Shin Yeh

Sghin Yeh is a Taiwanese restaurant chain well known in Taiwan, established in Singapore on the second floor of Liang Court. The dining room is spacious and overlooks the Clarke Quay canal. Many private rooms are available for large groups, making it a popular choice for family gatherings.

A couple of their signature dishes are based on Taiwanese bottarga. The bottarga is wrapped into a cuttlefish fishcake, and lightly baked. The slices are then served with fresh leek. Probably due to the light cooking process, the bottarga tends to be drier and more intense in flavour than I am used to.

I prefer their other bottarga dish, which consists in slices of Bottarga sandwiched in-between tomato, turnip and leek and accompanied by black beans. This is for me such a different way of having this delicacy. Although I still prefer to have it Italian style with olive oil and bread, this combination is more healthy and refreshing.

The duck with preserved vegetables in is very juicy and well flavoured by the buillon it is served with.

I liked the pig's trotter with steamed peanuts, although there wasn't much meat in it, and I can have a cheaper, larger and meatier portion elsewhere (see my review of Hiang Ji).

The string beans with mined pork is a Chinese classic and Shin Yeh's version is very tasty and not as oily as others. As a personal preference, the best string beans still remains Silk Road's.

Their signature pan-fried turnip pancake didn't particularly impress me, as it tasted quite like a simple home made egg pancake.

This was the best dish out of all. The sea bass with eggplant and tofu in special stock (S$5/100gr) comes in a large clay-pot with a generous amount of tofu chunks and aubergine strips. But what makes this dish outstanding is the thick, rich stock based on yellow beans. The fish is slightly coated in flour and pan fried first so the skin deeply absorbs the sauce. One portion is only about S$25 (about 500gr) and is just right for about 2-3 people.

It is no surprise that this restaurant is normally busy, despite being located in a shopping mall that is not mainstream. Shin-yeh offers a good variety of specialty dishes that cannot be found elsewhere in Singapore, differentiating itself from the vast majority of Chinese family restaurants.

Shin Yeh
Website: http://www.shinyeh.com.sg/
Address: Liang Court Shopping Centre, #02-19
Telephone: +65 6338 7337