Geylang Claypot Rice @ Beach Road

If the famous Beach Road Prawn Mee is in East Coast Road, it should not be surprising to find the popular Lorong 33 Geylang Claypot Rice in Beach Road.

With over 30 years of history, Geylang Claypot Rice was founded by Mr Ng Kim Hock at the Lor 33 location. The humble restaurant was also listed on the Singapore Michelin Guide 2016 for their signature tasty rice cooked over charcoal. Besides the claypot rice, there are other starred dishes to go along with the rice.

Geylang Claypot Rice closed its doors in 2018, leaving many loyal customers disappointed. It re-opened with a nicer dining environment in Beach Road, just across my office. Everyone was excited in the office to go and try.

We were handed out a menu the other day when we walked pass the renovation and was told that we should call in advance to save time, which was what we did today.

The signature claypot rice had Chinese sausages, salted fish, chicken and nothing else. It had a pleasing aroma when the claypot lid was removed before us. But they just left it on the table, not knowing what to do with them. Hmm, do you want us to mix in the sauce ourselves? Then, an auntie came running to our table and shouted instructions to another girl to mix in the condiments.

The staff added in the black sauce and mixed up the rice with the ingredients. The chicken was cooked just right and was moist and flavourful, but we got mainly wing parts and therefore many bits of broken bones were mixed into the rice.

Usually we loved the burnt rice on the bottom of the claypot, but here we were disappointed. The burnt rice was too hard to consume. It was most likely cooked rice that were used for the claypot rice to save time. The rice dried out, and the burnt part because hard as stone and not puffy if they worked on the claypot with raw rice.

芙蓉蛋 Furong egg omelette – hmm burnt.

金沙排骨 Salted egg pork ribs – the pork ribs were really bad, just bones and nothing else.

酥炸软壳蟹 Deep fried soft shell crab – chopped into a mess.

姜葱鱼片 Fish slices in ginger and scallions – nothing to shout about.

Perhaps it was because it just reopened and the staff was not well-trained. Or they were trying to get their grooves back. In any case, we were not impressed. There are three more claypot rice places along Beach Road, and two of them (the one just next door and in Golden Mile Food Centre) were better.

If they do not improve quickly, it would not survive the competition given that it is more expensive than the other two. It’s only saving grace, the dining environment was better.

Lorong 33 Geylang Claypot Rice
361/363/365 Beach Road
Singapore 199576
Tel: +65 6744 4574 / 6744 3619

https://www.facebook.com/geylangclaypotrice/

Date Visited : May 2019