If you’re working in the Central Business District and you’ve been looking for a healthy Korean restaurant for weekday lunches, look no further. SBCD Korean Tofu House is a new restaurant at Tanjong Pagar Centre, right above Tanjong Pagar MRT and perfect for people working nearby.
The outlet is tucked away and might be a little hard to find, but brightly lit signs are there to guide you. IndoChili is right next to it, so if you manage to catch a glimpse of that signage, you’ll be able to find SBCD.
The interior is spacious and well-lit, with plenty of wood accents. We dropped by after the lunch hour so it was less crowded, but there were still a few people slowly enjoying their meals.
As you might have guessed, SBCD specialises in tofu dishes, and proudly proclaims to make the tofu fresh by hand every single day. We were particularly excited to try the dishes, since we needed some healthy food to balance out all the Chinese New Year snacks.
We ordered the Original Soontofu with Beef ($18.90) as well as the Seafood Soontofu ($19.90). Each soontofu comes with a Hot Stone Rice and side dishes. We really enjoyed the roasted seaweed and the fried fish side dishes, which are refillable so go ahead and indulge in your favourites!
We were particularly impressed by the idea of pouring hot corn tea into the stone bowl after most of the rice had been dished out into bowls for us. The bowl of rice and tea is then set aside to be consumed at the end of the meal.
The Seafood Soontofu was packed with plenty of ingredients – prawns, mussels, clams, squid, an egg and of course, the handmade tofu. We ordered this with the lowest spice level since we weren’t too sure about how spicy the standard was.
The stew was mild with only a slight hint of spice, we recommend going for the standard level instead. The soup for the Seafood Soontofu was sweet with the taste of the seafood infused into it, and we really enjoyed the handmade tofu that has a very noticeable taste of soya bean, which makes the usually tasteless tofu quite interesting to eat.
The seafood was decent, but we didn’t feel that the prawns were as fresh as they could have been. The squid more than made up for it though, and was still tender and not overcooked.
We ordered the Original Beef Soontofu in the standard spice level and enjoyed it much more than the mild spice of the Seafood Soontofu. The amount of beef given was slightly disappointing; there were only about three big slices and the rest were all small pieces that appeared to have been minced slightly.
The soup was slightly blander than the seafood variation, since there were no prawns to flavour the soup and make it sweet.
After we finished the stew and the rice, we lifted the covers on the stone pots to see what had become of the rice in there.
Does it remind you of anything? When we saw it, we immediately thought of Teochew porridge, which we love. The rice was extra soft from being soaked in the hot corn tea, and the taste of the roasted corn added a different taste profile to the rice.
Since we had finished our stew, we ate the rice with the side dishes that were provided, and we found that they paired really well together. At the end of our meal, we were totally full and left feeling glad that we’d eaten something healthier than our usual options of junk food and snacks.
Expected damage: $19 – $30 per pax
