Address: 390 Victoria Street, Golden Landmark Hotel #03-12A Singapore 188061
Tel: 6339 7766

I am doomed. As a sign that I have no life outside of work, I am hanging out more and more with my colleagues instead of my very old and dear friends from school days. In fact, I sometimes even cancel on appointments with old, dear friends (shhh…) just to hang out with this bunch of people that I see every single freaking Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6pm.

So here I am again, lunching with my darling colleagues at one of my colleague’s (let’s call him Ongster) favourite haunts - Mooi Chin.

Mooi Chin is a Hainanese restaurant on the third floor of the Golden Landmark Hotel. It’s apparently been around since the 1930s.

With blind faith in Ongster’s experience, we left it to him to order the food. He did not disappoint us.
The first dish to arrive was the fish maw and vegetables. I am not a fan of fish maw. It’s ugly, squishy , strangely chewy and has no real taste of its own (save for some fishy aftertaste) . Nonetheless, I quite enjoyed this dish.

We also had the Hainanese pork chop and fries. The pork chop was nicely breaded and fried and came sitting on a heavenly brown sauce thickened with cornflour.

The chicken in soya bean sauce and the sambal pomfret are supposed to be the house specialties - and for good reason.

The chicken was expertly fried so that it was crispy on the outside but remained tender and juicy on the inside.

The fish was fried and then generously lathered with sambal paste. Somehow, the frying process seemed to have enhanced the fragrance of the sambal paste and made it much tastier and spicier. After we had finished the fish, we polished off our bowls of white rice with the remaining sambal paste.

We were almost an hour late for work by the time we had washed down the fiery (but satisfying) meal with glasses of hot chinese tea. After Ongster footed the bill (S$108 for 5 persons - of course we paid him back subsequently), we made the reluctant, lazy journey back to the office.