Daemyung Vivaldi Park Ski World (South Korea) - Winter 2017/2018 Review

👍 ~1 hour travel time from Seoul makes it day-trippable. Lots of indoor, underground activities (and restaurants) for non-skiiers, or for in-between runs.
👎 Mostly man-made snow, only 11 (fairly boring) slopes, proximity to Seoul means it's super crowded during peak periods.

Let's get one thing out of the way: If you're an advanced ski'ier or snowboarder (or even a strong intermediate) looking for fresh powder, off piste, and long scenic thigh-burning runs, you will be disappointed here.

But if you're a first-timer or beginner looking to just dip your toes in the world of ski'ing for a day or two before continuing for the rest of your Seoul/South Korea itinerary, then Vivaldi Park Ski World could tick quite a few boxes very satisfactorily!


The park is entirely purpose-built, so the complex has a bit of a "theme-park" look & feel. What you lose in character, though, you gain in efficiency: The ski complex and all the accommodation towers are linked up via the basement. The basement, in turn, houses a dozen or so cafes and restaurants, a supermarket, a few shops selling souvenirs and clothes, and an assortment of attractions/activities like an electric go-kart track, carousel, VR arcade, bowling alley, table tennis, movie theatre, billiards tables, and handicraft studio. The adjoining Ocean Park does double duty as a jijimbang (Korean Spa) in winter, so there really is a LOT to if a few of your travel party doesn't want to hit the slopes.


While it's possible to DIY your ski trip here, we decided to go through Koreal Trip (in conjunction with JSki): Paying ₩260,000/night for a 4-person Maple Family Room, plus ₩70,000/person/day for the ski lift ticket plus gear rental (skis, boots, poles, jacket and pants only). Consider topping up ₩22,000/person for a 1-hour group ski lesson if everyone in your group is a beginner or first timer.

The advantage of going through Koreal Trip / JSki is, of course, a less stressful trip as they'll arrange everything for you (they'll even help you with your hotel check in while you're out skiing on the first day).


Of course, not everything's clear and sunny skies. Being so near to Seoul, Vivaldi Park attracts a ton of visitors from Seoul, making it ridiculously crowded on the weekends, holidays and other peak periods. And given that there are only two beginner slopes, the 30-45 minute queues for the lifts can get pretty annoying. The slopes are also limited (2 beginner, 5 intermediate, 4 advanced/expert, 1 half-pipe), and are 'boring,' so once you're a comfortable intermediate, this place can really only be a "practice your technique" hill rather than a "cruise and enjoy the scenery, twists and turns" one.

Nevertheless, it's still a great place for a weekday (or two) detour from Seoul to get some snow under your feet. Let us know in the comments below if you've got any other questions!

Tsukiji Fish Market Restaurant Review (Orchard Central Singapore)

👍 Wide range of Japanese food types under one roof means that there's something for everyone.
👎 Doesn't live up to the "Tsukiji" name; Food's generally just mediocre.

Right off the bat, let's get this out of the way: Tsukiji Fish Market Restaurant (Orchard Central) is in no way related to the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo. But of course you knew that already.

What the Restaurant lacks in a legitimate link to the fish market, it makes up for in variety, though: It's sort of a "dining hall" concept with a few different kitchens offering up different types of Japanese cuisine. There's a sushi/sashimi kitchen, a tempura kitchen, a steak kitchen, a ramen kitchen and an omakase (sushi) kitchen. Naturally, you can order from any of the kitchens, making a huge variety of Japanese cuisine available. In theory, having dedicated kitchens for each cuisine type should improve food quality, so let's have a closer look!


From the aforementioned Tsukiji Fish Market, we order their flagship 7-kinds sashimi boat (s$39.80). The boat comes with generously-portioned slices of the usual suspects - salmon, akami (tuna), swordfish and yellowtail - and some slightly more imaginative morsels of scallops, uni (sea urchin) and prawn. Overall we quite liked the balance between price, quality, portion size and choice of fish. The akami, especially, was quite a bit better than what you normally get with lower end sushi / sashimi places.


