Mouth Restaurant 地茂馆 @ Tanjong Pagar

The first Mouth Restaurant I went to was in Chinatown Point more than 30 years ago. At the peak of its popularity, it had more than 10 restaurants across Singapore. Now there is only one in Tanjong Pagar.

We used to go for their dim sum as well as their Peking Duck. They were also the first to introduce the lava centred 流沙包 salted egg yolk buns and the black colour 墨汁叉烧包 squid ink char siew bun. After all these years, Mouth Restaurant has retained the look and feel of a typical Chinese restaurant with its red coloured chairs and large round tables with lazy Susans.

We went for lunch during our QBR meetings in the office, and they offered seafood set lunch for 5/8/10 pax during this special time of dining restrictions, very intuitive for office and business lunches of all group sizes. We had a table of 5 and 8, and they were able to do the same menu for both tables.

1/ 金汤蟹肉鱼鳔羹 Braised Golden Soup w Fresh Crab Meat & Fish Maw

Delicious and thick fish maw soup to replace the usual shark’s fin soup that most Chinese banquet would serve. I am one in support of not serving shark’s fin in banquet – the celluloid has not taste. Fish maw on the other hand is abundant and absorb all the flavours from the soup. Not much crab meat in the soup though.

2/ 地茂点心拼盘 Mouth’s Dim Sum Platter

The appetiser course came with four different types of dim sums – siew mai, fried carrot cake with XO sauce, spring rolls, and Teochew crystal kueh. I especially liked the carrot cake, the chef had taken care to pan fried each piece so that it had a crust while remained soft inside.

3/ 金蒜蒸虾 Steamed Prawn w Minced Garlic

Steamed prawn with minced garlic with a thick brown sauce made with oyster sauce. Nice.

4/ 红烧三菇豆根时蔬 Braised Seasonal Vegetable w Trio Mushroom

The seasonal vegetable used was lettuce, and the three types of mushrooms were shiitake, shimeiji and trumpet mushrooms. The thick, red sauce was made from vegetarian oyster sauce (which is made from mushroom again). It was how my mom would make this dish.

5/ 北京片皮鸭 Mouth’s Peking Duck served w Homemade flour Skin

This is their signature dish, Peking duck done the traditional way with popiah skin instead of egg skin that most used today. The sweet sauce had been smeared in each piece of crispy duck skin wrapped in the popiah skin, you just need to decided if you want to add leek and cucumber strips or put extra sauce.I could not remember how it tasted before, but it was quite wet.

6/ 油浸笋壳鱼 Fried Soon Hock Fish w Blended Soya Sauce

This is one dish I would never attempt at home because of the amount of oil needed to deep fry the soon hock fish, also known as marbled goby. As marbled gobies are mainly farmed these days, it could be quite muddy and chewy (which we refer to as “lohkor”). I didn’t like the way they coated the fish with too much flour, and there was a bit of fishiness towards the belly of the fish (my favourite portion).

7/ 鸭丝焖伊面 Braised E-fu Noodle w Shredded Duck meat

The Peking duck meat was shredded and braised with e-fu noodles. Simple and delicious. I was pretty sure the entire duck was not used in this noodles, I was wondering were the drumsticks went to.

8/ 是日甜品 Dessert of the Day

The daily dessert was white fungus with wolf berries and dried longan. Cold and sweet, perfect for the hot day.

Afterthoughts

It was so good to dine at Mouth Restaurant after all these years to find that it still serve solid Cantonese cuisine. The style was old school, and although many places serve Cantonese, Mouth still retain an 80/90s menu that would bring a smile to many old-timers like me. I could not remember when was the last time a restaurant would serve white fungus sweet soup as dessert, but everything on today’s menu was good. Would definitely come back again soon.

Mouth Restaurant 地茂馆
38 Maxwell Rd, #01-01/02 Airview Building, Singapore 069116
Tel : +65 6438 5798

Visited in Apr 2022