As part of my vegetarian adventure, this restaurant came out on my google search for restaurants suitable for vegetarians and vegans and I decided to bring parents to give this new meatless restaurant a try. They have 2 outlets; one at Marina Square and another one at TripleOne Somerset. To avoid the crowd, I made a reservation at the TripleOne outlet.
At first glance, the restaurant looks like one of those hipster modern cafes with white brick walls and low industrial lamps and lightings. There are a lot of additional green touches as part of the decorations with mounted plants and even an organic greenhouse area at the side of the restaurant.
There are 2 themed tables which are caged up within these white fences and is great for that Instagram picture. These 2 tables are also the least cold areas of the restaurant as the rest of the tables have strong air conditioning blowing at them so if you are afraid of the cold, do ask for one of these 2 tables.
The menu is quite clean and artistic and is nicely separated into different categories like entrees, soup, salad, burgers, pizza, clay pot etc. The cuisine served is a good mix of local flavours, western as well as some South-East Asian cuisines.
Recommended by the staff, we order California maki as our starter, the maki had generous slabs of avocados on top and crunchy sticks of carrots, cucumbers and mock crab stick. There was also a drizzle of sesame sauce and something that taste like hoisin sauce. The maki tasted very similar to the actual deal and is a fantastic recommendation.
The som tam which is Thai papaya salad is so good we finished it in seconds. The actual som tam has shrimp paste or salted crab added to add on a layer of savoury flavours to the salad. This version has a more refreshing taste instead as there is a clear sweet and tangy flavour from the fruit and vegetables used. The crushed peanuts added also gave it a nice crunch and texture. Although different, this version totally does not pale in comparison to the real som tam and this also had a nice kick with the chilli in the sauce.
Since the restaurant was pretty cold, we ordered a hot herbal soup to warm our stomachs and this was such a good choice. Since there was no meat used, we were expecting the soup to be flat and bland as we have tasted in many other vegetarian versions. However, this herbal soup was extremely deep in flavours with nice mushroom fragrance, a hint of herbal flavours and good textures from the white and black fungus. The serving is good for sharing with 3 persons and any group size bigger than 3 would require at least 2 orders. In fact, I could have finished this all by myself.
This was a totally unexpected gem when we made a generic order but I guess nothing can go wrong with crispy cereals. This crispy cereal dish is commonly cooked with prawns or fried fish and the cereals have a tint of buttery flavour. Instead of fish or prawns, they used fried tofu which had crispy golden brown skin and soft warm tofu inside. The flavours were so good that my parents added the cereal to everything they were eating for that nice crunch. Order this and you will not regret this.
One of the most popular dishes in Green Ba is their clay pot rice and you can see that this is highly recommended in many online blogs and you can also see many customers in the restaurants ordering this dish. Visually, the clay pot rice was very colourful and smell great with that sizzling rice aroma as the server brought it to our table. There were fresh and crunchy broccoli, black fungus, carrots, red and green pepper as well as Chinese mushroom and lion mane mushrooms. The pot was very hot so there was a nice crispy pan-fried texture for the rice at the bottom of the pot which is the best part of any clay pot rice.
This is a staple you will find common in most Chinese stir-fry restaurants; dry fried rice vermicelli noodles. The usual version has prawns and pork but this version has generous strips of cabbage, carrots and shimeji mushrooms. This dish is generally tasty but more on the bland side for me. The thing I liked about the dish is that it was not as oily as the usual ones outside so it felt like a healthier version.
This last dish was the most disappointing of all the items we ordered. This Vietnamese pho soup was extremely bland and flat and there was really no flavour at all. The noodle soup has fresh vegetables and huge pieces of beancurd, cut red chilli and chilli flakes. Although the flavours of the soup were a total miss, the noodles were still well cooked and soft.
We also had the yam paste dessert which was served while I went to the toilet so I wasn’t in time to take a picture before my parents dig into it. The yam paste was served with pumpkin paste and it was not too sweet and perfect as an ending for a perfect meal. The texture of the dessert was smooth and creamy but at SGD 7.90 it was slightly pricey.
Overall, the atmosphere and the food at Green Ba was absolutely great and we almost forgot that it was a meatless restaurant as every dish served was so tasty and delicious. One thing to note is that the service is top-notch and the server was extremely attentive to our needs like pulling or holding a chair for my elderly parents and getting a hot glass of water when they complain that they were cold and even getting side plates before we even asked for them. The dishes range from SGD 6 to SGD 17 for entree to mains. We loved our experience here so well that we could jolly well become their regular.
Address: 111 Somerset Rd, TripleOne Somerset, Singapore 238164
Operating hours: 9 am to 9 pm
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