Our choices went a little downhill from there, though. We ordered a Wagyu Roast Beef Donburi (s$18.80) from the Steak kitchen's menu, and it was a mediocre mess of seemingly low-grade, insufficiently seasoned roast beef. Although I did quite like the ponzu-based sauce.


The Ebi Anago Tempura Donburi (Tendon, s$18.80) was similarly mediocre. Although the ingredients used were pretty good, and the tempura technique wasn't bad - just the right balance of flour, with the right amount of crisp - the bowl was really lacking in flavour due to the chef's stinginess with the sauce (as you can probably see from the photo). The number of items - prawn, fish, sea eel, etc - you get with the bowl makes it pretty good value, though!


To conclude, Tsukiji Fish Market Restaurant (again, no relation to the fish market in Tokyo) serves up a large variety of so-so food. It's probably not the best choice along Orchard Road if you've got a craving for a specific Japanese Food type (for example Ramen), but if you're in a large group, the restaurant might be good enough to satisfy (barely) everyone's palettes.

Tsukiji Fish Market Restaurant is on the 12th Floor of Orchard Central (take a lift to the 11th floor and then an escalator to the 12th). Reservations not accepted. Non-halal.

Seafood from the Heart: The Kitchen Table's Dinner Buffet Review (W Hotel Sentosa)

👍 Wide range of seafood and seafood-themed dishes and cuisines. Food's generally pretty good!
👎 Location's inconvenient with no wheels. A little pricey at s$88++ per person.

The Kitchen Table is W Hotel Singapore's buffet / all purpose restaurant, serving up breakfast, lunch, dinner, and brunch (on weekends). On Friday - Sunday nights their dinner goes ocean-themed with their "Seafood from the Heart" buffet spread. It's a pretty expensive dinner, so without further ado let's see if the food justifies the s$103.58 per person (after service charge and taxes) price tag!


The cold seafood station is small, but makes up for it with a solid variety of alaskan king crab, prawns, mussels, lobster, crab claws, and langoustine / scampi. The Friday night dining crowd is sparse, which means that there's plenty of each to go around.


The neighbouring sushi station does quadruple duty with oysters, a whole poached salmon, and ceviche mixed up a la minute as well. The sushi is pretty crappy, and the salmon's a little plain, but the ceviche's mixed up to order so you can tell the chef to adjust the condiments to your tastes.


Salad and cold cuts are pretty par for the course for hotel restaurant buffets, with a decent variety of smoked fish, ham, salmon gravadlax, air-dried beef, etc.


The indian station was one of the better ones, in our opinions, serving up tandoori lobsters and a whole tandoori red snapper in addition to the normal spread of briyanis, dhalls, curries and assorted breads. The snapper, being a large fish, has somewhat firm, but delicious-tasting flesh. We also really enjoyed the tandoori lobsters, flavoured and cooked to perfection!


The hot food line has decent, if not mind-blowing, variety, with around a dozen or so different dishes including a whole salmon, black pepper dungeness crab, baked lobsters with cheese and sambal stingray. The overall taste of the dishes were pretty good, but quality suffers from the fact that the dining room is less then half full: People aren't eating the food quickly enough, so it gets left out for a long time. Long enough, in fact, for some dishes to actually cool down to almost room temperature!


No such problem with the baked lobsters with cheese sauce, of course: It's one of the few dishes that gets snapped up pretty quickly after each replenish.


There's also a noodles & dim-sum station. We tried both: The laksa which pretty damn good; but the dim sum was over-steamed and limp and soggy.


The final desserts station has a chocolate fountain, and individual-sized portions of assorted cakes, desserts, macarons, cookies and a surprisingly wide variety of nyonya kuih. We quite like that even the cakes are individually-portioned, so you don't get the aesthetic problems of serving a full sized cake (and then having the guests really mess it up).


