Have been gradually scoping out the new restaurants in Market Square. I've been interested in trying out Niya's Kitchen for a little while but been a little bit dissuaded by the overly enthusiastic staff standing out front and a general lack of menus online. Nevertheless, we decided to go check it out for a quick weekday family dinner and were pleasantly surprised with the experience.
Whilst the name gives no hints, the menu was decidedly Northern Chinese/Shanghainese in nature with mains, sides as well as rice and noodle dishes. We ordered quite a selection to try as much as we could.
Our appetizer was the tofu salad with preserved egg. Light and refreshing the tofu was silky smooth and didn't fall apart as we grabbed it. The century egg was deeply umami and went well with the soy sauce to give the tofu flavour.
Another snack we had was the Pan Fried Bun rather than being wrapped at the top, the folds were concealed at the bottom. I really enjoyed these pan fried buns actually. The bun pastry was quite thin but elastic enough that it wasn't brittle, there was an ample amount of soup inside each bun and the filling was well seasoned. Would recommend getting this dish for sure.
Of the rice dishes we ordered the Kung Pao Chicken Rice. The portion size was immense and the chicken to rice ratio was very generous. The dish was quite spicy for me and I noted that there were more peppers and cashews than chicken, but the tastes and flavours were pretty good.
Next up was one of my favourites, the Shepherd Purse Pork Stir Fried Rice Cake. In terms of Shanghai food, I love a good stir fried rice cake. With its chewy glutinous texture, it soaks up the porky meat sauces infused with shepherd purse. There wasn't too much meat in this dish and I would have preferred a bit more pork, but there was an abundance of shepherd purse and the portions were very generous.
We also had two noodle dishes, the first one was Beef in Spicy Sour Soup with Noodles. This was notably more expensive than the other dishes but was also about double the size. It came in what I would call a small basin and was topped with some very fatty beef and spicy oil atop the spicy sour broth. The dish was far spicier than I had anticipated and it really pushed the limits of my tolerance, the noodles were firm, but I wish there was more given the size of the dish. Again the soup was quite fatty and so was the beef, I would definitely have been less guilty if they used leaner cuts.
Our last dish of the night was the Shanghai Stir Fried Noodles. The portion size was alright but small compared to the other options they had here. I really liked the savoury flavours of dark soy which was absorbed deep into each strand of noodle. Again though, they didn't have much meat at all in the dish, but an abundance of veggies. If they had more pork strips, it would have been far more balanced.
Overall, we had a pretty good time at Niya's kitchen, it gives the nearby Taste Gallery a good run for their money, and I'd be keen to come back and have more of their pan fried pork dumplings soon.
Taste: 7/10
Value: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Environment: 7/10
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