Enjoy Eating House & Bar (Mercure on Stevens)

Popiah with a twist
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Three scoops of gelato - Blue Pea Lemongrass, Sea Salt Horlicks and Soursop on popiah skin, with shaved peanut candy and coriander
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Perhaps it’s a side effect of turning thirty, but I find myself enjoying traditional Asian desserts a lot more now. From Pulut Hitam to Tau Suan and to Chendol, I love ‘em all. So when I saw that @enjoyeatinghouse offers Teochew Orh Ni with Butternut Squash ($8++), I ordered it without a second thought.⠀
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Orh Ni is a traditional Teochew dessert that’s yam that’s processed into a paste, sweetened and doused in coconut milk. Over here at Enjoy Eating House, they have added butternut squash and ginkgo nuts for a little textural variety. The yam paste was silky smooth and slightly sticky, and each swallow goes down easy thanks to the lubrication provided by the coconut milk. The yam paste was sufficiently sweet and earns the ultimate Asian praise of ‘not too sweet’. The butternut squash and gingko nuts did add extra resistance to the otherwise soft & smooth texture for a little variety.⠀
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If you ever decide to patronise @enjoyeatinghouse , don’t forget to order this delightful dessert so you can truly enjoy eating at this house.

And now for @enjoyeatinghouse star attraction, please give it up for their Singapore Style Chili Prawns ($28++)! Five titanic, mercifully de-shelled prawns with the heads still on arrive fresh from the market. These jumbo prawns are then stir-fried with Enjoy’s execution of the familiar & beloved Singaporean chili crab sauce. The five prawns are fantastically fresh, as evidenced by their supple & snappy textures.⠀
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The flavour comes exclusively from the egg-stravagantly eggy chili gravy, which is sweet & salty in equal measure. Lots of egg bits are floating around in this mildly spicy gravy for a little additional texture, but the charming combination of savoury & sweet is what compels you to give more pleasure to your palate. Better yet, squeeze out as much of the flavour lurking in the prawn heads into the gravy, mix it up and, well, enjoy the taste. Enjoy knows how gloriously gratifying their gravy is, as they offer you the opportunity to try & mop up as much of this delicious chili prawn gravy with their deep fried mantous ($2++ for 4).⠀
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Enjoy Eating House’s Chili prawns are good, but what’s holding them back from greatness is the viscosity of the gravy. Or rather, the lack thereof. The chili gravy was rather runny & thin, and putting any of it on the prawns or the mantous resulted in the gravy just flowing right off. All that’s needed now is for Enjoy to thicken the gravy, and its rating would get bumped up to legendary status.

Bakwan Kepiting (pork & crab meatball) soup is a Peranakan staple soup, so I was pretty surprised to see it on @enjoyeatinghouse menu going for just twelve dollars before tax & service charge. What surprised me even more was just how tremendously tasty Enjoy Eating House’s bakwan kepiting soup was.⠀
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The massive meatballs are packed a bit looser than the average meatball, which gives a lighter, easier to chew ball of meat that’s simply but sufficiently seasoned. This time, I could taste & feel the crabmeat added into the mix, and the subtle & lighter flavour offset the richness of the pork excellently. The broth is also sublime, as it is supremely sapid, yet it is light & clean and so easy to drink. I was happily scooping up every last drop, and although the bakwan kepiting soup might not be the water of life, it’s pretty close.⠀
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As for the Silky Egg Crispy Hor Fun ($19++), a thick & satisfyingly salty gravy coats the copious amounts of deep fried flat rice noodles, as well as the plentiful portion of pork, prawns and squid. In theory the crispy hor fun should soak up the viscous gravy & soften up slightly while retaining some crunch, but in practice the deep fried flat noodles only soaked up some gravy and gained a texture akin to that of stale crackers. Not soft, not crisp, but an odd cross of sort of crunchy and chewy ⠀
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The hor fun not exactly doing what Enjoy Eating House had hoped for isn’t their fault, and the fab flavours alone were enough to carry the dish. One suggestion I do have is that Enjoy could cut the hor fun into shorter strips for easier edibility, and for the extra enjoyment.

This was my second time dining at @enjoyeatinghouse, and while I certainly appreciated the food once more I didn’t know what category to put it into. Mod-Sin? Modern Zichar? Peranakan fusion? The Jumbo Kurobuta & Crab Ngoh Hiong ($17++ a roll) certainly says Peranakan, but the Sautéed Asparagus with Mushrooms & Truffle ($22++) is a lot harder to pin down.⠀
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Enjoy Eating House wasn’t tooting their own horn when they labeled their ngoh hiong as ‘jumbo’, it’s truly titanic to match the price. The texture of the pork mince combined with the crab is on the looser, less dense side, which does give a lighter mouthfeel that complements the thin, crisp beancurd skin wrapper. I didn’t pick up on the crab in there, but the meat mix was interspersed with a delightful amount of crunchy & fresh water chestnut chunks. ⠀
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The flavours of the five spice powder were in full force, but I think that Enjoy could benefit from adding in more salt into the seasoning. The kicap manis dip actually revolutionised the ngoh hiong, adding a sweet & savoury note that not only made the ngoh hiong richer & weightier, but more conplete flavour wise.⠀
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The Sautéed Asparagus with Mushrooms & Truffle is a massive stir-fry loaded with fresh, snappy asparagus that’s been baptised in a holy moly amount of truffle oil. Despite the description, the dish was about thirty five percent asparagus, thirty five percent assorted mushrooms, twenty percent carrots & ten percent cashews. It was a harmonious blend of contrasting textures that keeps you engaged & interested to the end, and it’s healthy yet hearty.⠀
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While the food here is not revolutionary or utterly mesmerising, you’ll still definitely enjoy a hearty family meal at @enjoyeatinghouse.⠀

The fish is nicely done as it is not too dry yet moist of the fish.. the price is decent and enough to eat 2-3 pax