Imperial Treasure Steamboat Restaurant (TripleOne Somerset) - One of most Luxurious Steamboats

This place is the ideal place to have good, quality steamboat in the comfort of posh environment.

The soup base available includes the familiar chicken soup, pork bones soup and the unconventional satay soup and more; varieties are always welcome. Even the chicken soup and pork bone soup here, are like no others found in other steamboat establishments, obviously, the ingredients had been cooked for a certain amount of time to imbue the stock with strong, fragrant flavours. I found the ginseng soup base to be too bitter for steamboat and its price is too expensive, so this one can be skipped.

Patrons will be given a tray of condiments (about 12 of them) to make a customized mixture of sauce that truly suits one's preferences. Though the chopped garlic lacks that pungent smell I expect from freshly chopped garlic.

There are choice ingredients like live prawns, kurobuta pork, dumplings, freshly made fishballs (with minimum flour used, good!), vegetables, spring rolls and more in the menu up for ordering. My personal opinion is that the Tang O vegetable is too expensive (top in price among all vegetables) and has a bitter taste, so it is best to avoid ordering this. A better choice is the baby spinach that has a neutral taste, therefore fully absorbing the essence of the broth.

The service is decent also. Though all these come with a hefty price tag. This is still worth for that occasional indulgence. Have become a regular of this place already! However, I notice that the price of the items have been steadily increasing ...

My Thoughts: Nice, but a bit expensive

Nearest car park: TripleOne Somerset's car park

Nearest MRT: Somerset

111 Somerset Road
TripleOne Somerset #01-21
Singapore
Contact No: 67328231

Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck Restaurant (Paragon) - Asia's top 50, huh?

I had visited Imperial Treasure at Paragon many years ago, but I did not write a review on it since it will not be a fair assessment based in such distance memory and I was not exactly picky about food way back then. Nonetheless, I had a fairly good impression of that visit and since this restaurant is the only SG Chinese restaurant to make it into Asia's top 50, I decided to visit this restaurant again. Turned out that I was quite disappointed with the overall standard of this place. There are many other better Chinese restaurants than this one (in terms of food and service), eg, Summer Palace, Li Bai, Paradise Pavilion, Asia Grand, Wan Lok, Jiang Nan Chun and Canton Recipe House. Even Crystal Jade Golden Palace, the neighbour a few doors is way better. I cannot see how this one could snag a spot in San Pellegrino's list.

Onto food, the taste and quality is not too bad, but not great either. I had tried the dumpling soup, vegetable dumplings and congee which are all... meh; slightly salty to be easy on the palate but lack complexity. It is hard to go wrong with fried dumplings (unless using stale ingredients), so no extra big points for doing this dish right. The only dish that impressed me was the crispy rice rolls; smooth, velvety rice flour skin wrapped around the intensely flavoured cha siew and crunchy fried dough bits. The combination worked wonderfully in creating different, harmonious textures in one roll. I actually wanted to add more orders for the roasted duck and desserts, but the service is so all over the place that I gave up trying to get a staff to place the orders.

As I dined at the lounging area outside of the restaurant, I must say that the ambience is horrible. The table is not exactly of the right height to eat my meal comfortable; there was a need to slightly hunch down when eating at those tables. There was no privacy or cosy environment to speak of and the number of staff assigned to lounge area was insufficient to handle the patrons. And not all the staffs know what was going on. When one staff told us about the issue about one of the orders, the others had zero idea on what was going on, thus of no help. So we ended looking for that specific staff just to query more on the problem. Trying to get the attention of the staff is no easy feat either.

While I'm not discounting the possibility of going back to patronize this restaurant, this is not on the top of list of places I like to visit regularly.

My Thoughts: Quite Okay

Nearest car park: Paragon's car park

Nearest MRT: Orchard

Paragon, #05-42/45
290 Orchard Road

Singapore

Contact No: 67327838