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Located just beside Toa Payoh public library, this restaurant mainly cater for the heartlander. The design of the restaurant is very traditional with gold and red as their main color theme, portraying through their wall paper and table cloths.
 
To start the meal, we have Shark's Cartilage Herbal Soup ($24). The shark cartilage is cook with herb such as danggui, ginseng and red dates. It taste quite robust with a bit of bitter taste from the ginseng and danggui.
 
Next, the Braised Sea Cucumber ($24) and Deep Fried Crispy Pig Trotters ($28). The braised sea cucumber is springy and quite generous in portion. The gravy is rich and goes well with the broccoli. The pig trotters meat is tender and the accompanying gravy is nice. However, the crispy skin part is pretty disappointing as there is no crunchiness in it and it is very thin.
 
The Fried “O Luat” Teochew Style ($30) is something you must try. They fried the eggs and potato starch until the form a crispy pancake, then topped with the sauce with oyster in it. What a crunchy goodness. Yummyyy.
 
Golden Sand Prawns ($30), or also known as salted egg prawns. The crispy prawns nicely coated with salted egg sauce and curry leaves. It has a nice texture and good combination of salty and sweet.
 
For vegetables, we had Braised Eight Treasure Vegetables ($16) and Stir Fry Teochew Vegetables Delight ($18). Braised Eight Treasure Vegetables consist of eight ingredients which include Fa Cai and dried oyster. The gravy is rich, robust and compliment each ingredients nicely. The Vegetables delight looks simple yet full of flavour. It is clean, crunchy and refreshing.
 
 
Of course, a birthday dinner will not be complete without Longevity Noodle ($18). Simple noodle dish with mushrooms gravy and crunchy bean sprout. It is robust and full of flavour.
 
For desserts, we have Sugar Coated Yam Bar ($16). Crispy fried yam block, coated with fine sugar. It is hot, sweet, unique and Yummyyy. After sweet desserts, in a typical Teochew style, we end the dinner with Kung Fu Cha.
 
Service is average, and understaffed also does not help with the situation. The interval between food also inconsistent, and you can wait a while before you food come out. As the restaurant is located on the second floor, they provide a lift for disable and elderly to get to their restaurant.
 
Overall, Swatow serve a traditional Teochew dishes. The food quality is good but the service can improve. We won't mind coming back in the future for some chow. Cheers!!

Maybe its the festive season.  But busy staff do not need to be rude staff.  My family wanted to try the dim sum on Sunday.  I called just now to make a booking and found out that dim sum and a la cart orders need not be pre-booked.  Just queue.  Bookings are only for set meal orders of 10 pax at $498.  The staff was rude and could not wait to end the call.  It ended with her saying "you call back later when you want to order".  I said "thank you" and will not call again.  

My family went to Swatow for our reunion dinner this year.

Realize that they had 2 timings for the dinner on that day and my bro booked the 5pm slot.

We arrived at the door ard 4.30pm and we are shocked to see a long queue in front of us, and we were told that we are only allowed to be seated only at 5pm, so have no choice but to wait as I can see that they are fully booked that day.

We only get to our seats ard 5.10pm.

Food is served by 5.20pm, and I should say that the staffs are rather efficient, in fact too efficient. The dishes are served quite fast and the interval within each dish is less than 10 mins. We have a hard time to finish our food on our table.

We had the traditional teochew Yu Sheng which is different from other restaurant, I do like their version as they are less sweet and all the vegetables are freshly prepared, I personally don't like those colourings stuffs thus I chose the teochew yusheng over the normal ones.

Nothing special about the crabmeat shark fin but I remembered I managed to down 2 small bowls of them.

But I do really liked their Braised Goose Meat, Teochew Eight treasure Veg and the Sweet Yam Paste, these are their specialty dishes I think.

The Goose Meat is thinly sliced and the braised sauce taste is not very salty which I liked.

The eight treasure veg another traditional teochew dish, they are just cooked well, not too soft or too hard, my Dad liked them a lot .

The Yam Paste is the Favourites, I don't like the coconut sauce and their version is w the sugar sauce, but they have a nice fragrance which I can't tell what it is, think that is what made it so special.

Only 1 thing which I have to complain is that the food is served too fast and some dishes are not hot enough, but I think is becos of the fully booked restaurant, I will find a day after CNY to come back again .

Worth a try