Thaipan impressed me with their excellent cuisine featuring outstanding sauces. It's moved right up to top spot on my list of favourite Chinese eateries - quite an achievement because I don't get impressed easily!

Down by the sea at the Civil Service Club at Changi Village, Thaipan has a large window area facing the sea. It's set in pleasant and tranquil surroundings, in a free standing building with high ceilings and a wide dining hall. There is a seminar room area with 4 tables.

Service staff were helpful and polite, with many Filipinos. Here is one Chinese restaurant where you can order in English comfortably. Tea was poured automatically after we were seated, which suggests that you don't have a choice of type of tea.

The menu is mainly Chinese cuisine, with some Thai dishes such as green mango salad, tom yum, green curry.

3 of us ordered:
Butter squid
Broccoli with crab meat
Stir fried french beans with dried shrimps
Prawn paste chicken
Jing du pork chop
Olive fried rice

The quantity of this lot was just slightly beyond the capacity of 3. All for $56 all in - excellent value, especially with such outstanding food!

Throughout the lunch, I kept hearing superlatives from around the table, including from myself. I must commend the sauces used - every sauce poured over the dishes were excellent in texture, mix and flavour.

The two most outstanding and particularly impressive dishes were the butter squid and the broccoli with crab meat.

The butter squid, which has been so well loved by many other reviewers before me, was exactly as they described. A mix of egg, spices and butter resulted in a truly impressive sauce with wonderful flavours. I felt the squid could have been cooked better for it was chewy. Given that others before me had better squids, I might just have got a difficult squid. Notwithstanding, it was indeed one of the best items!

The broccoli with crab meat was equally, if not more, impressive. The broccoli was cooked nicely without destroying it by cooking too long, and the sauce, oh the sauce! Wow! Every bit as good as the squid, and even more so, I felt.

French beans came cooked to the right level. It looked a little undercooked but wasn't. It had a nice heap of dried shrimp and what I think could have been lard. Well executed, and again good flavours!

The chef seems to have very good control of the temperature and the timing - both the vegetable dishes came out exactly as I would have liked. Excellent skill worth commending.

Olive fried rice was another good find. Overall, I preferred the sea-based dishes to the land-based dishes. To me, they were simply excellent, outstanding, surpassing most of what I've had in so many other places elsewhere. Coupled with the ability to impress me at first taste, this gets a rare 9 rating from me. Which of my reviews has such a high count of impressive, outstanding and excellent? Having experienced such an unexpected great find, I'm already making plans to return!

Having read so much about ThaiPan, I decided to give this a try. Did a "Da Pao" back home, but checked out the surroundings as well.

Located in a colonial building right next to the Changi Beach, the place had a nice casual feel to it, with an al fresco section that provides you with a great sea view. Service staff was helpful, and friendly.

I ordered: a green mango salad (ok lah, not my fave, but my sis-in-law loves this), honey chicken, black pepper beef, brocolli with crab sauce, toufu with pork floss, fried olive rice and pineapple rice. The $66 meal (they kindly took off the service charge)was sufficient to feed a family of 6 (including one hungry teenage boy!) with some leftovers.

The brocolli was easily the favorite dish. The generous use of fresh crab meat, cooked with a runny egg yolk sauce resulted in a very sweet, fragrant taste that paired very well with the crunchy fresh brocolli.

The rice dishes were my next favorite, with a lovely "wok hei" to it. The black pepper beef, and the honey chicken was alright, as was the toufu. I supposed they would have tasted much better taken "fresh" from the kitchen, rather than as a "da pao".

Well, my family loved the food, so it looks like we will be going to the restaurant one evening soon. Meanwhile, the staff advised that I should make reservations one day before, especially if I want to dine on a weekend.

Yes its back to Thai Pan at Changi Village again after a rather acceptable experience just a couple of weeks back. My parents were keen to try it out after I casually mentioned about Thai Pan's restored olden clubhouse interior in a conversation and so there we were, on a wet Sunday night.

Butter Squid - Purportedly one of the signature dishes of Thai Pan and one that I didn't get to try the last time round, the butter squid was interesting in the sense that it was coated with a thick layer of butter and egg yolk, very much like those you would find in butter prawns, albeit being soft and mashed.

