Nobiro Japanese Restaurant & Sake Bar, West Coast

Nobiro Japanese Restaurant & Sake Bar is a Japanese restaurant in the Clementi / West Coast area of Singapore.  It is situated among a row of shops within the Faber Drive housing area.  Nobiro Restaurant’s location in a quiet residential area means that the diners are unlikely to be casual passers-by.  It took some deliberate effort in order to locate the place.

The good thing about restaurants in quiet estates is that the atmosphere is peaceful and parking is usually free. This was the case at Nobiro Japanese Restaurant & Sake Bar at Faber Drive.  The restaurant was simply decorated but comfortable.  The serving staff was friendly. Many of the other diners seemed like regulars who worked nearby.  There were lots of friendly greetings and banter between customers and staff. Which is a good thing.

Nobiro Japanese Restaurant & Sake Bar Menu

It is important to note that there are two quite different menus for lunch and dinner. It would appear that dinner is the better time to visit Nobiro Izakaya. That is when they fire up their charcoal grill and go into yakitori production.   We can imagine that the place will be a nice drinking place when that happens.  Here are pictures of some pages from the set lunch menu, day menu and the dinner menu (the ones with the black pages).

We tried a carafe of house pour sake ($31 for 360 ml).   It was simple and pleasant sake.

The grilled squid ($15) was slightly overdone and dry.  The hamachi collar was very good. Fresh and perfectly grilled.  It was a small portion and so they charged us $10 instead of the menu price of $15.

We tried three of the set lunch options. The tofu nabe set ($18) was a simple seafood and tofu soup with noodles.  This had a clear clean taste. A good dish for days when you just feel like a soupy meal.

The grilled salmon set ($15) came with a small piece of fish and a big bowl of rice with some cabbage salad.  The fish tasted good, but it was so petite.  The salad was very plain. This was the least favourite set lunch item we tried that day.

The tempura set ($19) was quite average.  No chawanmushi was offered as part of the meal and so we ordered them separately ($5).  Its taste was not bad but its texture was a tad hard.  Overall, it is always interesting to discover new restaurants, especially in out-of-the-way (at least for us) places.  Nobiro Izakaya & Sake Bar, is a pleasant neighbourhood restaurant in the West Coast part of Singapore. Not the best Japanese food we have tried but certainly a place that will come to mind when we feel like Japanese food in the West of Singapore.

Ratings:

Food: 3

Service: 4

Value: 2

Atmosphere: 3

Overall Rating: 3 TOPs 

Address

108 Faber Drive
Singapore (129418)

HoursTue-Sun: 11:30am-2:30pm, 5:30-10:30pm
Closed Monday