Overall, we really liked the abundance of seafood available throughout the whole buffet line, and also some of the novel (to us, anyway) flavours like the tandoori lobster. What we didn't really like was some of the hot dishes being left out on the line for way too long. We also thought that while the food was generally "not bad," there weren't really any standout "oh so delicious" dishes. To us, we think it's a little much to ask a diner to drive (or UberGrab) all the way out to Sentosa Cove, and pay a hundred bucks for this dinner, when there are countless other hotel buffets in Singapore that are better, cheaper, more convenient, or all three.


The Kitchen Table is at W Hotel Sentosa Cove. For reservations, call up +65 6808 7268 or email thekitchentable.singapore@whotels.com. Non-halal.

High Tea at Brasserie Les Saveurs, St Regis Singapore.

👍 Amazing ambience, nice selection of teas, buffet spread to fill up large tummies.
👎 A little pricey for smaller appetites; local flavour scones were interesting but a bit dry.

Brasserie Les Saveurs is the French, all-day-dining restaurant of the St Regis Singapore. Between lunch and dinner services the restaurant pushes out Afternoon Tea: Your choice of TWG teas (including a blend specifically created for the St Regis chain), scones, sandwiches and pastries served on a three-tiered silver stand, waffles and crepes prepared a la minute, and a mini buffet spread to fill up any stomach space you have left.

Thanks to a wide range of credit card / dining card discounts available, per-pax nett prices are s$48 (weekdays) or s$52 (weekends). Let's find out if the experience is worth the money!


Brasserie Les Savuers' ambience is, of course, amazing. It's classy, it's comfortable, the air conditioning is great, and the live pianist almost never takes a break. Chairs are comfy, too, making the dining room a perfect place to catch up and chit chat for two hours over scones and coffee.


The buffet spread itself, isn't really all that great. There's a half-dozen (or so) cold items like Alaskan crab salad and an assortment of cold cuts, and an assortment of different bread. There's also a waffle and crepe station (not pictured).


Over on the desserts section, a chocolate fountain takes center stage, accompanied by a few cakes and pastries, some fruits, and 4 ice cream flavours.


Finally - there's a small cheese cart with some common cheeses (and their accompaniments).


Overall, the buffet spread won't win any "best buffet" awards, but the focus really is on the afternoon tea spread. We really dig the shiny silver three-tiered stand (and teapot). Starting from the bottom, the sandwiches were okay, the scones were a bit dry (and we didn't really appreciate the pandan and salted egg ones), but the desserts were pretty good.

Speaking of that silver teapot, there's a wide range of TWG teas, but they're not free flow: You only pick one tea, and the waiters come round with refills of hot water.


Our final verdict, then? Considering the buffet spread, waffles & crepes station, and cheese cart, the pricing actually is pretty reasonable. For comparison, TWG's Parisian Tea Set is s$40 nett without any of these 'extras,' and in our opinion is far less attractive place to eat.

Taste-wise the food isn't the greatest, but in our opinions the ambience more than makes up for it; and this might be our default afternoon tea spot for now whenever we're in the mood to splurge a little!

$20 Good Eats: Uncle Leong Signature (Waterway Point, Punggol)

How much must a meal be priced at to be called "affordable?"

Singapore's food possibly has the hugest price range in the world: We've got s$2 Chicken Rice all the way up to s$530 dinners. We think what is most interesting for the most of us, though, is trying to find a sweet spot somewhere in between - good food that won't break the bank. So for 2017 we're going to look for ho chiak places at (or maybe slightly over) $20 - the price range which, to us, is considered affordable.

Without further ado, our first entry for our $20 Good Eats series is from Uncle Leong Signature in Waterway Point (Punggol)!


With our budget of $20 in mind we skipped past the crab and abalone pages on the menu, and ordered a duo of carbs: Crab Meat and Seafood Fried Rice. Flavour-wise the fried rice was pretty good, with a decent amount of crab meat / seafood, but distinctly lacking in wok hei.


The Minced Meat Tofu was up next: Minced pork, mushrooms, and zha chai (Szechuan preserved vegetable) steamed on a bed of beancurd. Interestingly enough the soy sauce-based gravy tasted a lot like the (also soy sauce based) gravy typically used in steaming fish.


