My friend keeps posting ig stories of Eat 3 Bowls 呷三碗 at Crawford Lane that I can no longer ignore the Taiwanese eatery. This is a happy success story. Eat 3 Bowls originally occupied a stall at Seah Im Food Centre but moved to open this restaurant.

The restaurant is decorated as a classroom setting, which is indicative of its crowd: mostly youths, teens to late 20s, except for us. There was a brisk queue when we were there but it moved quickly.

Eat 3 bowls set includes lu rou fan, chicken rice, mee sua, and a drink.

The menu is simple enough: just 3 bowls of mains that you can order a la carte or as a set: lu rou fan, chicken rice, and intestine mee sua.

I recommend getting the Eat Three Bowls with drink set ($15), which consists of the 3 bowls of mains and a choice of drink. The drink can be Taiwan bubble tea (Black Tea / Green Tea / Oolong Tea) or brown sugar bubble tea latte. This could be shared between two persons if you order some sides.

For the serving, the bowls are slightly bigger than normal rice bowls, you know, those orange bowl that hawkers use to scoop rice.

All three bowls are excellent, the best among them is the lu rou fan. It has a fantastic starchy and grainy texture, as if potatoes have dissolved completely in the sauce, although we couldn’t find any potato. Maybe they just use starch. In any case, because of this magic sauce, it makes the rice so addictive.

The intestine mee sua is quite good. It’s just a touch vinegary although I prefer it to be bolder, more vinegary. The oysters here aren’t plump. On the whole, it’s not as good as Shihlin Fried Chicken’s mee sua which is my favourite mee sua in Singapore because it has plump oysters and is vinegary enough. But still, this bowl of mee sua is serviceable.

Boba is included in the set.

This is the first time I ate Taiwanese chicken rice and I like it. It is slightly salty, not soy-sauce salty, but salt-salt salty. This salt serves to undercut the heaviness of the lu rou fan and the vinegary mee sua. Although the chicken rice seems to complement the two dishes, it stands on its own.

Braised cabbage is too limp

The friend, who keeps posting ig stories on Eat 3 Bowls, suggests getting the herbal pork rib soup ($6) after my visit. So we didn’t order it. We got the braised Chinese cabbage ($4.2) to pretend to be healthy. It is braised so long that it is too soft, even a baby can it—food should have some texture.

Braised intestine

The braised intestines ($5.80) is not bad but the sauce isn’t dark and salty enough.

Also: all bubble tea here go for S$3.80 a la carte, which is about half price of what specialised boba shops are selling. Goes to show how much profits boba shops are getting. Our fresh milk with brown sugar pearls is good. The pearls are soft and chewy, comparable to boba shops.

My only gripe is that all the food wasn’t warm, even the rice. They were served at room temperature. As an old man, I like hot food. My guess is, judging from how swift the food arrived on our table, all the food has been prepared since morning, and they only need to scoop it.

This is the a la carte bowl of lu rou fan ($8), about 1.5 times bigger than the one in the set.

Including an a la carte lu rou fan ($8) and braised egg ($1.30), we paid $34 for two persons. We overordered and were too full. We shouldn’t have ordered the a la carte lu rou fan, which would bring the bill down to $26 for two.

Menu

Food: 7/10
Service: 7/10
Decor: 6/10
Price: 7.5/10

You may be interested in…
–Lai Lai Taiwan Casual Dining, City Square Mall: Super Turned On By Their Shallot Chilli Oil and Free Salad Bar
–The Salted Plum, Boat Quay: The Popular Pop-up FIVE TEN, Serving Taiwanese Street Food, Has Found a Home
–Taipei, Taiwan (Part I) – Introduction, Wu Fen Pu and Raohe Night Market
–Goldleaf New Taiwan Porridge Restaurant, Amoy Street

Written by Dr. A. Nathanael Ho.