In celebration of Mother’s and Father’s Days, Diamond Kitchen at Marina Parade and at Science Park present five new set menus and four new dishes. The sets range from $288+ (4-5 persons) to $888 (8-10 persons) from 1 May to 19 May and 1 to 20 Jun.  The four new dishes can be enjoyed a la carte or in the sets. In this review, I’ll first talk about their new dishes and then their signature dishes.

New Dishes

The salted egg yolk potato chips ($12) are sliced by hand, then deep-fried and tossed in their signature homemade salted egg sauce made from duck egg yolk, curry leaves, and chilli. It’s too much addiction but also too costly for a small bowl.

The yamballs with otah (6 pcs, $16) is like bite-sized yam-ring with housemade otah in the middle, made from fresh mackerel with a variety of spices including the restaurant’s “gan xiang” blend.” The otah has deep flavours, and yam and otah go well together. The crispy surface is pleasing but again, like the salted egg chips, I thought it is expensive for 6 pieces.

The 5-step “Duck Rice” ($24 small, $48 large) is the the most time-consuming dish to make, but unfortunately, it’s my least favourite. It takes 3 days to prepare and 5 steps of roasting, air-drying, streaming, deep frying and pan frying. It is a pancake of roast duck and glutinous rice in sweet Thai chilli. It tastes like an amalgamation of Chinese New Year things like nian gao and pork floss and Peking duck. All sweet things, which don’t sit well as a main, and it comes across as dry and slightly hard.

The last new dish, a dessert, warm pumpkin dessert ($3.50 / bowl), has bits of yam and crunchy chestnut. It’s nice, but perhaps too starchy.

Signatures

A herbal stock of Chinese wine, wolfberries, and dang gui is poured over live tiger prawns on hot stones in a bamboo basket – and then steamed for several minds. That’s why it’s called sauna prawns ($24 / $36 / $48). It’s nice, but I can skip this and spend the money on another crab.

The best dish of the night, their signature of signatures, gan xiang crabs (market price), uses Sir Lankan crabs in their speciality gan xiang sauce of hae bee hiam, curry powder, lemongrass, dried chilli, taucheo, and other ingredients. It’s slightly spicy but super aromatic. I don’t really like crabs but this one has me craving for more.

Their clam bee hoon in superior stock ($12 / $18 / $24) is a little too starchy for me.

In general, although the pricing is a tad high, the food is great, especially the crabs which are a perfect 10.

Food: 6.75/10
Price / value: 5.5/10
Decor / ambience: 6/10

You may be interested in…
–JUMBO Seafood @ Ion Orchard: New Outlet With Exclusive Dim Sum Items and Lavish Seafood Rice
–The Boiler, Esplanade: The Popular Communal Seafood Restaurant Comes to the City
–Uncle Leong Seafood, Punggol: Unexpected Great Service and Extremely Fresh Crabs
–New Ubin Seafood, Hillview: How I Spent $80 on Cze Char. Ouch.

Written by Dr. A. Nathanael Ho.