East Ocean Restaurant - 391 Orchard Rd

It’s one of the older establishment of Chinese cuisine in Singapore. It also has a bit of a blast from the past. The Waiters and Waitresses spoke Cantonese among themselves which is quite rare. Very friendly staff happy to recommend dishes that make sense in the combination we’ve selected. Dim sums are generally gooood. The siew mai was a bit disappointing. Meat is a bit chunky inside and lacks salt. The stir fried carrot cake would be better if it had a bit more x.o. sauce. The star dish was the plain stir fried noodles. The “wok hei” Smokey charred flavour was quite a treat.

Definitely worth every penny. Love the cheerfulness and friendliness of the waitresses working here. Most of them are aunties and spoke Cantonese, creating a very good ambience for dim sum.

The East Ocean in Shaw Towers used to be THE place in Singapore for elites wanting Teochew cuisine HK style. Today, 25 years later, I walked into its namesake at Ngee Ann City to a totally different experience. We were early, so the decor and ambiance was somewhat deserving of the name East Ocean. The service was, though not impeccable, was acceptable. The menu didn't have any of their renowned dishes of yesteryear. No goose meat. No deep fried onion pancakes. We ordered a fish (steamed), crab roe shark's fin, Hong Kong Kailan fried with salted fish. Then the crowd started streaming in - happy, noisy and thrifty. Most were there for the dim sums. For lunch? Tsk tsk. We had a wonderful meal and left satiated but sad. It is a shame how East Ocean's fortune has declined. Yet there are a few staffs from those glorious days still working there. They are trying hard to hold true to the highest standards while serving customers oblivious to its glorious past or order dishes worthy of their chef's culinary skills. Guess time flies and the world had moved on.

I usually write review to support new, up and coming/underrated restaurants, but this place really needs a good o' shoutout. I am so glad that I came here for lunch because this experience will ensure that I don't ever come back again. RESERVATION ISSUE: We made a reservation at 1pm, arrived on time to find at least 5-8 other groups WAITING outside even though they had an existing reservation. It is not rocket science to ensure a healthy pipeline for patrons who made a reservation to be seated on time. We waited for 30 mins to get in and another 25mins for our food. We were not the only group with this issue -- the restaurant either don't manage their tables well, or are unwilling to leave tables reserved for patrons who actually bothered to plan their visit to East Ocean Restaurant. BRAISED PEANUTS AND ZAPPY NAPKINS for $2 each: Invisible charges and not informing us that the zappy napkin costs money, and that they charge their braised peanuts together WITH the zappy napkins. We were charged extra $12 (6 PAX, $2 EACH) just to have a few braised peanuts (which is not even good), and they told us Oh we don't waive the charge when you return us zappy cause you had some of our nuts~ If you do not wish to get pitifully scammed like us, please just decline their subpar braised peanuts (you can get something similar at Fairprice for $0.8 and you can eat your freaking fill) and not use their zappy napkins. -Ok maybe their service is good and food is decent- NOPE, BAD SERVICE: My family members were yelled at by the auntie because we could not hear her introduction of the beverage menu, and the auntie waitress shouted the tea menu at us when we asked for her to repeat... once. It's like we were reprimanded for being such deafs and we were taking up her time. Is it our fault that the restaurant is noisy that we ask for assistance with ordering our drinks? Tea cup was not very clean and the staff was not the slightest apologetic about preparing dirty tableware for us. Out of perhaps 5-6 staffs we spoke to, I reckoned only 2 of them spoke to us properly. At this point, I was not even expecting politeness, but actually staffs who have some decency in taking our orders and helping us out. FOOD.... DISAPPOINTING: We are just a family who came here with a reservation to try out this dim sum place, we are definitely not some fussy dim sum connoisseurs STILL the food was very disappointing. Considering we were never once spared from disappointment in this place, East Ocean Restaurant failed to secure their last possible redeeming trait as a restaurant with their food. If you like bland food and don't mind tasting food that has no soul: try the fried mee pok, chinese spinach, fried salad spring roll, deep fried seafood tofu If you like to eat mediocre food at very premium prices try the: beef cubes with capsicum ($32 but beef few and far in between, but decently prepared to say the least), stir fried scallop (plenty of egg white and eggs, a bit of scallop and they probably put a drop of truffle oil to bump the prices to $28 steamed siew mai, special mention to their toppings that was so oversteamed the veg has died 3 times in the steamer 3 kinds roasted meat $32 6 PAX with a bit of low quality food and overcharging, we paid close to $300 for our bill. If you find that service, food, hygiene and your precious time do not matter you may consider visiting this restaurant. PS. I only took some photos of the food because halfway through I was thinking why take pictures for them when I'm getting increasingly dissatisfied the longer I stay in this restaurant...?

Good food .. but only given one hour to eat since no reservations . . Dare not to order more coz only have one hour to eat. Make sure to make reservations online, probably u get more than one hour to eat..

Quite authentic HK/Guang Dong dim sum serve here. Overall all dim sum was nice, price was affordable as well, just the 糯米鸡 is not what i expected those black and oily~? It was a great place to enjoy a wonderful dim sum for breakfast or brunch~

Treat from my colleague at this old-schooled Cantonese restaurant, so I don't know what's their prices. ? Their roasted pork was amazingly well done! Most of their dim sum were great, didn't get why was there a need to put a green pea on their siew mai. ? Can give a miss to their 红油抄手 (spicy wantons) and 小笼包 (xiao long bao). In my opinion, not that wonderful if you compared to other dim sum places like DTF. ?

Ordered set menu for 5 pax. Food was good and served really fast. Only Problem we didn’t know got to leave the place by 9 pm, and our reservation was at 7 pm. Most tables stayed till 930 pm though. So dinner was pretty stressful.