Tom 尼胖子的烤鱼店 or Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish was the first restaurant that we visited after Singapore entered into phase 2 of the reopening plans on 19 Jun 2020. After Circuit Breaker, Singapore started to reopen its economy in phases and in phase 2, restaurants and most business have reopened! (By the way, did you realise that when you Google “Circuit Breaker” now, you won’t be able to find the actual circuit breaker electrical component…)
The reason why we visited Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish is because of the many Tan Yu advertisements that we’ve been seeing all around Singapore. Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish is a direct beneficiary of those advertisements! The other reason why we decided to visit NPZ Grilled Fish is because of its location. It is located at Boat Quay with seats by the Singapore River. Post-COVID, restaurants by the Singapore River would have much fewer guests, which was another draw for us.
Getting to Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish Boat Quay 尼胖子的烤鱼店
Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish is located 77 Boat Quay. To get to Boat Quay, we usually take the MRT to Raffles Place MRT Station and take a short walk from there. No parking, no frills. However, if you’re coming from the Raffles Place station, Ni Pang Zi is actually at the furthest end of Boat Quay. This means that you’d have to walk past the many touts along this stretch – which these days, have toned down significantly from its heydays.
Bearing our face masks, we arrived at Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish in the midst of a slight drizzle. Of course, the first order of the day, nope, not the menu. Safe Entry!
Safe Entry is part of Singapore’s contact tracing system which includes the TraceTogether app. Hopefully, the contact tracing wearable won’t be made compulsory…
Fish We Ate at Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish Boat Quay 尼胖子的烤鱼店
Next, it was time to browse the menu!
Again, due to the Tan Yu advertisements, we had already decided upon the Pickled Pepper Basa Fish (or Ling Bo Fish). Of course, we went for the less spicy option. Anything more, we’d be fighting the fiery peril than enjoying the grilled fish. For add-ons, we went for the pork belly and beancurd skin. We shared a Tsing Dao Beer ($6.80) as well as a rice ($1). As we went with the Eatigo 50% discount, the entire bill came to less than $30 bucks which was not too bad for a Boat Quay restaurant.
While we waited for the grilled fish to arrive, we enjoyed the Singapore River view while sipping on our drinks…
Our guess was spot on. We were the only guests seated at the outdoors seats – another guest just left as we arrived at Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish. COVID-19 has not been kind to businesses. The views from Ni Pang Zi was fantastic. We had close up views of our Parliament House (love it when we see our flag flying high in the wind) as well as the Asian Civilisations Museum and Marina Bay Sands in the distance.
The presentation of the grilled fish at Ni Pang Zi, was actually quite good. The pot that contained the grilled fish had intricate carvings that adds a little touch of class to the dish. We were told that the Basa Fish (Ling Bo Fish) had to be cooked for another 2 minutes. In the meantime, we inspected the dish a little closer…
The “depth” of the pot was actually quite shallow. For the add-ons, we found the sliced pork to be quite generous while we found the beancurd skin to be bordering on measly. As for the soup, we actually enjoyed the spicy, sourish taste of the pickled pepper. It was rather appetising. After our visit, we were not thirsty – an indication that MSG was not used to liven the taste of the awesome soup.
For the Basa Fish (Ling Bo Fish), we totally loved it. The fish was well grilled. You could taste the very slightly charred portions of the skin with the smokiness infused to the fish. The portion was also generous. We had several large chunky pieces of meat. Took us almost an hour to devour the entire pot.
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Verdict
We thoroughly enjoy our visit to Ni Pang Zi Grilled Fish (尼胖子的烤鱼店). With the 50% discount, the deal was pretty hard to beat. We’d definitely be back for a second visit and check out the fatty beef pot. Have you tried the fatty beef pot at Ni Pang Zi? Tell us in the comments section below!
P.S. We also changed our outfits! Did you notice? 😛
