Haven’t visited Dily’s in a while but the one thing that never changes is how terrible the staff are at wrapping your cai fan. Each time we open our packs of rice, we’re always on the edge of our seats and scrambling to see if we need to line the bottom of our packed lunches with tissue paper so the gravy doesn’t spill out. Almost none of the serving staff can wrap a decent pack of cai fan, so good luck to you if you order something with gravy. Prepare tons of tissue or just open it in the plastic bag.

Ordering dishes from Dily’s is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. Although you can see the dishes right in front of you, sometimes the seasonings or gravy taste isn’t so apparent and the staff usually don’t bother to tell you what it is apart from the type of meat that’s in the dish. Sometimes the aunties also tend to combine dishes so you might end up with eggplant hidden at the back of the ladies finger dish you pointed to.

I got the chicken in gravy, ladies finger and scrambled egg with onions. My chicken gravy was savoury and non-spicy in this order, but this isn’t always the case. My colleagues ordered from the batch of chicken in gravy that came out directly after mine and theirs was spicy with chilli slices and chilli seeds hidden in the unassuming gravy. I think the garlic cloves came with the chicken, but I’m not too sure. I’d usually pick them out but since I just came back from Korea and learnt to eat raw garlic cloves, I ate these with the rice. They were quite sweet and still released a little heat with each bite which was nice. Overall, the chicken chunks are always pretty good, they’re tender and do absorb the flavours of the gravy they’re cooked in. The ladies fingers are quite decent, but they always tend to be very gooey so if you don’t like the ladies finger slime then stay clear of this. The scrambled egg is usually a safe option, and it’s not too salty or tasteless. Keep in mind that depending on the server you get, you might want to opt for the pre-cut omelettes or pre-portioned dishes as some servers tend to be more kiam siap with others and you end up with a tiny portion especially during lunch hour.