For our daily helping of vegetables we chose the Chinese Spinach with Eggs, flavoured nicely with ikan bilis (anchovies). What we didn't appreciate so much was that no effort was made to combine/mix the spinach - cooked separately and heaped in a lump in the middle/bottom of the dish - with the eggs and gravy.


Finally, we round out our dinner with a protein: Lemon Chicken. The still-moist-and-juicy chicken was deep-fried well with a crispy crust, but the lemon sauce was just so-so lah (was perhaps a bit too sweet).

We can't quite recall the exact per-dish prices, but we do know that the total bill for four stomachs (of average appetite) was pretty much exactly s$80. The food's solid, if unspectacular, and took a somewhat pedestrian 35 minutes to arrive. Nevertheless felt that it was pretty good value for money for a nice variety of food in air-conditioned comfort.

Uncle Leong Signature is on the B2 level of Waterway Point, Punggol (connected to the MRT station), and is open for lunch and dinner 7 days a week. Lunch set meals are available for 4pax onwards; Dinner set meals from 6pax onwards. Reservations not accepted; Non-halal.

Hipster Singaporean food at Sinpopo Brand - Katong / Joo Chiat.

With dozens of restaurants and cafés popping up around Singapore seemingly almost daily, eateries can sometimes tend to feel a little generic - after all, a burger joint is a burger joint is a burger joint, no? It takes quite a bit of differentiation and something special to get stand out of the crowd - which is what Sinpopo Brand is trying to do with its hipster, retro take on Singapore-Malaysian food favorites!


There's a bunch of interesting-sounding drinks - for example, Fake Bird's Nest and Longan Slushie - which we skip in favor of a childhood favorite a little closer to our hearts - the Sng Muay Pop ($5). It's essentially kat chai suen mui Mark-II: lime, bits of sour plum frozen in sour ice balls, plopped into sweetened soda water, and is actually pretty damn good.


The Crab Wantons ($8) were a decent, if less than epiphanic starter. The the house dip was flavourful, and the wantons were nice and crispy, but were just missing a little depth of flavour.


For our main course we went with the house special - Nasi Lemak for Two ($25), with free flow sambal (and presumably rice). The rice itself was a little mushy and underwhelming, which disappointed a little; The accompaniments ranged from utterly delicious (har cheong kai wings), so-so-lah (luncheon meat crisps, sambal fishballs, potatoes in curry) to "meh" (rojak slaw). Overall the set was pretty nice, but we weren't so sure if it's something we'd crave for in the future.


With advancement in age comes a reduction in stomach capacity and a shrinking sweet tooth; so we only tried one dessert - the Gula Melaka Cake ($7). The cake has really simple execution - it's just a sponge cake with a layer of gula melaka glazing, but the balance of flavours and textures is sublime. Definitely a nice, sweet and satisfying end to the meal.


At just over $25 a person, we thought that the food was pretty reasonably priced (this is a restaurant/cafe after all). Food wasn't perfect, but it was good enough at the price point that we'll certainly come back to try some of the other items on the menu - the Sliced Wagyu Horfun sounds particularly interesting!

Sinpopo Brand is at 458 Joo Chiat Rd, S 427671; reservations not accepted. Non-halal.

BBQ Meats at Camp Kilo Charcoal Club, Kampong Bugis.

Roasting over a proper fossil fuel - be it wood, or charcoal - is one of the best ways of cooking meat (and other foods). With the right cut of meat, and the right fire or charcoal, the intense heat coupled with the smoke & other aromas from flare-ups from the fat drippings give a wonderful taste that other cooking methods can't match.

Unfortunately, BBQ'ing is also one of the most troublesome cooking methods. It takes a lot of effort to book a pit and start a properly hot fire, which simply doesn't make sense if you're only feeding two mouths. So we were thrilled to find out about Camp Kilo Charcoal Club - a newly opened charcoal-grilled BBQ restaurant at Kampong Bugis!


