Friday, January 06, 2017

Ju Hao, Tiong Bahru Plaza

I first noticed Ju Hao (#02-112 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road) when I saw them at Square 2 at Novena some time ago. From what I read, they were previously operating in the food court at Lavender and had worked with MOF to reinvent their business. 

The first thing that struck me while looking at the menu was the reminder of Din Tai Fung. There were enough similarities that one could be forgiven if they were to think them a clone of DTF. With the number of parallels that could have been drawn, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the kitchen people actually came from DTF. 

They are even priced quite similarly.


Here's some garlic spicy pork with cucumber thing. These aren't bad, but it's not exactly very mention worthy either. It's a lot less spicy than it looked.


Behold that pork chop fried rice. Doesn't it just look DTF? Well actually, there was a difference. Ju Hao is less heavy handed on the five spice marinade on their pork chops. I'm considering this a serious alternative though.


Even the xiao long bao looks similar, but one can tell that the DTF ones are made with more delicate skin and greater finesse with the folds. These above are actually salted yolk xiao long bao and they're pretty good. Blows the salted yolk sauce shit that's been going around out of the water.


That's some three treasure signature noodle. Not very tasty at all and their beef briskets were kinda tough. That "special" sauce with the noodles didn't taste so special. I wonder if restaurants these days even understand what the word 'signature' means. Note to self, never order this again.

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