I was scrolling through Eatigo recently looking for places to try (at a discount!!!) and found Gin Khao which was near my sister's workplace. We've not eaten Thai food in quite a while so we decided to go after her work. Raffles Place is a ghost town after working hours so Gin Khao already had a 50% discount starting from 6pm, which is a really good timing for dinner.
Food
Gin Khao's signature dish is apparently the Watermelon Fried Rice. Watermelon Fried Rice is not a particularly common Thai dish so we were pretty curious to see how this would taste.
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| Watermelon Fried Rice ($14.80) |
I was a bit disappointed the fried rice wasn't served in a watermelon bowl like all the pictures I've seen but nevermind, we'll move on.
This was reminiscent of Chinese fried rice with the slight but not prominent wok hei taste. The fried rice is fried with two shrimps, carrots, cabbage, and egg. Three tiny watermelon balls are then buried in it. And then it's garnished with some cashew nuts and chicken floss. The watermelon is a refreshing touch to fried rice that can tend to be a bit oily.
But honestly I'm not impressed. This is basically Yangzhou fried rice with a 0% effort upgrade by tossing in watermelons and garnishing it with some cashews and chicken floss. And there's only three measly balls of watermelon that really isn't enough for this whole plate of fried rice. This was pretty disappointing as it seems that other previous iterations of this dish at other outlets came with more ingredients like squid, mussels, fried bean curd skin, and also much more watermelon. Hopefully this was a once off thing and we had a bad experience. Because if this is how the dish is supposed to be, then this dish is definitely not worth it.
We also tried the Tom Kha Gai since it looked interesting and we haven't tried it before. We didn't want to go for the usual suspects like Pad Thai and Som Tam, which you would probably be able to get easily at other places.
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| Tom Kha Gai ($13.80) |
Wow, this was such a different experience. The coconut milk base makes it so rich, and so different from the Cantonese 煲汤 soups that I'm used to. But the sourness typical of Thai cuisine quickly cuts through it and makes this so so soo addictive. On the first mouth I was still a bit hesitant about the flavour profile of the soup but by the time I was halfway though, I couldn't stop drinking it even though I was bursting from all the food. I really appreciated having this dish here and expanded my Thai vocabulary of food.
The food here teeters on the semi-atas side with prices about $15. The struggle here was always, why should I order this $15 Pad Thai when I can get it for $5 at the coffee shop near my home. The food here is definitely of good quality, with more ingredients in one dish compared to the street food iteration. It's reasonably priced when you bear in mind that this is a nice restaurant with people serving the food to you, even if it lacks a bit of soul with the Jay Chou songs playing in the background.
And if you have the chance to reserve this place at 50% off on Eatigo, this place is definitely worth it!
Location
Gin Khao
1 Raffles Place #04-29
Singapore 048616
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