Straits Kitchen

"You need peanut sauce to go with satay, you know?" 

"There are different varieties of laksa. Penang laksa wins." 

Straits Kitchen is the perfect place for a Singaporean food crash course, in the comfort of an air-conditioned environment . Over the course of 1+ hour and some accidental eavesdropping while walking around to get my food, there was a lot of food tutoring going on by Singaporeans to foreigners. 

Straits Kitchen is pretty much like a high class hawker centre. Here are certain interesting aspects of this place. Firstly, the food is halal. Secondly, I like how they have different kinds of plates for different kinds of food, instead of your old, boring white plate. Thirdly, they have big trays for you to put your little plates in them- so considerate! Fourthly, every station is manned (i.e. your food is more likely than not cooked on the spot).

I zoomed in right to the Indian food. I pretty much love Indian food and took some tandoori chicken, nann and roti prata. The tandoori chicken was delicious- Charred, bursting with flavour and very juicy too! The roti prata was not greasy yet not cardboard-dry.

The skin of the popiah was nice and thin, but the vegetables unfortunately lacked flavour and was quite bland.  

I didn't try any of the Malay food because nothing particularly appealed to me. I have to say the smell of the belacan was heavenly when I walked past it! 

The Chinese wok selection comprised of some deep fried food items, fried rice, fried noodles and some egg with tofu thingy. Besides these wok selection, there's also a noodle selection where you can have prawn mee soup, laksa, chicken noodle soup etc. I tried the Hainanese style steamed chicken. They basically cut a small portion of chicken for you and drizzle soya sauce over it, just like what they do at the chicken rice stalls. The chicken was very smooth. 

I tried the salt and pepper prawn which i ate with the shell because it's healthy this way with all the calcium intact. Okay, that's not the main reason, I admit. It was because I was just plain lazy to remove the shell. The prawn was a little over deep fried. 

Although the satay is done on the spot, it didn't take very long for the satay to be ready. The satay is not overcharred and is very sweet. 

A galore of nonya kueh. See that empty plate in the middle? It's supposed to be kueh dadar which is done on the spot. It's one of the best kueh dadar I have ever eaten, incredibly smooth skin with lots of juicy shredded coconut within. I tried the thing next to the kueh dadar and it was quite bad- too dry. It contains corn.

My test of good ondeh ondeh depends on the skin and whether it instantly bursts in your mouth. It burst pretty much instantly but the skin was too thick. The cake next to it was a very popular item although I felt that it was far too sweet.

Besides these, there was also a station where there is warm dessert. However, the station looked strangely deserted and I didn't get to try the famous goreng pisang. They had some deep fried items on display but nobody was manning the station and it seemed like the food was left there for quite some time. At the same station, there is also ice kacang and chendol.

The ice cream quality is very good. The flavours are very Singaporean and includes coconut, durian and sweet corn ice cream. For sherbet flavours, they have mango and soursop. I tried the mango sherbet and it was sour and shiok.

You get free flow of juices as well. There's mango, sour plum, barley, rose flavour drinks.

Buffet lunch is $44++. Food quality's pretty good but I find it a little too expensive, considering that there are not many expensive food items but food that you can easily get in a hawker centre or decent nonya kueh stall. I wish they could put little tags in front of the food itself, instead of putting it as part of the menu at the side. This is a perfect place for those who are looking for halal buffets or want to bring their foreign friends to experience a slice of Singapore in a comfortable environment.

Straits Kitchen 
Grand Hyatt Singapore
10 Scotts Road
Tel No: 6 732 1234