Sinma Live Seafood Restaurant@Geylang

Sinma Live Seafood Restaurant is a popular seafood haunt for the locals, tucked in a small corner in Geylang Lorong 3.

It is called a 'restaurant', but actually is more of a coffee shop Chi Char type of food haunt.  The business seems to have grown over the years, now it occupies two corner shops on both sides of the road on ground floor, plus a air-con dining area on the 2nd floor.  Looking around, you find most of the patrons are local Singaporeans, or people who live nearby.  They come here for the restaurant's famous dishes, including crab & their frog-leg porridge.

We ordered quite a number of dishes, including of course their signature dishes chilli crab, frog-leg porridge plus deep-fried Soon Hock fish, plus some vegies.

Here is the Soon Hock fish.  The guys started eating before I managed a photo, so that's the minus side of eating with all guys :(   The fish is quite fresh, and although it is deep fried, the meat remains flesh and tender.  It is not dry, but the out shell is very crispy.  The down-side is the fish is not very big in size, so it is finished in a much shorter time than I had expected.

Their vegies dishes are quite standard, cooked with lots of oil, so if you are health conscious, you may not like it too much, however, in terms of taste, their vegie dishes can get at least a pass.

The chilli crab came as a surprise to us.  Two giant crabs came to our table.  They use Sri Lanka crabs, so the shell is thick and hard.  But, their chilli crab is not really spicy, more toward the sweet side, rather than spicy hot side.  Freshness of the crabs are ok, at least better standard than No Sign Board Seafood.

The disappointment is actually the frog-leg porridge.  For non-Singaporeans, when someone mentions frog-leg porridge, they may think the frog leg and the porridge is together, but it is not, not in Singapore.  The frog legs and the porridge are cooked separately, and you only mix them together in your own bowl.

Now, let's talk about the porridge first.  The porridge has not much taste, and it is not the well-done type of porridge, how do I know?  I just know it, or my taste buds just know it.  Then the frog legs are too spicy.  The chilli crab is not spicy, but the frog-leg is.  The dry chilli they use is so strong that I choked a couple of times.  After finish eating the frog legs, my lips were still hot!  The frog legs somehow lacks in tenderness and sweetness.

In terms of service, it is a coffee shop, manned by mostly mainland Chinese workers, so don't expect outstanding services.  They didn't give up the cracking tool for eating crabs, and it took them a long time for them to bring one when asked.  They will only change your plates upon request, so if you are choosy about service standards, then don't go there, it is not that kind of place.

My rating: 3.5/5 (by coffee shop standard)