Chong Qing Grilled Fish at Thomson Road is one of the Sichuan restaurants we visit whenever we feel like having a fiery meal. Even though we know from experience that we’d regret it the following morning.
In addition to dining in, we’ve also gotten their signature spicy grilled fish delivered to our home. It conveniently came with a self-contained heat pack that allowed us to (sort of) recreate the in-house experience, albeit with a less than ideal outcome.
CQGF also happens to be on the list of places that our friend RC wanted to check out, and so we made reservations at their Thomson branch for an early 5pm weekday dinner.
Why such an awkward timing? Well, firstly, they were running a generous 30% off promotion for weekday ala carte dine-in orders from 2:30 to 6:00pm. Secondly, they were offering 1-for-1 pints of Asahi beer. And finally, we get hungry early nowadays.
I’m not sure if they’re still running these specific promotions, so best to check their socials, or call them to confirm, before you physically head there.
The first thing we ordered was, of course, their signature spicy grilled fish. They have several choices of fish, soup base, spice level and additional toppings. We went with seabass, Sichuan mala, medium spicy and additional lotus root that evening.
When the huge tray containing an entire seabass was placed in front of us, it was quite an impressive sight. Especially the thick layer of chilli oil, copious amounts of dried chillies and bunches of whole green Sichuan peppercorns.
Surprisingly, it didn’t taste as spicy as it looked, and both RC and I felt that it would have been more satisfying to go with “big spicy” (大辣), though The Wife and RC’s husband were definitely feeling the heat.
I tried drinking the “soup” to see if I could get a bigger chilli kick. It turned out to be a big mistake, because it was way too oily and way too pungent going down the throat, triggering a rather violent coughing fit.
Note to self: not everything that looks like soup should actually be drunk as a soup.
In addition to the grilled fish, and to maximise the generous 30% discount, we ordered other dishes to go with our meal. We had tried their saliva chicken (口水鸡) previously and decided to order it again. It was as tasty as we remembered, although with a noticeably lower spice level.
To balance out the heat, we also got the sliced pork with cucumber and minced garlic (蒜泥白肉) , served in a pool of soy vinegar sauce. It’s served cold, with the crunchy cucumber batons providing a nice refreshing contrast to the other rich and heavy dishes.
Being huge sweet and sour pork fans, we had to order what was listed as 贵妃荔枝猪肉, or “concubine lychee pork” on the menu. Well, there was definitely lychee and pork in the dish, but I struggled to understand the concubine reference. Perhaps back in the day, and like us, they love the dish as well.
Almost every Chinese restaurant in Singapore, as well as every tze char and cai png stall on the island, has their version of sweet and sour pork. It’s simple enough to cook, but not easy to perfect.
The one at CQGF is easily among the best that we’ve had so far. The pork nuggets have the right proportion of fat and lean meat, the sauce is equally parts sweet and tangy, nicely coating the deep-fried pork without making it soggy.
It would have been good enough as is, but the addition of whole globes of fresh juicy lychee elevated the dish to something you’d find in a high-end restaurant at a five star hotel. Or something worthy to be served to the king’s favourite concubine.
The accompanying dishes that we ordered that night were all surprisingly good. We thought that CQGF was mainly a place for spicy Sichuan grilled fish, but now that we know how tasty their other dishes are, we’ll definitely be back to order more.
