Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Geyland Claypot rice, Geyland Lorong 33.
Dropped by Geylang Lorong 33 this evening for a dinner with the family. My dad's been raving about the claypot rice here for a long time and decided to bring us there. The place is like a typical quaint little classic coffeeshop. It's called Geyland Claypot Rice. They have a website as well. http://www.geylangclaypot.com/.
The claypot rice. We called in to order, since it would take 30 minutes to prepare and we didn't want to wait. The number is 67444574 or 67443619. It was one of the nicest claypot rice I've eaten. One thing I really like about it is the chicken cubes. In many of the ones I've tried before, the chicken becomes too dry and tasteless. Not in this one. The chicken was slightly juicy and had a subtle saltiness to it.
There have also various zhi char like dishes to go along with your rice, but they're definately not your run-of-the-mill kind. This is quite simply, hand made tofu with prawn. I really like this dish. The tofu was soft and fragant, and when you bite into it, it crumbles into pieces. Very very nice. And the prawn was of a decent size, and very juicy. One of the gripes I have about prawns in such dishes is that they sometimes lose their flavour because they are overcooked. Not in this case. It came out perfectly. The gravy is like something from Mui Fan or Hor Fan in zhi char stalls, but somehow they made it really delicious. This is a must-try if you eat here.
This dish is known as Assam Tomyum Fish. I thought the assam was way too overpowering. So much so that the fish and the tom yam loses its significance in this dish. I wouldn't order it again.
The remains of their soup of the day. I took it after we drank all the soup. Oops! It changes everyday. My mum commented that they had watercress soup the last time and it was very good, so we tried this soup. Even my parents were stumped because they had never heard of this soup before, pronouced Fei Hua soup I think. You can see the Szechuan Veg looking thing inside. I think that's the thingy that they were talking about. The soup tasted abit like lotus root soup, although it had a little bitter taste. According to the waitress, it has medicinal properties. Not too bad, not too good either. But you can taste that they have been cooking the soup for very long, from the taste and the color. I'm sure if it was something else like old cucumber or lotus root, their soup would taste great.
45 dollars in total. It was an OK price, I guess. I was a little disappointed with the soup and the fish, but the rice and tofu were really good. I wouldn't mind coming back again.