A room with a view - wasted

Si Chuan Dou Hua
80 Raffles Place
#60-01 UOB Plaza 1
Singapore 048624
Tel: +65 6535 6006


I believe strongly that the design of any place should incorporate its greatest and most distinct assets. In the case of Si Chuan Dou Hua @ UOB Plaza, this is the spectacular view of downtown Singapore. Along with that is the wondrous natural light that it gets, being at the top of one of Singapore’s tallest skyscrapers and – unlike other restaurants closer to the ground – bathed in sunshine that is unfettered by the collection of other buildings around it.

Unfortunately, the designers of this place chose to hide these assets behind a labyrinth of thick walls. Granted, these walls are of dark, sensual teak, and very good to look at in their own right, but one can’t help feel cheated after travelling 60 floors – via two elevators, three if you come from the basement carpark. I expected a grand view, and I didn’t get it. The windows are aesthetically well designed too, but ultimately not enough to let in the light, and inexplicably fitted with blinds and framed with cross sections.

For the crowd that the restaurant targets, though, it might make the most sense. I imagine that the restaurant serves mostly the business lunch crowd – who want to feel cocooned away in private rooms, with only occasional reminders of the heights they occupy. Indeed, the perimeter of the restaurant – the areas with the most access to the view and the outside light – had largely been set aside for these private rooms, leaving the inner chambers of the restaurant with little natural light and without an inkling of the tremendous view that lay beyond those teak walls.


I was at Si Chuan Dou Hua recently for a workshop, after which they fed us with dim sum. I have to say, the dim sum here is surprisingly very competent. One wouldn’t expect a Sichuan restaurant to be well versed in what is a primarily Cantonese genre, but I found out that the chefs (Malaysian) had trained in Hong Kong, and you can’t get much closer to the source than that.


The pastries that I tried – a pancake of chicken floss and a seafood sesame bun – were exquisite, and the pastry itself was first-rate. Working in my line I have begun to develop an appreciation of the possible highs and lows of texture, of crumb structure and of mouthfeel that bakers can accomplish – and I can say that the chefs at Si Chuan Dou Hua know what they are doing.

Because prawns are an integral ingredient in so many dim sum staples, exercising care in the choice and use of this ingredient is paramount. The ones used at Si Chuan Dou Hua are juicy and succulent – especially in an excellent beancurd skin dish – and if they had ever been frozen, I certainly could not tell.


There were a couple of missteps, though. The dan dan noodles came in a sauce which was all heat and no flavour. Spice is well and good if it accentuates, or imparts flavour, but to numb the tongue and not offer a reward with that shock is just cruel. Another disappointment was the house beancurd. I bought a couple of orders to take away, and – conscious of the importance of consuming them “fresh” – sat down to eat it at the earliest opportunity. But the beancurd was not as smooth as some versions I’ve eaten, and also came in a syrup that was not sweet enough by some distance. It was actively disappointing, and for a restaurant that references beancurd in their name, quite a letdown indeed.