The Golden Peony website says “sophisticated and intimate”, and “tranquil atmosphere”. Respectfully, are they talking about the same restaurant as I went to last night? If so, they clearly haven’t visited for a while.
Let’s rewind.
Dinner there was a night out for Sander and I before I left for Australia for work. We started with a pre-dinner drink at wild oats and then jumped in a cab to the Conrad Hotel’s ‘award-winning’ Golden Peony Cantonese restaurant. Really we should have turned around as soon as we walked in, but we had some meal vouchers for the Conrad Hotel, so we decided to stick it out and see what happened.
Relatively intimate table for two? We were seated right between the service area and the payment counter. You be the judge.
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| The Golden Peony -- image from their website -- |
The Golden Peony started off well (Sander realised they hadn’t made a mistake with their name – it really was Peony and not Pony). We selected a set menu, and although this was a lunch menu (in our defence, it didn’t say so anywhere on the menu) they agreed to make it for us. The first course was a trio of dumplings and was definitely the highlight of the entire experience, especially the bean curd-wrapped mango and prawn – a wonderful sweet surprise mid-bite.
The second course was a disappointing soup – two chunks of fatty pork with lots of bones. I wondered whether I had missed something culturally, or was it really just pork stock in a bowl. Neither of us finished it. Course three was shredded duck and sugar snap peas. This would have been the second highlight of the meal for me – delicious duck morsels and perfectly steamed peas – but Sander’s was full of bones (again) and my unfinished dish (I was mid-mouthful) was cleared away from under me at lightning speed and before I realised it I was mourning the loss of the three sugar snap peas I’d been saving for last.
Dish four was my first experience with congee – ubiquitous in Singapore. Ours was chicken congee – two lumps of chicken and some slightly salty, fine-ground porridge. Sander thought it was what cornflour porridge would taste and feel like if anyone was mad enough to make it. I had two spoons of congee and one of my chicken lumps. If that was representative of congee then it was my first and last experience. I was anticipating dessert with trepidation, but when the fruity thin custard soup arrived I was pleasantly surprised by its freshness. I’m a big fan of custard and I certainly wouldn’t have made it so thin, but it was definitely tasty. Thankfully.
Needless to say we didn’t want to linger in the ‘tranquil atmosphere’ and hot footed it out of there, still having paid nearly $100 despite our $70 of vouchers.
TripAdvisor has it ranked #68 out of over 1,000 restaurants in Singapore. This dining experience has seriously made me question the validity of TripAdvisor’s recommendations as I know the quality of the Singaporean dining landscape is much better than this.
Oh, and one smile from our waitress wouldn’t have gone astray.
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