Xin En Vegetarian - Clementi

There will be a lot of reviews coming on my site soon in and around the Clementi area.  Today I will be featuring Xin En Vegetarian, or in Chinese known as 心恩素食.  The character 心 means 'heart', while 恩 translates to 'grace/kindness'.  This stall has only recently opened, and sells a number of daily specials, such as bak kut teh, mee siam, dry noodle etc.  They have had the most positive feedback for their mee rebus, which is available on Fridays only.













Xin En Vegetarian
Location: Blk 720, Clementi West Street 2 (Gourmet Street Coffee Shop)
Contact: 93282007 
Opening Hours: Daily 6.00am-3.00pm.  Closed on alternate Sundays. 


Nothing much was available on the day that I visited, so I picked out Tahu Goreng, to have on the side.  Nothing special to note about this dish, I was really hoping that the thick sauce on top had more kick to it - But instead, it was quite mild, with little flavour leaping out.  This is quite dangerous, as tofu is used, which is essentially a blank canvas.  Acceptable, but not something I would order again.

Price: $1.20.     5/10
It was nice to see a coffee shop bother with the plating, with curved white plates used, instead of the horrendous yellow or red plastic plates typically used in hawkers.  The plating isn't up to the standard of Onn, but good enough.  This Dry Noodle dish was one of the daily specials, but overall it made for a pretty disappointing experience.  The major letdown in this dish was the total lack of flavour.  The 'sauce' (to call it such feels almost an insult to the word) had the consistency and taste of plain water.  I don't know what other vocabulary to use to explain the sheer lack in flavour of this dish.  The only plus was that good quality char siew was used, and that at least brought some sweet and smokey flavour to the dish - Everything else was completely void of flavour, with salt desperately needed.

Price: $2.50.     3/10



Conclusion - With Xin En being new to the vegetarian scene, perhaps it will take them a while to (for lack of a better term) get their act together - So I don't want to be too harsh in this review.  Having said that, it would be sheer negligence on my part to overlook the flaws that were present in the dishes that I sampled.  Let's hope things get better.

Overall Rating
Food - 4/10
Ambiance- 6/10
Service - 6/10
Value - 6/10