It's testament to the Kilo brand that within a week of (official) opening, the restaurant is already full house at dinner. It has a very casual, hip-and-happening vibe, and the dining area is al-fresco (outdoor only). Orders are placed at the counter - menu items will probably change in the future but for now there's Poussin Chicken (young, less-than-a-kilogram birds; $10 for half, $18 for a whole bird), Whole Roasted Pig ($12/100gm), Crispy Pork Belly ($10/100gm) and Pork Ribs ($15 for ½ a slab, $30 for a whole slab).


There's a complement of side dishes on menu, too - we tried the Brussels Sprouts ($14), which were sweet & spicy, with a hint of bitterness, and crisp from added rice puff balls.




The BBQ meats overall, while being very reasonably priced (I'd go so far as to say they were cheap) and generally very competently cooked, were a little compromised taste-wise. For example, the crispy pork belly was succulent, tender and tasty, but the skin wasn't as crisp/cracking as a Chinese sio bak; The ribs had a terrific house BBQ sauce but could have done with a longer cooking time in a proper smoker. The chicken was perhaps the star of the show: juicy, moist, with just the right amount of char on the skin.

We're also not huge fans of al-fresco dining in the Singaporean heat; but having air conditioning would inevitably mean a hike in food prices, so that's perhaps a reasonable sacrifice to make.

Camp Kilo Charcoal Club is on the ground floor of Kilo's Kallang headquarters - i.e. one of those places in Singapore where you really need a car (or taxi) to reach. Apparently they only open on Fridays (from 5.30pm) and Weekends (from 11am). Reservations accepted for Large groups; Non-Halal.

Cow Tongue and Cheap Sashimi - at Sandaime Bunji!

One of the reasons that the darling and I are such huge Japanese food fans is the sheer variety of cuisine from the various parts of the country. Today, we visit Sandaime Bunji, which originates from Sendai (sort of halfway between Tokyo and Hokkaido), and specializes in two decidedly non-mainstream dishes: 牛たん ('Gyuu-tan,' charcoal-grilled ox tongue) and わら焼きかつおたたき ('Warayaki Katsuo Tataki,' Skipjack Tuna seared over a rice straw fire).


Yes, there is a tuna loin in the midst of that fire.
We decided not to order the straw fired tuna at the last minute, opting instead for the irresistibly-priced six types of Assorted Sashimi (s$15.90, promo price). There's a small caveat - each diner must order a drink - but otherwise it's an absolute steal for hefty, chunky slices of fresh, raw fish. There's even two cubes of 大トロ ('Oo-Toro,' fatty tuna belly)!


Of course, we made sure to try the restaurant's other specialty - 12P 牛たん Dinner Set ($42.90). The dinner set comes with 12 slices of charcoal-grilled ox tongue, a clear ox tongue soup, vegetables (seaweed & bean sprouts), appetizer (pitan tofu) and a bowl of mixed rice and barley.

It's a hearty meal, and a very ... interesting one. Ox tongue has a strong, distinctly beefy flavour, but with a uniquely smooth texture and a somewhat chewy bite. Taste and flavour-wise it was nice, but in our opinions when tongue is served this way, it loses heat too quickly and so the latter half of the meal felt like eating cold beef. Definitely a dish that you should wolf down as quickly as possible.


Our other main course for the night - the Unagi Dinner Set ($19.90 for the full/large size) - comes with the same accompaniments as the cow tongue, plus chawanmushi (steamed egg custard). It's remarkably value for money, considering that the unagi alone probably costs just as much if you buy it from Meidi-ya or Isetan or any other Japanese supermarket.

Taste-wise - it was above average but not mind-blowing. The eel was obviously cooked beforehand and only finished on the grill - therefore not having enough time over the coals to get a really nice char on the edges. Still a satisfying meal nevertheless!


So while we weren't blown away by the ox tongue, we were pleasantly surprised with the very reasonable prices of the other items on the menu - especially the Unagi - and can totally imagine coming back again if/when we're in the area. Note that the Sashimi bowl is a promo price, and the waiter didn't know when the promo ends.

