Restaurant Aisyah (西北香), Telok Ayer Street

I was keen to try Restaurant Aisyah (176 Telok Ayer Steet, tel : +65 9372 4321) when I read about them opening earlier in the year. The reason was because they were suppose to be a showcase of cuisine from the region of Xinjiang which is uncommon on this island and exploring some of these Chinese Muslim food from that region has been a thing of mine. We managed to come down for lunch recently. Pity - I wanted to like them.

Tried their cumin mutton dry noodles. Reminded me instantly of the Tohu Goshi langmeni at the Dolan Uyghur Restaurant because of the similar type of noodles and sauce - with some differences. The portions here were puny. The amount of cumin flavour for a dish with cumin in its name was....let's say puny. The minced mutton had a very good amount of natural meat flavour going on but I wished there were more of it. Not a bad plate of noodles but I can imagine this being much better.

Not much mutton in the cumin mutton fried rice as well. Ditto for the cumin flavour. Not much ingredients in it for what it's worth. As a fried rice, it was not bad. As a cumin mutton fried rice, it was mediocre. I'd pay no more than $2 for it if I had a choice.

The menu mentioned stir fried kailan and beef. Unless it was stir fried in water, I'd say that the vegetables and beef were likely boiled. Not a bad dish but wasn't what I had expected from a stir fry. Not much beef flavour coming from the meat too.

The skewers were a last attempt to validate the restaurant. We wanted this to be good so that we could at least have a reason to come back. Left two were lamb and right three were chicken hearts. Latter was not bad. A little dry compared with those from izakaya/kushiyaki joints but I could go along. Mutton was $3 a skewer, double the dollar cost at Manchurian Restaurant and only half as good so that would make them four times as expensive. I wouldn't say that the taste was bad but we've had better.

It's a little difficult to justify $3 for these things when it's not so difficult to find street level quality for about a dollar each. What bothered me also was that these guys for some reason are holding back on the cumin which I think is self defeating.