Majestic Bay Seafood Restaurant, Gardens by the Bay

Been hearing numerous mentions of this restaurant (18 Marina Gardens Drive, #01-10 Flower Dome, Gardens by the Bay, tel : +65 6604 6604) and their signature coffee crab that was suppose to be at present juncture, unique. The owner as I read was a chef who had previously cut his teeth under some fairly prestigious roles like the once executive chef at the vaunted Hai Tien Lo at Pan Pacific, Majestic Restaurant and Jade at Fullerton Hotel.

One of the starters we had was pickled cucumber and grapes in Kyoto dressing. The latter I'm guessing was a citrus, soy and sesame based dressing. Rather refreshing.

What was unexpectedly tasty were the deep fried lychees that were stuffed with lobster, crab and mushroom. Of which the presence of the former two came in the form of flavours and not textures. One can only stuff so much into lychees after all. The batter was surprisingly light despite appearance and there was a taste almost felt like curry in them. Pretty good for deep fried things that I often do not fancy.

Not so impressed by the seafood fried rice with tobiko. The rice was grainy, well fried and supplemented with multitudes of textures from the grains, bits of scallops & shrimp, meat floss of sorts and even rice crispies. It was just a pity that everything was bland.

I had been expecting nothing less than decent and at least a minimal of fruity flavours for the sweet and sour pork with strawberries, guava and green apples. My expectations were met squarely.

Asparaguses and mushrooms stir fried with garlic were just that.

The kopi sauce tasted like Garrett's caramel popcorn. Albeit a much more full bodied version and had  a more pronounced bittersweet aroma that was actually quite addictive. This meant that we were licking the sauce off the shells before getting to the meat because there wasn't any other way to get to the sauce unlike chilli crab. The crab itself wasn't so impressive. Meat was stuck to the shell and any natural sweetness from the crustacean was overwhelmed by their really robust kopi sauce.

Mee sua with baby abalones was quite nice. That being said, the mee sua didn't come with a rich abalone or shellfish flavour. I'm not sure if it should be. It just tasted like a nicely done mee sua. While it said portions for 3-4 on the menu, I am pretty sure one hungry person could have finished it.

These cream filled mochi were mediocre. The cream had barely any flavour and the same could be said for the bits of strawberries in them. I could hardly identify those bits as strawberries. The stir fried nian gao tasted pretty good from the aroma brought about from the coating of desiccated coconut and sesame seeds. But it also tasted more like kueh ko swee than nian gao.

Couldn't say that the double boiled Chinese pear dessert was memorable either because I'm actually having difficulty thinking of what to say about it. Nothing registered.

Salted egg custard buns were just so so. In the recent years, these buns have become wildly popular. Most dim sum eateries have started offering them because they're generally well liked. The ones made here were sadly, not the better ones around. I'm thinking that dessert is not a forte here.