Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger: Shin Kushiya, VivoCity

I've been spoilt by Kazu, so most kushiyaki to me are trying to get there. Except for one or two others (or perhaps three) that are noticeably above the crowd, the rest are well...... trying. Shin Kushiya (#02-120, Vivocity, 1 Harbourfront Walk, tel : +65 6275 8766) has been around for quite a while and I've never had to chance to drop by until recently. I've been told that while they aren't they best there is, they're better than the most. I personally think having multiple branches brings the questions of quality and consistency into the equation, but I'll not dwell on that here.

Since there's pictures, I'll try to summarise. I will strongly recommend against the calamari and lamb persillade. The former is 60% batter, greasy and belongs to somewhere at the top of the list of worst deep fried calamari I've eaten. The latter is just overwhelmed by the mustard and frankly, for what they were charging, I expect better quality and quantity of meat.

The rest are decent. Their foie gras seemed to be dusted with a super thin crumbly skin which gave another dimension to the texture of something that generally just liquifies in your mouth. Don't mind having their grills again, but doesn't exactly make me hanker for their food. I think I could attribute that partially to their quality of char aroma which wasn't really quite up there.

The uni/roe/truffle oil pasta was a pretty nicely done plate of noodles. I can only gripe about how little uni one gets for the money they are charging. Pretty expensive I must say.

Their mochi desserts are actually pretty nice.