Shan Yuan Vegetarian - Boon Keng

Shan Yuan is another stall that is nestled in an extremely vegetarian friendly hawker centre, just outside exit B of Boon Keng MRT.  There are over five vegetarian stalls all a stones throw away from each other.  There are two downsides, however.  Firstly, the opening times of all the stalls are extremely unreliable (I have faced a situation where at 6pm all the stalls where inexplicably closed).  Secondly, they all more or less sell the same conventional stereotypical Chinese vegetarian food.  Sigh, how I long for something with a little more unique, sometimes.

 
Shan Yuan Vegetarian
Location: #01-41, Blk 31 Bendemeer Road
Contact: Unknown
Opening Hours: Closed on Tuesdays

The first dish to greet my assessment table of doom was the Kway Chap.  There are a few laudable aspects to this dish - Namely, the flavourful (yet subtle) soup, and the nicely marinated tofu.  What I took less kindly too was the kway.  The texture was almost right, but required a little more firmness.  Ultimately the kway was too brittle, and disintegrated when picked up.

Price: $2.50.     6/10
The next dish I packeted was the Fried Rice.  For vegans, do make sure to highlight that you don't want eggs in the rice.  The rice itself did have pretty good flavour, although there were one too many beansprouts inside for my liking.  Beansprouts I associate more with noodle dishes, rather than rice.  To make up for the egg, that I asked to be excluded, they added in tofu, which added a perfect substitute for the egg.  Those hideous mock seafood jelly 'meats' unfortunately found there way into the packet - All vegetarian stalls really need to stop using that garbage, not only is it unhealthy, it also gives vegetarian food a bad image, in my opinion.

Price: $3.00.     6/10


Conclusion - Although I found the food from this stall to be acceptable, I simply found both dishes quite forgettable - Thus, even finding anything interesting to summarise this review is a challenge.  To put it simply, I have had much worse food in Singapore, but I have also experienced much better.

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