Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine 阿里疆 – Northern Chinese restaurant at VivoCity

Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine (阿里疆) is a new restaurant at VivoCity Mall. It is unlike the more common type of Chinese restaurants in Singapore that focus on food from Southern China. As its name suggests, the Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine restaurant serves Northern Chinese food that originate from the places along the ancient Silk Road that stretched from the east to the west of China and beyond.

Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine takes up a large space on level 3, which is the rooftop level of VivoCity. A related restaurant that serves a more casual version of Alijiang is located just next door. The decor is quite unlike those of a typical Chinese restaurant. Bright colours are used on the walls and furniture. Bold lamp shapes and fixtures are used. From a distance, I might have guessed that it was a Spanish restaurant. There are a few private rooms and an alfresco dining area. The latter is located right by the seafront and may be an attractive area in the evenings.

The Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine Menu looks more like a photo album. The pages are large and contain clear photos of the dishes. Many of the dishes are new to us. Meat dishes, particularly lamb and beef, are featured more prominently than the usual Chinese restaurants we find in Singapore. Here are some pictures of sample sections of the menu. The actual range of dishes available is much larger than what we show here.

The Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine Menu

We selected some items without knowing much about them. Wherever possible we asked for the level of spiciness to be kept at a minimum.

We tried the Kazakh baked potatoes ($12) as we were curious about Kazakh cuisine. It was a dish of sliced potatoes cooked with some vegetables and served on a hotplate. It was still spicy but was manageable. But we found it to be very salty. It could be a characteristic of Northern Chinese cuisine to have their dishes more heavily flavoured. We made a mental note for future visits to also request for less salt in addition to less spiciness.

The sauted cabbage with crispy pancake ($16) was a dish with a more familiar taste. It was like stir fried cabbage with a topping of some crispy biscuits. Some vinegar may have been used to add a mild tartiness in the taste. It was a pleasant dish that was not too salty.

Grilled lamb are found in a few items of the menu. We ordered some BBQ mutton sticks ($3.50 each) to try. They were small skewers of meat. Each was probably the equivalent of two sticks of satay. The mutton was tender and had an average level of gamey flavour. Those who like mutton will enjoy it.

The Xinjiang Fried Roasted Beef ($28) was attractively presented on a hot grill. Thinly sliced beef that had been grilled with vegetables. It reminded us of Spanish fajitas. The taste was pretty good, except that we should have asked for it to be less salty. Thank goodness we also had some hand baked naan ($5) to eat them with.

Our final dish was Arabian fried rice ($18). Again, it was curiosity that prompted us to order the dish as none of us had ever eaten an Arabian version of fried rice. It turned out to be a dish that looked and tasted not much different from that which we are used to. In fact, there is a close resemblance to the Indian style nasi goreng because of the use of bits of beef in it.

Overall, we had mixed feelings about the food that we tried that day. But we enjoyed the experience of going through an unfamiliar menu and trying some new items. Another visit to hone our dish selection to meet our palette will probably make it a more interesting restaurant to visit.

Alijiang Silk Road Cuisine 阿里疆
Harbourfront Walk, #03-11, Vivo City
Singapore 098585

Mon-Sun: 11am-3pm, 6pm-11pm

Nearby MRT Station: Harbourfront

The Ordinary Patrons | Real Dining Experience of Ordinary People
an independent Singapore food blog

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