Malaysia
Singapore
Thailand
“Red House: Traditional & New seafood”
I was lucky enough to join in on the food tasting invite with Philip (keropokman) and Catherine (Camemberu) at Red House Seafood Restaurant at Prinsep st. This is Red House Seafood’s 3rd branch with a foray into modern rebranding, while maintaining good old recipes over 30 years old since their literal red house at East Coast.
Located along the stretches of KTV pubs at Prinsep, this was not a road frequented by food finders. In fact, Red House Seafood took over the lease from a KTV that went bankrupt before it.
Using top designers, Red House redesigned their logo as well as their new restaurant interiors to a more minimalistic look, yet retaining traditional chinese nuances like wooden chairs, large round sharing tables and framed walls.
First up, we had the Trio Combination of Chef’s Signature Squid ($30/$58). This consisted of BBQ Squid, crispy baby squid and golden calamari strips. BBQ squid was pretty normal but, I really liked the baby squid for its bouncy tender texture and the eggy golden calamari stripes that were a remake of the Italian fried squid dish. Sad to say, the babies of animals always taste better.
Oh yea, I lack photos of these 2 dishes because I was slightly late and missed photo taking of starters. whoops.
Being a seafood restaurant, next up were Tiger prawns with creamy custard sauce ($7/100g). The seafood, being delivered fresh everyday as well as swimming in the tanks at the back, really brought out this dish. The creamy milky taste of the custard also matches the mild oceanic prawns for a flavourful combination.
Finally had the chance to show off the brilliance of my iPhone 5 camera. Spicy Seafood Combination ($28/$56). A spicy thai inspired curry dish, it had scallops, prawns, fish and squid all having a lovely swim in the stew. It was not overly spicy and has undertones of lemongrass, thus the Thai element.
My favourite delicious mess of the night: Black Pepper Crab (seasonal price, depending on type of crab as well). There are some restaurants that really go all out on the pepper, but I found Red House’s version having just enough fire. I was told the original crab recipes have remained unchanged and unmodified since the first day they opened their first restaurant in 1976.
One minor gripe though, the crab’s shell stuck to the flesh sometimes when de-shelling. Not a clean open if cooked properly via 2 steps: Steaming then frying. Other than that, the spices and sauce broth used were all very fragrant and not over-powering in any one dimension.
After black pepper, comes Singapore’s favourite Chilli crab. There were fried mantous as well to dip in the eggy chilli sauce. I love chilli crab sauce, and this was of the sweeter tomato variety. The crab flesh was cooked perfectly for this dish. Again, Red House doesn’t use much spiciness, but this chilli dish could have used slightly more fire.
Red house Prinsep does online delivery as well as private room bookings, perfect for business meetings or family gatherings. A very filling experience for me; if you love seafood you should check out one of Singapore’s oldest seafood names.
Expected Damage: $60/pax
