2011.02.19, Bugis Iluma Mall, The Manhattan Fish Market, Red Hot Treasure

Red Hot Treasure (S$9.90)

Dipping Sauce (Left to right: minced pickle, sour cream, hot sauce)

The Manhattan Fish Market

The Manhattan Fish Market

We were suggested by one of our group members to eat at this restaurant after watching 127 hours at Bugis Mall. The restaurant itself is actually located in the Bugis Mall itself on the 4th floor. As the name tells you, this place offers a variety of American seafood dishes. It's actually a mall-type  restaurant so the price as we can imagine is just pricier than the market's establishments. Since they offer more like American type of seafood dishes, they offer several types of breaded fish fillet with french fries, green salad, and also steamboat dish.

What I ordered actually called the Red Hot Treasure. It's two pieces of oil pan-fried fish fillet with fried rice on the side. Garnished with sambal (hot sauce), two pieces of clams, a sliced of lime and tomato. The food was actually quite good. They cooked the fish lightly with oil while preserving the natural juice and taste that comes from the fish. I think the main ingredients of the fish were the typical salt and pepper but it was good enough for me. The fried rice was actually complemented the fish very well. The fried rice did not taste too salty (as they don't want to over power the taste of the fish) while offering quite light buttery taste to our taste bud. The two clams were ok, nothing too extraordinary out of them :) The sambal was actually quite interesting. I do like sambal actually. When the sambal touches your tongue, it didn't give a spontaneous heat in the beginning. It tasted sweet and slightly tangy... but once you started to swallow the sambal and it hits the back of your tongue the heat starts slowly creeping out and filling your whole mouth with that sensation. It's not too hot (to me at the least), but it was fun. :D

The restaurant also offered another set of dipping sauce that could be shared with another person in your group. The green part was actually sliced-diced-minced-salty pickle... sort of. I didn't quite like it because it didn't offer any strong and unique flavor. I prefer the one that they offer in the market food court better. The white part was the sour cream. Again, nothing special about it. And the last one was another sambal. It's not spicy at all to me. I tasted sourness that comes from it instead of the heat. The flavor profile was similar to tasting Tabasco by itself. You don't taste the heat, instead you only tasted the sourness. If you think that Tabasco is hot, then this one is probably hot enough for you... and you could ignore my opinion about any kind of hot sauce in the coming posts or the previous ones.

Overall: it's a good, comfortable restaurant offering types of seafood dishes that is familiar to us. The ambiance was also nice when I got there. The service was also quite fast considering the restaurant was about 80% full in the Friday night. I would recommend this restaurant if you want to have something that you're already familiar with (either the taste profile or the kind of dish that you had before), but if you're feeling adventurous.... hence this may not be the place for you.    

Rating: Food: A- (Taste: A-, Portion: A-, Price: A-), Place: A (Service: A, Cleanliness: A+, Ambiance: restaurant+)