What is ribeye steak and fries doing in a chilli crab restaurant? And what is an ex-ACS boy doing running it?
New Ubin Seafood offers many surprises, not least of which are its owner and its menu. While old favourites such as chilli, pepper, garlic and butter crab/prawns are on the menu, as are a wide assortment of fish done any way you like, I’m afraid I never got to try any of them!
The sociable and articulate owner, Mr SM Pang, who used to work in pharmaceuticals before he became a restaurateur, recommended some specials, with constant interjections from my dining companions. We ended up with a table full of everybody’s favourite dishes, even if they did not quite add up to a balanced meal!
Fried Ubin beehoon
I mean, what are three carbo dishes doing on the same table? We had mee goreng (spicy, excellent and wet, $12), fried Ubin beehoon (with black sauce, $8) and also a memorable fried rice, but more of that later.
We also had two baby squid dishes: one fried with petai (that bitter stink bean which you either love or hate, $17) and the other, crisp-fried the old-fashioned way, $12.
Then came the unexpected rib-eye steak. Definitely a macho dish, it is not surprising that my male dining companions, all ex-ACSians, clamoured for it! At $53 a serving, it was hefty in more ways than one.
Fried baby squid
But it came properly medium rare with a pile of caramelised onions and chunky chips on a wooden cutting board with sauces on the side. And if you order the beef, you also get the fried rice that comes with it.
What a blow-out that turned out to be! The rice is fried with dripping from the beef, seasoned with soya sauce from Kuala Lumpur and topped with crisp bits of beef fat! We wiped the plate clean.
No less gutsy was the deep-fried brinjal, $12. Sweetened with a spicy glaze, the dried fish found within provided a shot of saltiness. Another good idea came in the HK kailan, our veg for the meal. It was delicious, if hardly healthful, for it was shredded, then deep-fried with dried whitebait adding more crunch to the mouthful ($12).
HK kailan
Since this was a seafood restaurant, we decided to order more dishes of well, seafood. SM recommended the local scallops instead of the bamboo clams, which were not available, with the garlic soya sauce that we had asked for. The scallops, $12, were sweet but rather thin and I thought, overwhelmed by the sauce.
While we had pondered something called the shovel-nosed ray, there was already too much on the table and besides we wanted dessert.
The or nee (or yam paste) that someone pleaded for turned out to be unlike the usual. The sweetened mash, topped with canned fruit and jelly, ($10) came on its own. You then add coconut cream before enjoying this Teochew dessert to endless discussions of whether it had been made with lard or not.
That at least is not surprising. Every time I have eaten or nee these days, someone is bound to mention the good (bad?) old days when it was made with lard!
New Ubin Seafood at Sin Ming Road
Ratings: Ambience: 3/5; Value: 4/5; Food: 4/5; Service: 3/5
New Ubin Seafood
Block 27, 01-174, Sin Ming Road
Tel: 6466 9558
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