Sandaime Bunji is at #01-14/15, Millenia Walk, Singapore. Reservations probably not required. Non-halal.

American-style BBQ meats at Red Eye Smokehouse

When eating out, the darling and I like places that serve up food that isn't easily replicable at home. For example, for American-style barbecue'd meats like brisket and ribs, you'd need to smoke them in a smoker for hours on end (expensive, and not practical for the majority of us who live in HDB apartments).

It's this train of thought that leads us to a honestly rather ulu corner of the Jalan Besar neighbourhood, where Red Eye Smokehouse has set up shop, serving up varieties of smoked, fatty, sinful meats!


Red Eye Smokehouse's dining area is industrial chic while yet maintaining a casual vibe; We particularly dig the huge blackboard menu outlining all the available meats. There are the usual suspects, of course - brisket, beef/pork ribs and pulled beef/pork - and some other interesting items like salmon fillets and sriracha bbq wings. Oh, and of course a number of sides, and a complement of beers and soft drinks.


We end up going with 116gm of Brisket ($17.40), 152gm of Smoked Salmon ($12.16), 356gm of Short Rib ($39.16), and sides of Broccoli Salad and Sweet Potato Fries ($8 each). No GST or Service Charge is tacked on to the blackboard/menu prices, which is a nice surprise.

The sides first: Sweet Potato Fries were pretty delicious! Nicely seasoned, crispy on the outside while still adequately moist and fluffy in the center. Broccoli Salad - nice vinaigrette providing a bit of acidity to cut through all the fats in the meats.


Speaking of meats - Red Eye Smokehouse's short rib was the most expensive but also the best meat of the three. Nice bark, terrific juiciness/moistness, and a great balance of fats to meat. A tad bit bland in some areas, but nothing a dash of either of the two supplied BBQ-sauces can't fix.

The brisket, on the other hand, was rather a disappointment, being too low on smoke in the flavour profile, and being too dry. Salmon was somewhere in between the two - nicely seasoned and having retained an adequate level of moisture.


At over $40/person, Red Eye Smokehouse's meats are ... somewhat reasonable. It's got the potential to be a regular hangout for carnivores who live nearby, but otherwise we feel that a better place to feed a brisket addiction would probably be Meatsmith in Telok Ayer.

Red Eye Smokehouse is at 1, Cavan Road; Reservations accepted for parties of 6 and above. Non-halal.

Shin Kushiya's Charcoal-Grilled Yakitori at Vivocity.

Yakitori (焼鳥), when it's done properly, is amazing comfort food. Just in case you're not sure what yakitori is: The word describes meat skewers, grilled and salted or lathered generously with sweet sauce. In our opinion, a good yakitori place needs to fulfill two conditions:

(i) There needs to be a good variety of meats and different cuts & parts; and
(ii) The skewers must be grilled over charcoal (preferably of the binchotan variety).

One place that seems to check both boxes is Shin Kushiya. This venerable Vivocity restaurant has been open since 2006, but for some shameful reason we'd never even heard about it til recently. Better late than never, though ... right?


Anyways we walked up and got a table, and then placed our orders! There are a number of different yakitori sets on the menu but we ala-carte'd it all the way:

Chicken: Yakitori (dark meat), Tsukune (meatballs), Bonjiri (tail), Kawa (chicken skin) and Uzara Tamago (quail eggs)
Pork: Chizu Maki (pork-wrapped mozarella), Enoki Maki (pork-wrapped enoki mushrooms) and Buta Bara (pork belly)
Beef: Gyu Karubi (short ribs)
Others: Toumorokoshi Shoyu yaki (corn on cob), Garlic Fried Rice


Overall, the yakitori was fairly good: Meats were cooked well, especially the skin & tail (our favorite yakitori parts); Certainly among the best skewers we've had in Singapore, and a big upgrade from 'stall'-type yakitori like Tori-Q. Still nowhere near the deliciousness of proper Yakitori places in Japan, though.

Oh, (dis)honourable mention needs to go to the karubi, which was so overcooked it was like eating beef jerky.


