Address: 53 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, Ang Mo Kio Hub, Singapore 569935
Tel: +65 6555 7787

I was watching the show Kung Pao: Enter The Fist on Friday. It was a parody of the Chinese Kung Fu shows of old by the Americans. So they had the American actors included into old footages of Kung Fu shows using digital imaging processes.

Anyway, there was this Chinese actress in the old footage who had very long hair strands coming down the side of her face and then doing a rather elaborate curl at the end. People familiar with these Chinese oldies will know what I am talking about. Well…I found her rather attractive in a strange way. I think it might have been those curls.

So there I was on Sunday, taking a bus. I was just staring out into the windows and trying to ignore the stupid advertisements playing on the stupid mobile TV set in the bus. Then, I spotted a male (a rather ugly specimen) with very long sideburns reaching down to his chin. Before that, my mind had blissfully mapped the image of long cheek hair to that of the female actress. But the sight of the atrocity instantly destroyed that mind map.

Soup Kitchen had a distinctive Chinese setting for its interior - complete with red doors and waitresses dressed in dowdy cheongsam pants ensemble (seriously, I had thought the Chinese were way ahead of their times to be so bold in choosing such bright colors for their houses… however, an episode on Discovery Channel revealed that Chinese doors/pillars were painted red due to the natural dyes the use..).

We started with the Waisan & Ginseng Roots Soup (S$5). It had pork in it. I am impartial to soup as my family was not really into it. But, nowadays, my mum seems to want to compensate for that by preparing soup at every meal…sigh. The soup at Soup Restaurant wasn’t that bad. I mean to call yourself a Soup Restaurant and not serve decent soup smacks of poor marketing.

The Begger Rib (S$12) on the other hand looked like radioactive Pork Ribs. And it tasted sweet instead of savoury too! Is there a conspiracy whereby restaurants are now toying with their clients by replacing salt with sugar!!?? But in this case, unlike the sugary bacon at PS Cafe, I think the chefs at Soup Restaurant had meant for the Pork Ribs to taste the way they had.

The signature dish at the restaurant is the Samsui Ginger Chicken ($13.80). It was quite good. Smooth, silky, porcelain skin. The chicken when dipped into the ginger dip was savoury and refreshing. I did not go for the process of wrapping the chicken with the cabbage, preferring to have it with plain rice.

Got to love Chinese food and culture (barring men spotting long cheek hair)…