Too big to fail?

Big Eater Seafood (大食家海鲜)
34 Jalan Pari Budong
Picardy Gardens
Tel: +65 6245 7268

One of the most difficult things in eating, for me at least, is knowing when to stop – and I think the same applies to restaurants. I think the older generation of restaurateur mostly still subscribes to the growth-at-all-costs model, and often pursue expansion at the expense of retaining their authenticity. Growing is a process not to be rushed, and only so few that I have seen do it well.

I was at Big Eater Seafood the other day for a simple dinner with my mother, and it struck me immediately how quickly this place had grown. From a corner shophouse before I left Singapore all those years ago, to taking on one additional shop space, to its current three shop spaces – and that was just the one outlet. I believe they have since opened three other outlets as well. They are doing well, no doubt, but at what cost?

We were there for their famous KL-style hokkien mee, different from the Singapore kind in that the dish is typically made with thick, udon-style noodles, coated in a sweet black sauce and topped with all manner of seafood. It takes some imagination, but Big Eater is actually quite a nice place to eat seafood. It is not by the sea, but in fact situated right beside a large canal which - thankfully - does not smell. There aren’t that many high-rises around, so you actually get good wind, and dining al fresco there is not an unbearable as it is in other parts of Singapore.

The food at Big Eater was good – the KL hokkien mee had dropped in standard but was still better than anything you could find in Singapore, and better even than one version that we had had in KL itself. The tofu skin rolls with minced shrimp were excellent. The vegetables (we had kang kong) were cooked well and had good wok hei. Vegetables are always the best gauge of a tze char chef’s ability. You need to cook them such that they absorb the flavour of their accompaniments, yet not too much that they lose their texture. And because the cooking time is usually short, it is rather difficult to taste and correct for your seasonings. The cooks at Big Eater were no amateurs, that much is certain.

But the wait to find that out was unbearable. We waited an entire 45 minutes for our food, as did the table next to us who had been seated at the same time. As we proceeded with the meal it was evident that this was happening to almost everybody in the restaurant. The sad part was that it wasn’t even close to full, only about 70% packed, so I cannot imagine what would have happened had they been at capacity. The man at the table next to us was positively livid, and called his waiter over many times, only to hear the same helpless answer each time. Not even the best food tastes any good when you are angry, and it was only this thought (and the fact that I had had a mid-afternoon snack not long before dinner) that prevented me from similarly losing my cool.

I didn’t have a peek into the kitchen, but it seemed that they had neglected to expand that even though they had expanded the shop space by three times. To their credit, they had made full use of technology to reduce human error – the waiters each carried a handheld device with which they took orders, in turn wirelessly transmitted to the kitchen. Yet cooking anything takes time, and once a kitchen gets backed up it is hell to get back on an even keel. 45 minutes is too long to wait for a meal – there is only so much conversation you can make before your stomach reminds you of what you were there for in the first place.

At a less busy time on a less busy day, I am sure Big Eater would have been a pleasant experience. It was decorated with a sense of humour, and the staff that attended to us were friendly and efficient. The food, too, was good – or perhaps we were just hungry from the long wait. Yet it seems to have grown too fast and too big to be able to ensure the same quality of experience for its customers – finding parking, too, is absolute torture. As it is I have marked this place down as one to avoid on Friday and Saturday evenings.