Tanyu Review @ Tampines 1 Spicy Grilled Fish 探鱼烤鱼

Had wanted to try Tanyu, the trendy spicy grilled fish chain for a long time, so I was glad that Brandon suggested meeting at their Tampines 1 outlet.

The quite quirky, eye catching entrance and facade piqued my curiosity.

The Shenzhen based chain has over 260 Tanyu restaurants across 67 cities in China. They first opened in Singapore in 2017 at this outlet in Tampines 1 mall. Now, there are five Tanyu restaurants in Sinagpore.

The restaurant was large and set up with little booths and tables all located quite close together, especially the booths, which were rather crammed. Nevertheless, the furniture were sturdy and comfortable.

The ordering protocol was pretty straightforward, just follow the steps 1 to 5.

Nat did the ordering which was through an app via QR code on the table. We can order online and pay at the counter (we chose this mode).

(I paranoid one... I will exit most apps once they ask me for my credit card details 😅 )

We had the 鲜青椒爽麻烤鱼 Green Pepper Sea Bass in spicy stock. There was a bunch of green peppercorn on top of green chili. The spices in the bubbling brownish stock were aromatic.

(There was a choice of fishes and type of spicy stock.)

I am not a big fan of farmed sea bass because of its earthy taste and slightly soft mushy texture.

Turned out that Tanyu's sea bass doesn't have the characteristic earthy taste. The big fish was flame grilled before stewing in hot spicy stock. Grilling gave the outside a slight char and sealed in the fish's sweet juices.

Its white flesh had a little subtle firmness and tasted sweet, reminding me of crab meat, no kidding. The spicy hot mala 麻辣 (numbing hot) stock both brought out and accentuated the sweetness of the grilled sea bass. The numbing sensation was slight and didn't bother me at all, in fact it enhanced the dining pleasure.

We had the Golden Combination which was an assortment of random prawn, fish balls, and tofu which we threw into the pan and let them simmer and stew in the spicy stock together with the sea bass.

I didn't like any of them as they all had that distinct mass produced flat taste and feel.

The traditional tofu was quite delightful. Soft, but grainy, it had a bit of soya bean taste and aroma. Dunked in the spicy stock, it took on some of its savoury spicy flavours.

There were various rice and noodle choices for carbs. I picked noodles with onion oil. The noodles were soft, spongy i.e. not springy or QQ.

I would try plain white rice or noodles next time as the combination of the noodles' assertive savoury salty sauce and robust spicy savoury flavour of the stock did not blend well together in my opinion.