New Ubin Seafood CHIJMES - Tze Char in a Swanky Locale

New Ubin Seafood CHIJMES is a new outlet by New Ubin Seafood. This is currently their second restaurant in Singapore. The other one is in the Hillview area (you can read about our visit here). Hitherto, we have associated New Ubin with gritty locations – their existing Hillview outlet is in a canteen of an industrial building, having moved there from the Sin Ming car workshops area. The New Ubin Seafood CHIJMES outlet marks a departure from that impression. A Tze Char or Zhi Char (煮炒) restaurant has moved into the posh neighbourhood of CHIJMES right in the heart of the Singapore CBD.

New Ubin Seafood Chijmes is located on the second floor. It is above Mexican restaurant El Mero Mero.The restaurant space is simple but nicer than their other locations.

New Ubin Seafood Chijmes Menu

Here are pictures of some pages from the New Ubin Seafood Chijmes menu and wine list. The wines in the list look affordable. Like the Hillview outlet, New Ubin Seafood Chijmes currently does not charge any corkage fee for BYO. This is a big attraction among some of their regular diners.

We went armed with a bottle of Italian Moscato. A slightly sweet wine which can be enjoyed by all. More importantly, with an alcohol content of only around 6%, it can be safely enjoyed without fear of any breathalyzer tests.

New Ubin provided the largest wine chiller we have ever seen in a restaurant. Not the most elegant, but it works and the temperature went down very quickly.

The pork and chicken satay ($6 for 5 sticks) were very good but very small. Five sticks per person would be nice as a snack.

We were not enamoured with the deep fried baby squid ($18). The squids were very small and became too hard and brittle from the deep frying.

Har cheong kai, deep fried chicken wings seasoned with a prawn paste, is a classic zhi char dish. The one at New Ubin Chijmes ($18 for 6) met our high expectations.

Likewise the hei chor (deep fried Hokkien prawn and pork rolls – $17) was very good. We were glad to have a cold white wine to go with these deep fried items on a hot day.

The kai lan fried with garlic and crispy seaweed ($15) was the most beautiful dish. It tasted good as well.

The KL Hokkien Mee ($15 for a small portion) was sweeter than what we recalled from our last visit to Kuala Lumpur. But it was still a flavourful and enjoyable dish.

Overall, lunch at the New Ubin Seafood Chijmes restaurant was more costly than eating similar dishes at a typical zhi char restaurant in Singapore. But considering the nice location of CHIJMES, I suppose the higher price is probably par for the course.