Sufood - City Hall

It is always exciting when I find out about a new vegetarian place in Singapore.  But Sufood was especially interesting to me.  The word Sufood may be new to Singaporeans, but it is a renowned vegetarian franchise in Taiwan.  There are currently 18 Sufood restaurants in Taiwan.  Singapore represents the first country outside of Taiwan that has a Sufood outlet.  So can Sufood take over Singapore, as it did with Taiwan?  Let's see... 



Sufood
Location: #02-19, 252 North Bridge Road, Raffles City Shopping Centre
Contact: 63335338
Opening Hours: Daily 11.30am-3.30pm & 5.50pm-10.00pm



Sufood recently commemorated their Singapore launch by breaking the Guinness World Record for serving the most amount of pizzas in the span of 12 hours.  They served a total of 3,574 - A large number.  The number of vegan pizzas they served during this record is a much easier to count - 0.  The event raised $12,015.50 for the Breast Cancer Foundation.


The seating of Sufood is quite large, with a total of 140 seats.  I was amazed to see that at dinner time the restaurant was totally packed.  On a side note, Sufood are looking to open four more outlets in Singapore by 2015, and eight by 2018 - Talk about expanding fast.
Currently, Sufood is only offering a set meal, which is priced at $25++.  So this set meal will be the focus of my review. The set meal is eight courses in total, and claims to have a total of 200 ingredients used in all their dishes.  The menu offers mainly Italian fusion food, with no artificial flavours or MSG.
To start off the set meal, customers will get Rosemary Breadsticks, with a choice of their mustard or blueberry sauce for dipping purposes.  If you're vegan, you will have to go with the blueberry, as the mustard contains dairy.  The breadsticks were softer than I imagined, and didn't have as much rosemary as I was hoping for.  Dipping into the blueberry was interesting, and reminded me of my childhood jam sandwiches in England.  The blueberry dip is actually very mild, some might find it is too bland.

6/10
There are a total of four salad options for the set meal, with two of them being vegan.  I picked the Mushroom Salad.  Warning, this dish (and a few others) contains onions/garlic, so Buddhists take note - Although these dishes are quite clearly stated on the menu.  'Salad' seems like quite an odd term for this dish, as there was little green colour on the plate.  I did really enjoy the various species of mushrooms though, which were tender and juicy.

7/10


We moved onto the soup options, and I decided to go for the Mushroom & Pea Pottage.  This soup actually consists of three different types of mushroom (button, shitake and king oyster), which are cooked and blended together with sweet peas.  Placed on top is a piece of sliced bread and two pieces of capsicum.  The soup didn't really capture the different flavours of mushroom inside, and the pea flavour was quite minimal as well, I didn't detect any sweetness.  With all that being said, I really like the concept of pea and mushroom soup, and if the flavours could be intensified then I would adore this dish.

6/10
When it comes to the main courses, you can't help but be impressed with the quality of plating for the dishes.  This Baked Potato Al Funghi looked like a work of art on the plate.  It is true we eat with our eyes, and my eyes were very happy.  The baked potato was cooked very well, with a chewy and slightly crisp outer skin, matched with fluffy inner potato.  The mushrooms couldn't have looked better, and the taste was splendid too.

7/10


Another main dish I sampled was the Spaghetti Pesto.  I've always been a big fan of pesto sauce, I love the earthy and herb flavour that it has, and I was very pleased to find that this sauce was vegan.  Overall this was probably the best dish of the entire meal . The spaghetti was very well cooked, and the ingredients tangled amongst the spaghetti were cooked perfectly.  The pesto sauce was smooth and really succeeded in bringing out the superb natural flavour of the basil.  Large portion size, too.

8/10
Customers who choose the set meal also have a choice of one drink and dessert.  For the drink I selected The Very Berry and for dessert I picked out Osmanthus Flower Jelly.  Desserts are a little tough for vegans, with the jelly being the only dessert suitable for the vegan diet.  The jelly was sweet and captured the flower essence well. The juice was fine enough, but fresh juice always appeals to me more.

Drink: 6/10
Dessert: 7/10


Conclusion - The staff at Sufood are remarkably trained (they were actually sent to Taiwan for two months to undergo training), and the restaurant in general is immaculately run.  I must say that only a couple of dishes impressed me on the set meal, but I still consider it worth of the $25++ price tag.  It will be interesting to see if Sufood can take over Singapore, judging by their early popularity, I would say their is a good chance they can.

Overall Rating
Food - 6/10
Ambiance- 8/10
Service - 9/10
Value - 7/10