Grandma's Restaurant

Before late 2010, Grandma's Restaurant had never really been on my family's radar. The reason was that our go-to place for Indonesian or spicy food was Tambuah Mas at Tanglin Shopping Centre. What made my family try Grandma's in December 2010 was a disappointing experience at Tambuah Mas. Since then, Grandma's has overtaken Tambuah Mas as the place to have Indo-type spicy food.

The decor and furniture at Grandma's, Paragon, are pleasing to the eye and comfortable. Even though the furniture has a more modern design, its earthy tones makes the restaurant feel warm and cosy. When we arrived at about 6pm, only three other tables were occupied. More people came in as time passed, but service was good throughout. Additionally, as the servers leave a big bottle of drinking water on each table, we could pour water for ourselves and did not have to wait for them to refill our glasses.

My cousin ordered the Char Kway Teow, the description of which is: "Flat rice noodles stir fried with chicken, prawns, clams, squid, egg, chives and beansprouts". My cousin said that it was good.

My mother ordered the Cantonese noodles. Its description reads: "Fresh seafood, chicken, vegetables and egg, stir-fried Cantonese style with your choice of Kway Teow, Sang Mee or Bee Hoon". My mother chose bee hoon. Compared to the char kway teow, this dish looked a little small.

The previous time I ate at Grandma's I had their curry chicken (thick, delicious coconutty curry blanketing four chicken drumsticks). So this time, I decided to try the beef rendang.

Grandma's chef had thoroughly caramelised the coconut milk and slowly cooked the beef so that the beef had absorbed all the spices and coconut milk. It was sufficient to use only a fork to pull apart the beef, and each strand of meat had huge flavour.

We like Grandma's sambal kangkong because their kangkong comes with more leaves than stalks, and does not arrive swimming in oil or grease. Further, Grandma's fries its kangkong with a generous amount of sambal so that every bite packs a spicy sambal punch. Even my cousin, who rarely eats spicy food, tried the kangkong and said that it was delicious.

Grandma's Restaurant
290 Orchard Road
#B1-42/43, The Paragon
Tel: 6737 7931
Opening hours: Daily from 11.30am to 10pm

Note: Before going to a restaurant I always like to first look at its menu so that I can decide in advance what to order. As I could not find the menu for Grandma's Restaurant online, I took a picture of every page in their menu for future reference.