In my virgin (freshman) (first) entry for Awful Eats, I shall tell you about last night’s dinner at Rama Thai Sharksfin Restaurant at 81 Tanjong Pagar Road.

The Place: The ambience was cheesy chinese Thai. I think Red was the main decorating colour and there was a teevee broadcasting Channel 8 in the back near where the link to the kitchen should be. It is small. Sits 50 maximum, unless you are a small person (read: child). Please make reservations.

The Food:
1. Seafood tomyum soup: Red colour. Far far far too sweet due to tomatoes and probably liberal helping of white sugar. Lots of prawns! Still too sweet.
2. Rama Thai special fried rice: Recommended by an over zealous waiter-manager. Came with cashew nuts, crab meat, prawns (again) and peas (ick). Quite appetizing (spelling) but like all fried rices, oily but not overly so.
3. Diced chicken sauteed with dried chili and cashew nuts (again!): Cashew nuts again. Pieces of chicken were tender and very good chili sauce was spicy. Dubious pieces of chestnuts (not sure) and garlic (maybe).
4. Prawn Cakes: Breaded prawn cakes fried golden brown. Could see pieces of prawn and slightly springy. Yummy like all fried things. Served with sweet chili sauce and sesame seeds.
5. Deep fried octopus in special Rama sauce: Same said annoying waiter person recommended this when I wanted the octopus fried with garlic and chili. My mother is a sucker for anything ‘recommended’, which is really very annoying too, (yes, she is a lemming, if the queue at some stall at the hawker centre is very long, you can bet she will think the food sold at that particularly stall is good). Special Rama sauce was lemon sauce = too sweet and not very nice.

Other points to note: The place was old and not very well maintained. The tablecloth showed its age. Abit on the too pricey side. Plenty of cashew nuts and prawns though. Parking in the tanjong pagar area not very fun. Along the road = parallel parking.

Awful really enjoyed the chicken and the prawn cakes.