Flavvors at the recently opened Orange Tee Building is a welcome addition to Toa Payoh’s Chinese fast-food turf of food courts, kopi tiams and the ubiquitous Crystal Jade Restaurant. Boasting a two-tiered, red-themed dining space with chairs beautifully upholstered in Oriental motifs and an enormous, black-rimmed lamp, the partially glass-wrapped restaurant feels, at first glance, more like a pricey Chinese restaurant.
But we were quickly won over by the concise yet sumptuous menu of affordably priced, non-denominational Chinese food – neither Cantonese nor Teochew – among them, a mound of XO sauce-licked fried rice with bits of perfectly fried salmon cubes. The dish, while big enough for four, is just $8.80. The xiao long bao (soup dumplings) were delicious meat parcels bursting with a satisfyingly savoury pork jus, while the Japanese pear and chicken soup was an addictively tart-and-sweet consommé with white fungus and wolfberries.
It’s not all familiar classics, though. A riot of deep-fried kai lan leaves, pork floss and silver fish served atop delicious sprigs of well-oiled kai lan stem revealed the chef’s occasional streak for creativity, but less successful was his heavy take on ah bo leng, an overly dense golden yam and pumpkin cream topped with melon cubes – a dish typically served in a ginger-based sweet soup. EC
See our Hot Tables listing
Find a restaurant and book online