Bao Ding BBQ (中华爆鼎三绝烧烤) — Restaurant in Singapore

Worst Dining Experience Ever

Me and my friend visited the restaurant for dinner yesterday night. After walking down the street and thinking about what to eat, we decided to give this restaurant a try after so many years, hopefully they are improving. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Seating arrangement We are having two pax (females) and the host brought us into a table with two guys sitting next to us, with no social distance at all hence, we rejected that table and were then brought to another table. We don’t mind having small table, just that we chose not to stay that close with people that we don’t know. We were seated and given menu, after placing the order, when the waitress saw another 3 pax coming in, she wanted to switch us back to that table again, we rejected again.

Food Taste and Quality Food taste and quality is really not up to standard. The cold dishes were super salty and you can still taste the MSG on top of the meat. Later, the bbq pork leg was served to us and it has a funny taste and we didn’t even have a bit but put it aside. All the bbq items came with nuts, and we were not being informed. Commonly, Chinese bbq doesn’t come with nuts, it might be a specialty of theirs but definitely not a delicious one.

Service Quality Every of our orders have been served to us, except two sticks of bbq chicken gizzards. Hence, we approached to the cashier counter and told the lady cashier about this. She didn’t apologise and still insisted that she served that right to our table. She even walkied her staff to check, and the staff was like making a big scene for saying that we might have mistaken the lamb sticks as chicken gizzards. In fact, we did order 2 sticks of lamb sticks, beef sticks and chicken gizzards, but on our table we only received 4 sticks. No matter how, they still owed us two sticks and why would we like for that $2 when our bill was more than $80 and we even ordered more than 2 persons portions. Back to the pork leg, it was placed on the table untouched, the staff didn’t even ask about it and just sent 2-3 staff to clear our table at once before we even finished our beer and making the payment. I intended to tell them about the taste of pork leg, not hoping for any refund, just to avoid them serving that not-so-fresh dish to other tables/customers. But now, I kept my mouth shut, cos otherwise, they will question us again for trying to cheat that few dollars thing.

We will never ever visit this restaurant again. If you really wish to visit, please take every photo of the dishes served to your table as an evidence to win...

Thought this was an excellent restaurant. Having walked past a number of times at different times of the day, it always seems to be pretty busy, almost always with locals too.

I think it will take a few tries to order the perfect dinner, but our first attempt was pretty decent.

Enjoyed scrambled eggs with tomato (a favourite of the Mrs from time she spent in China). Chilli clams with garlic were great. Steamed broccoli with garlic, also fantastic, nice to have some fresh vegetables.

We ordered dumplings which for me were very special. Only ordered them because every other table had them and we didn’t. We were missing out. For personal reasons they took me back to my childhood. I’d go back just for these.

In addition to these dishes we also had some bbq: chicken, pork belly, pork ribs and sausage. All were very nice. A big hit of cumin too which is nice to see. Beware, for the bbq there is a minimum order of 2 skewers, they’re between Sing$1-2 each, so it’s not the end of the world!

Need to go back to try a number of other dishes we saw other people ordering, and to get more of those dumplings!! Also, I need to take some more (and better) photos, I was far too busy eating.

Beer is cheap too! Total bill came to below Sing$50 which is really reasonable for the...

Came here for lunch. Had their plum juice I think. Not that sour and a little on the sweet side.

Skewers were not bad. They weren't spicy at all. So you can actually request for more chili. -Grilled mutton kebab. Mutton wasn't that strong so ok. -Grilled beef kebab. Ok. -Grilled beef tendon. Translucent and very chewy. Could use more seasoning taste. -Grilled sausage. Chinese sausage which were quite sweet. -Grilled pork intestine. Chewy intestine with some smell and was skewered with some cut green chili. -Grilled pig kidney. Ok but I don't really like kidney. -Grilled chicken gizzard. Good and slightly chewy. -Grilled chicken heart. Ok -Grilled chicken kebab. Tender chicken. -Grilled stinky tofu. Crispy tofu with a slight stinky tofu taste. -Grilled chives. Quite salty but good. -Grilled baked mushroom (aka oyster mushroom). Very salty. -Grilled mushroom (aka shiitake mushroom). Quite oily. -Grilled needle mushroom (aka Enoki mushroom). Seasoning just nice. -Grilled chicken feet. Quite chewy.

Overall quite ok I guess. There's also a point system which most China food restaurants uses. So you can accumulate points from your bill and exchange it for items...