SZ Kitchen D'ARENA • We Come Here for Amazing Fish 小珍私房菜 ☏ 8013 0558

SZ Kitchen D'Arena 小珍私房菜 | 511 Upper Jurong Rd, Blk E Level 1, Singapore 638366 🚅 10 minutes walk from Joo Koon station ☏ Tel: 8013 0558 ⏰ 11 am - 3:30 pm | 4:30pm - 9 pm

I followed Johnny of SZ Kitchen since his days at Gek Poh shopping centre in Jurong (about 10 years ago). SZ Kitchen serves affordable set meals and fish soup which are good value and tasty. We also like their fried chicken.

But, to us SZ Kitchen's biggest draw has always been their premium fish.

Johnny has supplies of wild caught giant groupers. He would contact us whenever stocks arrive. (Over time, his supply has become regular and steady.)

We enjoyed the giant grouper's meaty white flesh and thick soft gelatinous skin with soup.

Johnny then opened SZ Kitchen at Fairprice Hub at Joo Koon MRT station in 2019. We followed Johnny there for his premium fish such as this moray eel (whenever the opportunity arose).

Two years ago, Johnny opened SZ Kitchen at D'Arena. We continued enjoying Johnny's fishes such as wild sea tilapia. These special tilapia fish have nice tender firm sweet flesh with no earthy taste at all.

Today, we were back at SZ Kitchen @ D'Arena because Johnny just received a batch of hump head parrotfish.

Johnny has consolidated SZ Kitchen at two locations - Fairprice Hub Joo Koon and at D'Arena.

The Fairprice Hub outlet focusses on affordable set meals. D'Arena is SZ Kitchen's flagship, a well appointed casual restaurant for slightly elevated family, group, and corporate dining. The outlet at Gek Poh has closed.

The decor at SZ Kitchen was simple but the restaurant was spacious and there were a couple of private rooms. It was full house today (Weds) during lunch hour.

We were here at D'Arena for this stewed hump head parrotfish - not much to see, the pieces of collagen and meat smothered in light brownish stewing liquid.

The collagen rich head bump was steamed then stewed with the meat and aromatics such as ginger and leek.

I was amazed by the delicious stewing liquid. It was like umami savoury sweet superior stock thicken by loads of gummy collagen from the hump head. I normally minimise carb intake, but today I stretched myself so that I can enjoy more stock with rice 🤭

The white flesh of the parrotfish was marvellous. Tender firm and sweet.

The head bump collagen had texture like firm springy sea cucumber. Nice mouth feel.

This stewed hump head parrotfish dish needs a long preparation time, so pre-ordering is required ☎️ 8013 0558. Generally, if you are coming for premium fish, call ahead to check availability and reserve.

Besides fish, SZ Kitchen has a full range of seafood, meat, poultry, vegetable and soup dishes. We tried a few and they were all well executed and delicious.