Taking over the space of Owl Bar at Medical Alumni Association at SGH, Guriru is Teppei’s newest concept of hamayaki, which means charcoal-grilled seafood (available from 4pm onwards). But the poolside, open-air bbq joint–you can smell wafts of charcoal as they bbq the food–offers other meats, rice bowls, and salads. For lunch (12pm – 4pm), they serve chirashi don ($18 – $19). All sauces are made in-house.

For this review, I’ll rank the best to worst items.

Although it’s a seafood bbq, the Kurobuta pork belly ($12) is the best thing here. It’s slow-cooked for four hours and finished with homemade yakitori sauce on the grill. The bitter and crispy burnt ends sets off the sweet, tender, umami pork. Divine.

The Hyogo oysters ($10 for 3 pc, $19 for 6) are a steal! There are some choices to cook them: (1) raw with homemade ponzu sauce, (2) grilled with butter, or (3) grilled with syoyu sauce. Since they are fresh, it is recommended to eat the raw. Plump and juicy. Super recommended.

The gindara ($16) is fantastic but I attribute it more to the ingredient itself: gindara by itself is already milky and fatty, so it is not hard to make it into a great dish.

My sister liked the whole squid ($16) with syoyu sauce. It’s nice, chewy but not tough.

The chicken thigh ($12) with homemade yakitori sauce is a ubiquitous dish but they do it very well here. The skin is boldly charred and saccharine while the (unmarinated) meat is bland–and both skin and meat work well together.

Limited portions of salmon belly ($14), glazed with yakitori sauce, are available daily. It’s nice and fat but nothing really special.

One flaw of this restaurant is that it doesn’t serve much vegetables and eggplant ($9) is one of their recommended veg. It’s good.

The Japanese rice, slowcooked with a special sauce, and together with Hyogo oysters, makes the oyster rice ($18). The rice has absorbed the sweetness of the seafood. It is very delicious and this dish would have made one of the top on this list but the dish arrived cold.

The black tiger prawns ($6.50 per piece, $25 for 5 pc) are a disappointment like I am to my mom. The shell and flesh cannot be separated easily – which many people say is an indication of prawns being not fresh.

We tried two different beef, meltique beef ($18) and wagyu beef. The wagyu is delectable and would have made the top of the list but the meltique beef is weird, tasting like plastic. Do NOT order the meltique beef.

The crust of the smoked duck pizza ($20) is biscuit.

Although many bbq items are glazed similarly (with homemade yakitori sauce), there is a wide variety to choose from. Not all the dishes are fantastic but the good ones outweigh the bad. And the food goes well with beer. Poolside, naked lightbulbs, bbq food and beer – it feels like a holiday. Sounds like a place I would come with friends or colleagues after work.

Guriru
SGH Medical Alumni Association, 2 College Road Singapore 169850
t: +65 9010 7020
M-Th 12pm – 11pm
F12pm – 12am
Sat 4pm – 12am
Closed on Sunday

Food: 6.75/10
Price: 6.5/10
Decor/ambience: 6.5/10

You may be interested in…
–Boyutei, Ann Siang: A Disappointing Cafe Collab Between Michelin-Starred Whitegrass and Matcha Specialist Hvala
–La Belle Epoque, Boat Quay: Modern European Restaurant With Garden-inspired Dishes
–Oishii Ristorante, Tanjong Pagar: Japanese-Italian Omakase Starting from $48+ (6 courses), Ends 31st July
–Armoury, South Beach Quarter: Steakhouse with 15 Rotating Craft Beer Taps Adds Spanish Tapas to Their Menu

This was an invited tasting. Written by Dr. A. Nathanael Ho.