Saturday, February 21, 2009

Chinese Box

C says:

Black Angus at One Fullerton has moved to a quaint colonial bungalow building within the NUS Law campus along Bukit Timah Road. It occupies the second floor of the building, and on the ground floor is Chinese Box. The owner of both also used to run Superbowl congee at Bowl Quay, so you can expect a wide variety of congees at Chinese Box too. Unfortunately, their noodles and congees are only available at lunchtime; at dinner time the menu offerings are more standard Chinese restaurant fare.

We came here for lunch on Saturday; unfortunately one of their starters (the signature roast pork square) wasn’t available, so we ended ordering 2 noodles and a congee to share. We had a honey glazed char siew noodle, beef brisket noodle and congee with 3 eggs and pork.



The noodles themselves are really good – thin, springy and no overwhelming taste of alkali. Between the 2 noodles, the char siew was much better, mainly because of the really good honey sauce which was drizzled over the char siew. The char siew was tender and the noodles had a really good bite to them – very Hong Kong-style. Instead of being drenched in the usual thick gravy, the beef brisket noodles here were just served with a very light, subtly-flavoured sauce. On the one hand it allowed you to really taste the flavour of the noodles, but it was a tad too plain for me. The dominant taste ended up being the chilli oil that I kept adding to the noodles. The beef brisket itself was really good, though. Very soft, tender and flavourful.


The congee that we ordered consisted of minced pork, pork slices, century egg, salted egg and a raw egg cracked on top. I’m used to century egg in Cantonese congee but it was quite interesting to add salted egg to the mix as well. This was very enjoyable and the congee was typical Hong Kong/Cantonese style – very fine and smooth with almost no discernible rice grains.

As far as the noodles and congee go, the standard here is way better than Crystal Jade, for similar prices. I just wish they had the noodle and congee offerings at dinner time as well, then this could really be a regular haunt whenever we visit my folks.

A says:

The service is excellent. The food’s good but not exactly spectacular.

Chinese Box
NUS Law Faculty
House 4, 1D Cluny Road (opp. Eu Tong Sen Building)
Tel: 6219-7877
Lunch: 11.30 am to 3 pm
Dinner: 6 pm to 11 pm

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