THE PARAMOUNT

9th May 2009

The Paramount Restaurant
30 East Coast Road #01-01/01
Paramount Hotel & Shopping Arcade
Singapore 428751
Tel: +65 64403233

For us, Mother's Day was celebrated every year at different venues and occassionally we go to HDB coffee shop's cze char with set menus, one of which was near AMK Ave 4 FC & Market and I recalled that the food there was a good spread with some special creative dishes and yet served in generous portions to satiate and satisfy one's appetite.

Why do we continue to celebrate and jostle with the crowd during this weekend declared commercially as Mother's Days where restaurants and eateries herald fanfare dishes to draw families that tend to dine out and celebrate over normal days. Simple, most mums cooked all days, 3 meals or more throughout 365days a year and the love and care she provides was above all and this is just a simple recognised gesture of "thank you, mum" dinner.

You may even get a few generations in one outing on Mother's Day including great-grandmother, grandmother, mothers, married daughters, daughter-in-laws, all mother's thenselves and it's day of gathering and bonding at least for this matter besides the excuse of enjoying good food for the day.

Paramount Restaurant at East Coast is easily accessible as it is situated directly opposite Parkway Parade Shopping Centre and it has been there over 20years. It's belongs to the famous Tung Luk Group synonymous with excellent Cantonese cuisine and Sam Leong, the culinary maestro, currently the director of kitchen who just won another award in 2009.

My brother opted for the expensive menu set and when Sam (not Sam Leong) the manager in charge who has crossed over from Lei Garden eight month's ago, proposed to tweak the menu and that we will be satisfied with his recommendation, towards the end of the meal, in fact, I wasnt really so agreeable.

At 9pm, the crepe for the Beijing road duck was drier over freshly made ones.
The Buddha Jump Over the Wall soup where we individually had our share of small succulently prepared abalone with sharkfin was special but the Bamboo Clams was heavily sprinkled with pungent garlic was a bit hard to chew especially for my mum. Dont think the children enjoyed this too thought Sam claims he won third prize in a competition for this signature dish.

The next signature dish was the big prawns, deshelled and deepfried and embodied a very thick creamy pumpkin paste and sprinkled with bits of strawberries and apples. Each one has two prawns that sits on a very intricate rice nest, very skillfully prepared here.

The expensive Marble Goby Fish was served in slices and not served wholly as a fish. Meat is very tender and fresh.

The Teochew Fried Mee Suah was tasty but it appears so simple akin to bee hoon that you get from the hawker centre for breakfast and I wish they put more thoughts here.

So why was I not fully satisfied despite that the above-going gravitate towards nice, tasty delicious expensive ingredients, Precisely the point is that they came served in their original taste and form that if you have the given ingredients, you may get the same dish at home. Perhaps I always look for creativity in dishes that takes special effort and steps to prepare, not easily copied if I were to pay for an expensive meal. That's my personal opinion.

However, the plus point is Sam arranged for us a large Private Room complete with TV and Karaoke sets which can dish out Mandarin, English, Korean, Japanese, Vitenamese or Hindi songs and we were thankful for this. We had a juxtapose of not only good food but also a rendition of old songs and moderns songs which the old and young belt out during dinner.



Longevity Birthday Buns, a traditional bun with lotus paste fillings and shaped in the form of a peach


CREPES with crispy skins of the Beijing Roast Duck has be carved out to be served with crepe and a nice dipping sauce



BUDDHA JUMP OVER THE WALL is a soup richly brewed with expensive ingredients like the succulent mini abalone which was really nice, sharkfin, sea cucumber and herbs that are double boiled with chicken over long hours of fire to produce such rich stock as soup.



Deep Fried Prawn with Pumpkin Sauce on Rice Nest



Steam Marble Goby Fish

Braised House Special Beancurd with Nameko Mushrooms and Vegetables

Bamboo Clams is a mollusc and is so named because it looks like a long segment of a bamboo. When split open, it reveals the long flesh of meat and to me, it taste like squid, chewy.

Teochew Fried "Mian Sian" Mee Suah

Yam Paste with Almond Cream served with coconut

Yeah ! got Tv and Karaoke too spreads happiness to my nieces face.

TUNG LUK GROUP OF RESTAURANT

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