He Jia Huan — Restaurant in Jurong East

TDLR: Food is not bad but the attitude you get is highly dependent on the number of pax eating. Not recommended to come here in small numbers.

Am writing this review while waiting for 1 hour for my food. For context I visited this place quite frequently for the past 2 years because the food is nice, but the service recently is so bad that I had to give a review even though I never gave below 5-star reviews on Google.

Came in at 7pm, ordered food, 20 mins later waiter asked me to changed seat to a temporarily opened small table (pic below) simply because I was alone and "they have a lot of customers waiting" (I was already sitting at their smallest table before the change). Also, hey, I'm also your customer right and I've ordered 2 pax worth of portions despite being alone, and you could've told me to change from the start not 20mins after I'm here. Utensils not provided and I had to beg multiple waiters for utensils when my 锅包肉arrived.

Waited until 7.45pm when my 羊肉串finally arrived and they missed my other orders when people who arrived after me already had their orders served. Wanted to cancel all my other orders but the waiter told me that my 五花肉is only 5 mins away ok so I waited and did not cancel. They came back 15 mins later with only half the sticks of 五花肉 (last photo) of what I ordered and told me to eat these first and wait for more. I have already waited for more than an hour at this point so I clearly told them to cancel all my other orders.

Really disappointed with...

Second restaurant, or the first Chinese one, we visited at Vision Exchange after getting to know of this hidden gem near Jurong East MRT.

Ordered quite a spread considering we were a table of 4, but was left feeling jelard and disappointed with the meal.

🐟 水煮鱼was very oily and salty, super generous serving though, and it comes with bean sprouts as well 🥬 四季豆 had a fair balance between being spicy and flavourful, I thought it was pretty good thinking there 🍢 the skewers generally had the same taste, but was pretty decent in terms of its flavour 🍄 fried mushrooms didn’t really tasted like what the name suggests, though it still was good by itself 🥗 the cold vegetables or 凉菜 was okay, had a tinge of spice to it to elevate the dish 🍗 辣子鸡 was properly numbing, it’s the first time my entire mouth and tongue got numb from this dish - it was a generous serving nonetheless 🍳 番茄炒蛋 was okay, sufficient flavoured and was by far the only dish which wasn’t spicy 🥤 酸梅汤 was horrendous, other than serving it’s purpose to 解腻, it was undrinkable.. 🧾 ordered at 5.50pm, but was still left with 1 pending dish at 6.50pm which we cancelled upon payment..

It might be the combination of dishes, but all of it came together to be too spicy/numbing for all of us. None of the dishes really stood out, despite the long queues and stretches of table throughout the corridor.

Not sure if we would consider returning with this first...

If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to eat at a normal restaurant in China, this is it. My family’s from China so I’ve grown up eating a lot of the dishes here, and it really hits the nostalgic spot whenever I crave that food. The atmosphere and service are definitely not the best in the world, but honestly it just made it better for me because it’s exactly the same back in China LOL

Servers are busy running around and don’t really have time to talk and explain things to you, but they’re always friendly in those brief moments that you manage to flag them down. The restaurant is a little stuffy cause of the grilling and seating, but it makes everything feel so lively.

As for the food itself, definitely get the lamb skewers and grilled enoki mushrooms. Their other dishes like the Beijing Da La Pi really taste just like they do back in China, though I don’t know if it would be everyone’s cup of tea. The only thing I’ve ever really had a complaint about was the scallop dish with glass noodles and garlic. I always order it in China and the scallop meat and noodles slide off with absolute ease there, but here the edges were burnt and the noodles were cooked for too long, which made it a lot harder to eat (though it still tasted ok).

This isn’t a place you should go to for world class food and service, but if you enjoy the bustling eateries and local dishes of China, this is where...