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.

Utage Set Dinner for two at Sumiya Charcoal Grill Izakaya, Orchard Central.

Happy New Year and Goat Xi Fa Cai! After a "short" hiatus (of a few months) we're back with our first restaurant review of 2015 and of the new Year of the Goat! The place we're visiting today is Sumiya Charcoal Grill Izakaya on the 12th floor of Orchard Central. It's opened by Chef Naoki Tsuzuki and the same folks behind the pretty decent Kuriya Dining over at Great World City.

Although Sumiya brands itself as an izakaya, it really ... isn't. The menu is heavy on sashimi and sushi, with particular emphasis on 'fresh' bluefin tuna. We decided to just go for the middle road option of three different set menus - the Utage Course at $128 for two - which starts off with a small heaping of Edamame!


We also get two plates of Salmon Avocado Monaka - a raw salmon and avo 'salad' sandwiched between Japanese wafers. The wafers themselves weren't anything to shout about - tasteless and dry, but they did give a bit of crunch to the otherwise mono-textured salmon/avo.


We also get 5 kinds of Premium Sashimi on a bed of ice. I'm not sure if Salmon really qualifies as 'premium' but nevertheless the assorted seafood was fresh and pretty substantially cut. Extra marks to the scallop (deliciously sweet) and of course chu-toro is always an oily, juicy bite of heaven.


Strangely enough, the Char-Grilled Chicken with Crazy Salt was served alongside all the cold dishes. I know Sumiya isn't really a fine dining place but surely they should hold the hot dishes until we're (almost) done with the cold ones?

Anyway, despite the funky name, this was just mediocre - a little on the dry side and not seasoned particularly well.


The next items in the set menu were the Double Steamed Rice with Grilled Eel and Salmon Roe, served with the Snow Crab Clear Soup. We thought this was a pretty nice rice dish - the slight saltiness from the ikura complementing the sweetness of the unagi sauce very well. The soup was decent, but with such little crab meat there wasn't much crab taste in the broth.


The deep fry was next - two shrimp, a large asparagus and hefty chunks of tuna meat (for each person), breaded and deep fried. These were a little disappointing - as you might possibly see in the photo, they were a little overfried and so the texture of the batter/breadcrumbs were a bit too hard to enjoy.

The deep fried tuna chunks were new to me and were surprisingly pretty nice though - the batter/breadcrumbs suffered from the same slight hardness but the fish chunks inside were moist and juicy.


The Dessert of the Day ended up being red bean-filled mochi, which I can't really comment on since I don't like mochi.


After taxes and service charge, with a final bill of close to $75 per person, we felt that the pricing was spot on for the quantity of food served up by the kitchen. However we were somewhat disappointed overall by the quality of some of the dishes.

As mentioned earlier, Sumiya is located on the 12th Floor of Orchard Central. We visited on a weeknight and the restaurant was full, so if you're visiting on a weekend reservations are probably recommended. The other two set menus are the Hana course ($88 for two) and the Sumiya course ($268 for two). Non-halal.

Apologies for the quality of photographs in this post as all photos were taken with mobile phones.

Fancy Shinkansen/Space Shuttle/Train Conveyor Belt at Genki Sushi!

Quick mid-week video minipost! Finally got around visiting Genki Sushi to check out their fancy sushi delivery system. You place your orders on an iPad and instead of a waitress serving your sushi it zips right to you on a motorized shinkansen / space shuttle conveyor belt. Awesome sauce!


Sushi itself is pretty par for the course for conveyor belt sushi chains in this part of the world - that is to say, reasonably cheap ($2.30 for two salmon belly nigiri) but honestly not very good. But of course you get what you pay for, and it is pretty fun watching the shuttle arrive.

Genki Sushi has three outlets - Orchar Central, Chinatown Point and Bugis+. Non-Halal.

Flammeküche (French "Pizza") at Flam's (Orchard Central)

Right off the bat, let me first say that describing a French food (Flammeküche or Tarte Flambée) with an Italian word (Pizza) is perhaps not the most politically (foodiecally?) correct way to go about things. So if you're reading this and you're French, no offense is intended. It's just that calling the Flammeküche a "French Pizza" seems like the easiest way to describe it in our neck of the woods :)

The Flammeküche originated from the region of Alsace in the North-East of France, and is traditionally, a very thin crust with lots of onions and bacon (or pork fat) on a crème fraîche-based sauce. The folks over at Flam's brought this Alsatian specialty to our shores about two months ago, naturally with a number of different toppings available on offer :)


It's hard to imagine the restaurant decor being any less French. Maybe it's because we're used to equating French food with Fine Dining; Flam's is much more casual. With bright orange sofa seating and lots of wood everywhere, it's not what you'd call cozy, but it does gel with that whole Pizza vibe.

Oops, I meant Flammeküche, of course!

Anyways, because the Flammeküches are so thin, they only need to be popped into the oven for something like 3 minutes before they're served. We started off with The French (SGD18.00), which is Camembert (cheese), walnuts and chives added to the basic bacon and onions. Having such a thin crust does mean that we can enjoy the taste of the liberally-sprinkled ingredients.


The Fresh Mushroom (SGD14.00) also comes loaded with slices of mushrooms. We're not 100% sure what mushrooms they were (tasted like shiitake). For those of us with normal appetites, one Flam per person is probably just about enough.


There are a bunch of sweet Flams on the menu too (for dessert) - we try The Banana Chocolate (SGD6.50) - a half-sized Flam that as its name suggests, comes with slices of Banana and chocolate chips. No bacon and onion on this pie, thankfully!


If you're in a particularly hungry mood, Flam's offers up "all you can eat"s for about SGD25 a mouth, which comes with a salad and non stop Flams until you throw in the towel.

So is a Flammeküche a "French Pizza?" Not really, in my opinion. There's no cheese topping, and the sauce is cream based and not tomato based. Nevertheless if you're in the area, the ingredients are fresh and the Flams are pretty good. Good value for money, too, especially if you're a big enough eater to take advantage of the "all you can eat" offering.

Flam's is on the second floor of Orchard Central. Non-halal.