Astons Specialties, East Coast Road

This dinner was organized by fatpig of Timeless Facade. It was also a first opportunity for me to attach faces to some names that I have been making various forms of correspondences to. Included in tonights first run to Aston, are also a very lovely trio of ladies from CozyCot. If I was asked, I thought the restaurant was a mixture of hits and misses. Read on....

Astons is located along a row of shop houses at Katong - address states East Coast Road. It's \somewhere across the street from Roxy Square. We arrived approximately 5-10 minutes before the reservation which was made at 8p.m. Apparently, no one  in the restaurant registered the reservations. And that was the scene at our arrival.

We were addressed appropriately for the inadequacy of failing to record the reservations very quickly by the busy but friendly counter staff. Managed to get the next table after about 20 minutes of wait. Which I thought was a nice job instead of putting the reservation into denial and making us wait with the queue. I'm sure I would have left if they did but I guess they were serious about their business.

The interior of of the restaurant was decorated in warmish shades. The seating space looked like it could accommodate about 50-60 people. Maybe. With the entrance wide open and ventilation from just a couple of ceiling fans and 2 air conditioners - one can imagine how comfortable it can be to have to wait in line. Not exactly the best of places for making conversations unless one typically enjoys humidity and heat. Would have been great if there was better air conditioning.

The menu was placed at the counter of the entrance. That was also the place which orders are made. The counter guy was kind enough to oblige taking our orders for 8 at our table which I thought was a nice gesture. Pic the right is the menu. I wasn't really sure what to expect because there were no pictures. You would have to hope that what you ordered looked like how you imagined it. Junie mentioned something along the lines of that also taking away the option for us to rant if the food didn't arrive the way it looked. Lol. The only item I thought sounded nice was their Burgundy Roast Beef. But we agreed as a group that what we would be going for tonight was Aston's wagyu steak which we were hoping that they didn't run out of. We managed to make our five orders.

Astons serves also IBC Root Beers which we ordered in a 6 pack. Never had IBC before but then again I'm not so much into sweet fizzy beverages. I've heard people saying that it's pretty good root beer. Tasted pretty much like regular root beer to me. Still good considering the fact that we were a couple of notches away from sweltering heat. 

IBC has an interesting bottle which features emboss onto the dark glass instead of the usual print or wrapper. You can see from the right that the labels aren't really obvious. Which made me want to scrutinise what was on the bottle. More than what I would usually do for bottled drinks. Maybe that was the intent of the bottle design?

The wagyu steaks were the highlights of the dinner. Think they weighed approximately 200g. There were some inconsistencies in the doneness. Some were more charred and others looked pink and juicy. The orders for our table also came at different times. The last two portions were served only when everyone else had almost finished their dinner. No one was elated about being put through the lengthy waits.

So the steaks themselves - each order came with a selection of two sides. Steak also came with a salty mushroom sauce on the side. The meat was fatty and well flavoured with each juicy bite. I liked it. Though it was a little small for me. Will give it credit for the flavour if not the portions. While it's not the best of grade Wagyu, I don't think anyone else actually offers something similar for this price point. $38.90. I just wished that it was bigger. Would have made it more satisfying.

That's the SuperShiok burger. It looked fat and juicy, laced with barbecue sauce and cheese along with sliced tomato and lettuce. At $12.50, one wouldn't expect less. I only managed to get a morsel which tasted okay to me. Patty's a little too dry. I don't think I'll come all the way here just for this.