The restaurant also offers up other Japanese food types like sushi/sashimi and soba noodles, which we didn't bother trying.

At a price range of around s$20-s$25/person of average appetite, our opinion is that Shin Kushiya provides average value for money. The charcoal grilling, while not being particularly outstanding, is good enough to make the restaurant our default go-to place whenever we have yakitori hankerings in the future. Reservations not really needed. Non-halal.

Scoot's ScootBiz ("Business Class") Review: TZ 201 from Tokyo to Singapore!

This is one post of a multi-part series covering our Two weeks Tokyo & Hokkaido Travel Guide:
    ▫ Singapore Airlines Suites Class from Singapore to Tokyo
    ▫ Three Days in Tokyo: Off the Beaten Path
    ▫ Sapporo, Otaru and Cape Kamui: Scenic Self-Drive Guide
    ▫ Furano, Biei, Sounkyou and Asahikawa: Amazing Autumn Colours
    ▫ Jozankei, Noboribetsu and Hakodate: Unparalleled Beauty
    ▫ Scoot's ScootBiz Class from Tokyo to Singapore

---

If you've been following along on our Hokkaido trip, you might recall that we spent the night in a really tiny hotel room.


The bed itself was fairly comfortable, though, and after check out we catch the hotel's free shuttle bus back to Narita Airport for our Scoot flight back to Singapore. If you're doing last minute souvenir shopping in Terminal 1, the Akihabara duty-free, air-side departure (i.e. past immigration / customs) shop has among the widest range of goods and snacks from all over the country.

A word of warning if you're hunting for food: The tempura at Tentei (天帝) is terrible and is to be avoided at all costs.


Our choice of transport back home: A "business class" seat on Scoot's Boeing 787 Dreamliner.


We put "business class" in quotation marks because this cabin really is a Premium Economy product rather than a true Business Class product ...


... which is sort of okay, because the pricing is very attractive! During promotion periods you can get a ticket at around the same price as a full service carrier's economy class. As you can see in the photo above, the seats are wide and you've got a lot of legroom. More than enough for even my 6-feet-tall body to stretch out very comfortably.


As part of the "business class" differentiation: A 'welcome aboard' cup of water. If you want bubbly or even soft drinks you'll have to pay for it.


Each seat also comes equipped with 110V sockets to power your laptops or devices. I understand that on the B787, economy class seats are also equipped with the same sockets, but that you'll have to pay extra to use them.


Of course, the standard Dreamliner features are present, including the clear-to-dark-blue electrically controlled window 'shades.' It doesn't ever get totally dark, in case you were wondering.


There's also the rainbow-coloured cabin lights, which we found rather tacky.


Food and drink is where Scoot's Low Cost Carrier roots really make themselves felt. A "business class" ticket includes baggage, an extra carry-on (two in total), and a meal with drink and dessert. There are four choices, all of which were so terrible that we can't be bothered to write about them in more detail.


The in-flight-entertainment is served up via the in-plane wifi. It's free for "business class" passengers, but you do have to bring your own device. We tried on iPhone, Android and Windows laptop and had no problems with streaming any of the (very limited) TV Shows and Movies. The Dreamliner also has Internet over the wifi; but as it was quite expensive we didn't pay and therefore don't know how fast (or slow) it is.


Scoot's Tokyo to Singapore service has a stop in Taipei (in both directions), so the total journey time is about 2 hours longer than a direct flight. Our flight was delayed by about two hours, which seems alarmingly par for the course according to FlightStats, which rates TZ 201 as only having an on-time performance of just 73%, with an 18 min average delay.

Having said that, we still do think ScootBiz fills a niche remarkably well. With pricing rivaling full service carriers' economy class, you get a vastly superior seat, with a lot of leg space and a seat that reclines far enough for actual comfortable sleep. Of course, Scoot is a low cost carrier, so you have to make do with sub-par in-flight entertainment and food and beverage. But we're impressed, and definitely wouldn't hesitate flying it again in the future - provided the price point remains roughly the same!