Yi Jia South Village Seafood Restaurant

I read on Sizzling Woks about Yi Jia South Village Seafood Restaurant @ Blk 21 Toa Payoh Lorong 7, #01-298. The pictures and recommendations on the book look decently attractive. Honestly, I held very high hopes but I was utterly disappointed.

It's a coffee shop in Toa Payoh area. I was a little amused by the signboard "Dear Customer Please Lower Your Voice After 12 Midnight." I thought it was kind of disturbing and irritating to see such a "warning" sign.

Anyway, the menu was tattered and old. However, I could see that most tables were already chopped by a piece of paper with customer names on it by 5pm++. Wahhh... got so popular meh? I was very eager to try for myself to see if it's really so good.

Guess what? The staff seemed super busy and in a mad rush. Most of them were sitting down and having their dinner @ 5pm++ so nobody served us. I thought it was weird. Then, we actually walked to the counter to take the menus ourselves before one kind auntie staff finally helped us. Dang, a very bad first impression!

The first dish was totally disappointing. The beans were not totally cooked. It's overly spicy and hard, like half cooked. It felt like after the chefs were done with their rushed dinner, they rushed out our food for us. =/ 1/5

The tofu was alright. Extremely crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. The portion was quite a lot too. However, it was a bit salty. 3/5

The recommended pork $10. Not so good. Not hot enough. Some of the pork were hard to chew. The sauce wasn't anything special. It tasted like any normal cai fan ones to me. 2/5

The recommended strawberry chicken $10. The whole plate had more of crispy chicken skin than chicken meat. It's just fried chicken covered in strawberry sauce. Nothing more than that. Did you notice the plate was chipped off too? 2/5

The bittergourd soup ($3.50) with lots of ingredients and not much soup....... 2/5

I had a bad experience overall. The only good point I could see was the big portions of food given + reasonable pricing. Maybe that's why it's so populated?