This was recommended in the New City Beats. I still remember the hosts raving about the soups here... Well, apparently they were paid to do so... =(

Our orders included:

Black Chicken Soup - $6

I guess the soups were pretty normal. The black chicken soup had a strong herbal taste but the meat portion was pathetic. I was only given a small chicken wing plus some other boney parts.

On the other hand, the pork ribs soup seemed to be more worthwhile, with ingredients like pork ribs, carrot, shark fin melon etc. However, there was a weird pork taste when you first tried it, which you probably will get used to it after more spoonfuls.

Size of the pot

This was the recommended claypot rice. Again normal, abeit salty for my liking. Then again, it came with generous serving of chicken, mushrooms, sausage, and can share the portion with 2 or 3 persons.

*****

When we stepped into the resturant at about 8pm +, there was no one there to attend to us. We waited for a few minutes, before I went to the counter and asked whether we had to find seats ourselves. The obviously not trained staff behind the counter told me yes. Later, I saw people coming in being served when the place was less crowded. The staff behind the counter, who seemed to be in charge of cooking claypot rice, appeared to me that he knew nothing but to cook the normal claypot chicken rice.

Ok nvm, we found our own seat as a family of 3 happened to leave. When we were seated, we tried to get attention from the staff to clear the table and to give us the menu. We tried not just once, but at least to get the attention of 3 staff. One of them even nodded the head and no action taken. We were already comtemplating of leaving the place when finally a staff "understood" our requests and came back with the menu.

Again, the staff was taking not much of an initative. We had to tell her specifically to clear the table. Guess what, she cleared our table by shifting the dirty plates to the jointed table beside us. Did she really expect us to have good appetite looking at the leftovers of the previous diners? *Roll eyes*

Our dining table

Again nvm... We decided to change table ourselves, which was obviously not noticed by any of the staff.

Next, order food rite? Guess what happened?

I'm sure you have a clue and you are definitely right! We couldnt get attention from the staff AGAIN! We were sitting right in front of the counter.. WTH

We must have spent at least 20 painful minutes trying to be attended to, from stepping into the resturant to getting our orders taken.

On a fair note, there is no GST and service charge here. Frankly speaking, I rather have the service charge if that means a better dining experience.

Personally, I value good dining experience which will include the food quality, the environment and the service standard. So if you ask, I will probably give this place a miss. Come to think of it, there is plenty of places selling good soups. In fact, I went to Bedok central and found a soup stall at one of the kopitiam ( where Astons is located as well). The black chicken soup costed less than $5 and was served similarly in those little pot. Nothing special, since everyone else is claiming that their soups are brewed in little pots so that the favours are contained.

And if you really must try this, try to avoid the peak hours. As quoted by my bf, the staff was like headless chickens, dunno what they are supposed to do... Super disorganized... *Shrugged*