consisted of rice, miso, appetizer, chawanmushi, sashimi, tempura and codfish.

Only the codfish was worth raving about. It was grilled really well such that the fish was soft and tender while the skin was not overly burnt and crispy. Sashimi was quite fresh too so that was a plus. The set also comes with ice-cream at the end. I wasn't too crazy about how they froze the cup together with the ice-cream. I know its a Jap restaurant and not Haagen Daaz but its little things like frozen ice bits sticking to your chocolate ice-cream that kills the dining experience a little.

I like the decor of the place though, very tastefully done. Too bad I wasn't lucky enough to get a window view of the river. Service was good, with smiley waitresses. To summarise the experience, the place had a good ambience but food wasn't wow enough to entice me to return unless I have to.

Visited here for lunch today with my colleague. We tried the set lunch meals ($6.00++).

We ordered the chicken tori teriyaki don, oyako don and one set of sushi (set A). All these dishes were at $6.00++ each. In terms of price, they were of good 'value for money' as the portion served were not small.

The teriyaki don I had is quite ok though my colleague commented that his oyako don was a bit bland where he needed to add in chilli powder and soy sauce to improve its taste.

As for the sushi, they are surely not the best we have ever tried in terms of taste. However, at this price for about 8-9 pieces of sushi, you cannot complain too much. Its relatively cheap though the sushi needs to improve on their varieties and the chef needed more skills to make the sushi (as the rice and ingredients tend to fall apart when we are picking them up).

The ambience is very cosy and soothing for us with its zen concept of decorations and furnishing. They also have displayed and put up small x'mas trees at various locations to add up to the coming festive seasons. They also play sentimental western songs and we felt that if they could play some Japanese songs such as the J-POP or Japan TV drama songs, that would blend very well! In addition, it is very well lighted and if you choose to sit at the window panes, you can have a good view on Singapore River and Clark Quay.

As for service, its ok. The waitress will greet you at the doorstep and they were quite polite too. Speed for serving food is ok (though we notice there were customers who came much later than us were being served their food first).

We were surprised that the business here was good, considering there are so many restaurants here and very competitive. It was about 70% full and I think its set lunch meal promotions work out well!

You may like to check this place out if you are working nearby! (P.S Central provides free shuttle service from City Hall and Raffles MRT stations)

Visit eateatenate.blogspot.com for a full review with pictures.


A random impromptu choice among the bulk of Japanese restaurants over at The Central ©.


Modern zen interior decor of the restaurant, neat and simple. Surprisingly it was rather empty compared to the raging queue at Waraku during the common 7 p.m. dinner time.


6 Sashimi Mori, S$45++,
Sashimi Mori! One of the most expensive starters in the menu, with an assortment of 6 different types of Sashimis - salmon, tuna, yellowtail, octopus, plus some other kind of fish which we couldn't really tell. Served chilled on ice shavings, the slices of raw meat were reasonably fresh and firm, and they melt right into your mouths.


Tempura Mori, S$19.80++,
The Tempura flour clumped up too much on a few parts, but overall, the dish felt neither too heavy or soggy, even after leaving aside for quite some time.


Hotate Mentai Yaki, S$15.80++,
An oh so delicious giant Hotate (scallop) with molten cheese blanketing all over. Be careful not to let it drip!


Steak Don, S$19.80++,
The entire Don was filled with tender beef steaks and that only, accompanied with an aromatic gravy sauce. First few scoops were wonderful, but soon it became a routine when the same food just got repeated over and over, even with pickles and miso soup as occasional diversions.


Salmon Oyako Don, S$18.80++,
Again, salmon Sashimis were fresh, but not so for the salmon roe if we were to pick on. Yes, they still burst and squirted juice upon pressure, but we were expecting a higher grade from such price.


VERDICT
With prices ranging from mid-high to high, the food seemed just slightly above average. The menu choices were a little restrictive and were mostly 'a la carte' - Kyomomoyama could do better by offering food in sets during dinner (and not just over lunch).

Ambience: Simple zen furnishing with a inviting friendly feel.

Service: Perhaps it's busy dinner time, it took awhile to catch the attention of the waiting staff. Time took to serve the food, ok not too long considering it's peak time.

Food: Lack of variety in terms of choice. Din able to catch what are the iconic or popular or special dishes here. The interesting dish I had here was the grilled riceball in seaweed stock... but portion is a lil too small.. The yakitoris were good, they were very flavourful, nicely grilled and tender. Another worth mentioning was the salmon cheese fry, crispy on the outside but oozing melted cheese and tender salmon on the inside. Unagi don a lil disappointing as the bones are not soft and palatable enough.

Overview: Probably might drop by one more time but i hope they add more variety to their menu or add more unique dishes of their own to set them apart from the many many Jap restuarants around the area.