Hillman — Restaurant in Osaka

I’ve never had such terrible and disappointing Singaporean food. I’m part Singaporean, and this was NOT it. The water spinach were sour and lacked wok hei, the bakuteh had no white pepper and garlic at all and, if anything, tasted more like pho broth because of the sole star anise flavor. The ribs in the bakuteh were so dry. The paper chicken was juicy but tasted like mild teriyaki. The fried rice was good but it was nothing special, tasted like a regular Chinese restaurant’s fried rice.

The staff were terrible too. We came in at 9:00 and the girl in the front looked genuinely disgusted and confused that we were there. It was only 2 hours before the listed closing time on google. I heard her whispering to the other staff “are they the ones who just called?” and “suddenly..?” they acted conflicted on whether to accept us and hesitatingly asked if it’s okay even if last order is at 10pm - an hour away. We weren’t even the only customers there! One group had just left, another was still there, and another had come after us. At 9:30, when the chefs had finished cooking everything, they turned off the music and it was dead quiet. You could see the chefs eyeing everyone and the girl was standing near the back picking at her fingers.

Terrible food,...

Where is the nasi lemak, char kway teow, tau hway chwee, kai fan, mee pok, wan tan mee, teh tarik, or kopi-o, etc?

The menu lacks everyday staple food dishes that i easily find in my neighbourhood kopitiams and hawker centres. As a Singaporean, i do not consider this place to have authentic Singaporean cuisine.

For example, i ordered the claypot vegetables but it was drenched in way too much soup served in a claypot and didn't have the same wok hei taste as what you would find in a good zi char neighbourhood kopitiam.

After trying the first dish of claypot vegetables, i didn't bother wasting time taking photos of the other dishes, including the paper chicken.

Limpeh says...

Went here for dinner and was surprised how bad the food was. The chilli crab was OK, didn't really like the sauce because tasted like thickened bottled chilli sauce. The mapo tofu was just bad, there weren't any depth to the flavour. It tasted like peppercorn and slight chilli with tofu. The Hokkien mee was based on shacha sauce but I felt like they didn't put in enough making it bland. Although the dish had shrimp with heads on, I gave up on eating it since it tasted like nothing.

The dishes I thought was OK/good are the fried rice and paper chicken.

Makes me wonder if the head chef was out when I was there or that's the food...