Friends Kitchen HK 朋友小廚

Was actually quite surprised to have found out about Friends Kitchen’s reopening when scrolling around social media fairly recently. For those whom have been follow f the happenings of the local F&B scene for a while, one would probably have heard of Friends Kitchen that was once situated around Neil Road — these folks are by the same people behind Friends Cafe that is located at The Brooks I in the area around Springleaf MRT Station; they are also affiliated to Wong Chiew Eating House as well. Whilst Friends Kitchen had closed their Neil Road location for a while by now, it seems that these folks had decided to resurrect the brand albeit in a different format from what they were previously — now situated in the Food Canopy coffeeshop at the foot of Blk 260 Ang Mo Kio Street 21, Friends Kitchen is now a stall within a coffeeshop. The signboard at the shopfront bears the establishment’s namesake in Chinese; 朋友小厨, though the menu does mention of its English name as “Friends Kitchen HK”. Interestingly, Friends Kitchen HK still uses the same menu as its days at Neil Road at its new location at Ang Mo Kio — the food offerings are being split across categories such as Seafood, Pork, Chicken, Veg, Egg, Soup, Beef, Rice, Noodles and Appetisers; its menu being a mix of communal sharing plates, as well as individually-sized dishes that one can also find at typical Hong Kong-style tea rooms.

Perhaps it is due to the monsoon season that happened during our point of visit to Friends Kitchen; we found ourselves actually craving for a Macaroni dish — something that was pretty much on theme considering how Friends Kitchen is an establishment serving up Hong Kong Chaar Chan Teng-style dishes, though we aren’t ones that typically appreciate macaroni soup. It is worth noting that Friends Kitchen offers two variants for their Macaroni offerings — one being the Ham Macaroni and the other would be the Char Siew Macaroni that we had picked; the Char Siew being the more noteworthy one of the two to us due to the affiliation between Friends Kitchen and Wong Chiew Eating House where the latter is an establishment noted for its Hong Kong-style roast meat offerings. We thought that the Char Siew Macaroni was the dish that left us with slightly better impressions that the rest; the soup was considerably light in flavour — just suitably savoury for a decent flavour whilst one can also detect the hint of fried shallots added to the soup as well. The macaroni does fine with a bit of a bouncy texture that was done just about right — the Char Siew here doesn’t come quite as sweet from the honey bbq glaze that some would expect, but still comes tender with a good, meaty bite that those whom love chunky Char Siew would likely be able to appreciate.

The Curry Fish Ball at Friends Kitchen comes in a format that is somewhat akin to a dry curry — just like how one would have expect Hong Kong-style curry to be, the curry gravy does come with a heavier hint of turmeric and lacks the coconut milk that one would find in the Singapore-style curry. The fishballs do come bouncy, but what we found interesting was the inclusion of what seems to be pig skin that gave a bit of a contrasting texture. Meanwhile, the Egg Tart was especially disappointing for us — the egg curd being a little too sweet and feeling rather over-steamed; the pastry also felt especially tired, limp and chewy, totally missing out on the light, flaky and crisp pastry that makes egg tarts so enjoyable in general. Whilst Friends Kitchen was a spot that have been quite hyped about during its hype, the current rendition felt like a shadow of what it once was — the presentation and quality of the food just didn’t seem to be it for us; it just felt like these folks had lost it somehow somewhere in the midst of navigating through the challenges in the local F&B scene. Perhaps it may also be us trying the wrong items during our visit to Friends Kitchen, but given what we had experienced, it would certainly take quite a fair bit of convincing in order to get us to revisit them in time to come.