Thai Pan Jade Tofu with Chicken Floss - The tofu was soft but not exactly silky and had a very strong egg taste, which was fine by me. But it got a little nauseating after a while. A very simple comfort dish.

Olive Fried Rice - They don't have the $1/bowl promotion for the olive rice on weekends so we had to get the standard $6 version, which was good for 2 pax. The rice was well fried with a rather strong olive taste that came across as rather moist. Coupled with a mildly sweet minced meat sauce, this dish was a hit with all of us. Just don't consume too much of it because after a certain point, the queasiness kicks in.

Broccoli with Crab Meat - The last time round, this dish stole the limelight with its not overly cooked broccoli and mildy starchy and savoury gravy. This time round however, the gravy was a tad too coagulated, resulting in a semi sticky solution that clang on to the broccoli. Still decent though.

Honey Chicken - I don't know what made us order this dish, but its probably got to do with it being listed as a recommendation on the menu. The chicken was tender but didn't exactly taste out of the ordinary. The sweetness index on this one is quite high though so if you have a low tolerance for sweet stuff, you might want to avoid this.

The food isn't expensive, at $44 for a 3 pax dinner. However I don't think the quality is really evident. Granted, all the dishes are still palatable and decent but I definitely won't make the long trek down. Service is decent but the place seems rather short handed especially on busy weekend evenings.

See all my pictures here.

Heard many rave reviews about Thai Pan, a Thai style cze char restaurant located at the eastern tip of Singapore so made the long trek down to give it a shot. Apparently its claim to fame is its quality food at coffeeshop cze char prices.

Located in a charming colonial style clubhouse within the Civil Service Club's premises at Changi Village, Thai Pan's interior boasts a sloping ceiling with wooden arches, parquet flooring and views of lush greenery through the checkered windows. The place does seem susceptible to echos though, because of the lack of sound dampening/absorbing materials like carpets.

Jade Tofu with Chicken Floss - I thought that the name sounded promising. Jade tofu conjures images of silken tofu with a nice savoury taste. However that wasn't quite the case unfortunately. The skin was a little crisp and the inside was soft but not exactly silky. I struggled to make out the mild savoury taste that the tofu carried but to be fair, it was decent, just nowhere in the league of Pow Sing.

Broccoli with Crab Meat - Personally I thought that this was quite good. There was egg white and small chunks of crab meat in the not too starchy and mildly appetising gravy that layered the crunchy and not overcooked broccoli.

Phad Thai - I didn't quite take this Thai Pan's rendition of this Thai street dish as the ketchup taste was just too overwhelming. I would have prefered a kaleidoscope of flavours and of course the ubiquitous dried shrimps. This one only had egg and chicken cubes.

Olive Rice - At $1 a pop, this was a great deal. But please note that its a promotion so I can't say if it will be a good deal in future. The rice was sufficient for 1 pax and had a nice wok hei taste with egg and cashew nuts. Accompanying alongside was a small serving of slightly sweet minced meat sauce that went well with the rice. The only minor gripe i had was that the rice did seem a little too damp for my liking.

The food was quite decent and the pricing relatively reasonable, at about $24 for 2 pax - a value proposition that comes close to or on par with what the coffeeshop cze char stalls are offering, albeit in a much better environment with better service.

See all my pictures here.

Last sat was there for dinner as it was my sister birthday & she have chosen this place. The reason she choose ThaiPan because she saw the review is ratherly high. So 7 of us decided to go for a try.

We have ordered some of the speciality, such as the

* Yam Basket with Assorted Seafood(Whats the different from normal zi
char stall?)
* Herbal Frog Legs (The only dish that is good)
* Braised Whole Chicken with Dried Scallops and Mushroom (Oily & it is not nice at all!)
* Mee Goreng (So-so, cannot consider good)
* Tofu with Fresh Crab Meat(Taste ok but not impressive)
* Tofu with Mango Salad (Taste ok but not impressive)
* ThaiPan Fried Rice (Tasteful)
* Pork Kuckle(Oily, meat tasteless)

So whats there to rave about this restaurant?