En Japanese Dining Bar

207 River Valley Road
#01-57 UE²
Singapore 239917
Tel: 67352212

I stick by my Japanese restaurant theory:

When in a Japanese restaurant and you hear a lot of chatter in Japanese, you are in the right place.

The bad news is when the staff speaks more Japanese than English and you almost have a communication breakdown. Nonetheless, you can resort to pointing and they will rattle the Japanese name of the dish back at you, which I gathered it means that they understand and have taken your order.


Grilled Yellowtail with Teriyaki Sauce

They have a page of daily specials, a regular menu and a set dinner which will cost you S$28 which is inclusive of a mug of beer, two appetizers, two half portion main courses from a choice of five and a dessert if my memory doesn’t fail me. We ordered a la carte from the daily specials, which were interesting and wonderfully prepared. From the daily specials, we had the pumpkin omelette, sour plum and salted fish fried rice and grilled yellowtail with teriyaki. Along with that, we ordered the yakitori platter from the regular menu. The yakitori platter was terrible, the meat was too dry and they served cartilage which I initially mistook for squid, and really nothing impressed. The daily specials however were flavoursome. All the three dishes were good, but I think the yellowtail was the best for its simplicity and being succulent. The total dinner cost was S$60 and it averages at about S$20 per person without drinks.

The service is terribly lacking: the food took too long to prepare that we were starving when the food arrived. We also spilled some green tea on the floor which we needed them to clean up but it took them almost 5 minutes because they did anything even though they would serve the table next to us and almost totally ignore the puddle of tea on the floor. But I guess if I had to choose between good food, bad service and bad food and good service, I have to go with the former and hence, I’ll most probably be back.