à¹Û©ÛÛ©á¦ Food Blog à¹Û©ÛÛ©á¦

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Pepper Lunch

Website : http://www.pepperlunch.com
Located at :

Takashimaya, Ngee Ann City B2
Isetan Scotts B1

Beef Pepper Rice

Combo Salmon & Chicken

This should be a fairly new concept restaurant opened since last year.

The operating concept is somewhat like fast food, whereby you have to join the queue to order and make payment for your food at the counters. The exception is, instead of finding your own table, the service staff will do that for you. I suppose they will ensure that you have secured a table before preparing your order. Sometimes, things will get frenzy when the queue gets long, and you can hear the counter staffs shouting to the staffs allocating tables, "Hey, this one got seat already or not??" Quite chaotic actually.

All orders come in sets. A set basically consists of a main dish (your food on that hotplate with rice) and your choice of either a drink or soup. I would say prices for the sets range between S$10 - S$16? Or was it S$20? Can't remember, around there lar.

In my humble opinion, I think the prices are quite expensive. For something that I have to cook myself and end up smelling like BBQ food at the end of the day, I'm actually thinking that I'm being overcharged. Heh, that's just my opinion.

Frankly, I think the variety of food is not a lot. They only have like 95% beef dishes and remaining 5% chicken / salmon. In fact, if I don't remember wrongly, that 5% is only 4 dishes, namely,

Salmon Pepper Rice
Combo Salmon & Chicken
Double Chicken Steak (something like that)
Double Salmon Steak (something like that)

I'm assuming that beef lovers will love this restaurant very much, given the variety of beef dishes, and non-beef eaters like me will be limited to choices. I think they should do something about the variety, like add some seafood or something.

Given that the queue was quite long when I first went there, I didn't have to wait very long for my food though. Essentially, they just need to heat up the hotplate, cut the meat and dump it together with the vegetables on the hotplate, spread some special butter and serve. Like how long could this take?! The waiter who brings the food to your table will then "teach" you how to cook your food. Something like, "You spread the special butter on the meat, cook for a minute, then start on the vegetables. Only add the special sauces after everything is cooked." The whole restaurant is filled with people busy concentrating on cooking their food with all the "Zzzz Zzz" sizzling sounds on the hotplate. Quite noisy actually, especially with the LCD screens teaching you how to cook your food as well.

All in all, I think the food is fairly ok, not those uber delicious kind but, will do lar. At one point, I thought that the food was quite tasty as it was piping hot on the hotplate, complete with loads of honey brown sauce, which I've added. I suppose that's what made it tasty. Special sauce leh! Or else I pay so much for what. But after finishing half the plate, and food has turned cold, I became quite sick of it actually. Or perhaps it's just me. Anyway, my friend who has tried the Beef Pepper Rice also said it was ok only. So there.

I think the Japanese are clever to come up with such concept. Afterall, they charge restaurant charges for fast food style services, and food to be cooked by customers themselves! Like, if the food is nice, they can claim it's the special butter and sauces, if it's not nice, then it's because customers themselves don't know how to cook! Brilliant! Actually, I'm more interested in knowing how special the butter and sauces are.

To conclude, I think I will not be stepping into Pepper Lunch for quite sometime, unless I have extra money to spare and want to do some cooking.

For a start, I shall not be so stringent and give it 3/5.

always me @ 12:09 PM |

0 Comments: