The Skewer Bar, Havelock Road

I found it very difficult to slap the Japanese label onto this post. The food from The Skewer Bar (727 Havelock Road, tel : +65 8933 5992) appears Japanese izakaya inspired with local influences. I wouldn't say that their standards are great. They're not mostly. Food's edible.

But according to some local Japanese guy who got sponsored to do a YouTube video on them, they're delicious and innovative. The lesson learnt to be gleaned here is a) not all Japanese are discerning and b) The Skewer Bar has sub standard quality control as this was not the main outpost that was featured in the video. The two need not necessarily be mutually exclusive.

Major gripe...everything's lukewarm. Most of the food do not feel/taste like they are freshly made.

There's Mandarin Wheat by Beijing's Jing-A Brewing Co. on tap. This was nice - easy drinking brew with some citrus. Like a less complex Hoegaarden. 

There's a four ton chawanmushi. 4 蛋...get it? Aside from the steamed egg custard, there's half a quail's egg, bits of century egg and a smidgeon of salted egg. It's lukewarm.

Scallops with garlic butter. Also strangely lukewarm. Flavours pretty good but the garlic and butter combination has always been an easy score.

I thought the otah tamagoyaki was not bad. The otah inside the egg tasted like Muar otah. Don't think they made them. Don't think the tamagoyaki were made on order as well. I get they feeling that these were pre-made and heated when they needed to serve.

What was unexpectedly nice was their ngoh hiong maki. These tasted much like a regular ngoh hiong with a solid chunk of prawn inside. I could even taste the water chestnuts. Toppings were fried tempura bits and tobiko which they were stingy with. Nicely done this one.

I need to run through these skewers. They don't taste fresh off the grill and sizzling like how I expected them to. I've had enough kushiyaki to know.

• unagi - wouldn't get those again.
• lamb - dry and a little stringy. Meat no fat. Not difficult to find Chinese shops doing 羊肉串儿 that outclasses these.
• hatsu - not bad. Don't know why it has been teriyaki-ed when salt will suffice.
• bacon wrapped quail eggs - okay pretty decent.
• bacon wrapped lychee - not bad, wouldn't mind more of them. Smaller than I imagined though.

Bacon's not very salty or smokey.

Grilled pineapples - barely luke warm. Barely crossed into the threshold of balance between sweet and citrus. It was on the verge of being more overbearing with the acid for their level of sweetness. I can't imagine how sour these might have been before they grilled it.

I was initially curious about their bbq stingray but after a show of their standards, decided against it.