Looking back before 2025, whenever I craved Korean Ginseng Chicken, I could only travel to Seoul for the authentic one or settle for the ones offered at a general Korean restaurant. Fast forward to today: since Modu opened the first speciality samgyetang restaurant, so many more have popped up in Singapore, and the newest is the Jiho Samgyetang from the SBCD group
Located within the CBD area at the basement of 18 Cross Street, the restaurant is more of an open-concept space
I tried very hard to take photos to show the space, but the tables are kind of scattered across the open atrium, with a small veranda to signify the entire area of the restaurant. The whole atmosphere is simple, with clean lines and bright lighting, and the entire restaurant can take more than 50 people at one time
They have 6 types of samgyetang and 6 types of samyejuk, which is the porridge version of the soup. They also have some speciality dishes like the duck health soup, spicy braised chicken stew and soy braised chicken stew. They have 3 types of bibimbap and 2 types of noodle soup. For side dishes, they have items like pancakes, dumplings, japchae, salad and more
They were simple in the side dishes provided: just the cabbage kimchi, radish kimchi and the spicy seasoned garlic. The side dishes were pretty normal and nothing too interesting to point out
We ordered the squid and minari salad served with avocado and seaweed. Since this was one of their signature dish, we ordered it to try, and the salad has a sweet, spicy and tangy sauce, which was great as an appetiser. The minari was crunchy, which gave another dimension of texture to the bouncy squid. Eating it together with the avocado and seaweed gave the dish another flavour, as the creaminess of the avocado complemented the spicy, nutty salad very well. I found the salad a little on the spicy side, so the avocado helped to tame the spice for me
Although there were 6 flavours to choose from for the samyetang, I still went for the perilla flavour, which came in this thick, milky soup base. The chicken was tender and soft, and the soup was thick and nutty. It was a very comforting bowl of soup, but it was missing some depth when compared to the other 2 samyetang speciality soup restaurants. It was a nice bowl of soup, which is better than most samyetang out there, but if I were to compare the 3 restaurants offering this in Singapore, I would rank them as the last one
Overall, if you are following the hype to chase down the new Korean restaurants, it is still worth a visit as the meal is generally healthy and warming. The salad is also something not found in other restaurants. For a samyetang lover, it might not be the best offering in town
Address: 18 Cross St, #B1-01, Singapore 048423
Opening hours: 11 am to 3 pm and 5 pm to 10 pm ( 11.30 am to 10 pm on Sat and Sun)
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