漁花食堂 裕農店

This is a hot stir-fry restaurant called "Yu Hua Dining" located on Yu Nong Road. Its Japanese-style name and appearance piqued my interest as I often pass by this road, so I decided to visit this little place on a Friday evening. However, instead of having a joyful Friday night, I felt quite disappointed after the meal, which prompted me to seriously write a piece for the first time in a while on this Saturday, my day off.

First of all, every time I pass by this restaurant, I can see a decent number of patrons inside. Although it’s not a famous queueing spot, it can't be that bad, right? Otherwise, how would all these people get there? Coupled with Google Maps reviews, it seemed decent enough, even with some repeated reviews, but most of the feedback was positive, and the overall rating was 4.1 stars — it should be fine, right?

However, the restaurant's menu still had some elements that made me uneasy, such as offering stir-fry, barbecue, seafood, and hot pot all at once. Perhaps it's my personal bias, but usually, when a restaurant tries to pack too much variety, there is bound to be some level of poor performance. You have to be skilled at stir-frying, seasoning well, and ensuring proper wok heat, but you also have to be proficient in grilling, which is quite contradictory. Grilling requires careful management of heat and timing; it needs to be slow and precise, while stir-frying is more physically demanding, using high heat and speed for dishes like sautéed vegetables or rice. At the same time, they are also dealing with hot pot, where the most important aspects are the soup base and the freshness of the ingredients. A restaurant that can master all these components must be quite strong. However, the outcome… sadly validated my bias 😢

Let me go over the dishes one by one!

Oyster Noodle Soup: It's not the orange-red kind of thick noodle soup we often see outside, nor is it the drier kind of noodles with oysters. This dish feels like it's somewhere in between; the ingredients are decent, but the flavor is quite ordinary.

Crab Meat Fried Eggs: The crab meat is fairly chunky; although the portion isn’t large, it's still sufficient. The eggs are scrambled in larger pieces, providing a nice texture. Overall, it's a pretty decent dish.

Mapo Tofu: This dish is seasoned more towards the Taiwanese style of Mapo Tofu; it's not overly numbing and has only a mild spiciness. Many Taiwanese Mapo Tofus tend to be overly thickened, and it’s common to find places where it's a flop due to excessive starch. This one has a reasonable level of thickening and doesn't have significant flavor issues, though I would prefer it to be a bit more numbing. I’d say it’s an okay dish.

Starting from the following dishes, my Friday night mood began to shift…

Five-Spice Salted Pork: What I was looking forward to was the kind of salted pork that might have a slightly crispy skin and a lot of black pepper on top. However, it was a golden-brown salted pork, quite different from what I imagined. That aside, as long as it’s delicious food, I think the presentation is okay. The saltiness of the pork was noticeable, so the first bite didn't have much of an impact, but my wife showed a troubled expression after tasting it. She is more sensitive to the meaty taste and mentioned that it seemed to have a bit of a foul smell. Initially, I didn't pay much attention and continued eating, but as I ate more, the pork smell started to reveal itself. I couldn't tell if it was due to low meat quality or lack of freshness. But with the use of five-spice seasoning and the method of making salted pork, it should be a flavorful dish; if it still has a strong pork smell, that indeed is a problem.

Salt and Pepper Grilled Ribs: This dish was key to my low evaluation of this dining experience. Compared to the five-spice salted pork, perhaps because the salt and pepper seasoning itself is quite simple, the pork smell became more pronounced. Even though I dipped a lot of salt and pepper powder to mask it, the foul odor was still hard to cover up. There are many ways to season ribs, and this restaurant's menu has more than just this flavor… but generally, ribs are hard to mess up; as long as they are properly grilled and paired with suitable sauces or spices, it should not be a problem. However, these ribs had an unacceptable pork smell.

Lastly, my feelings after the meal: the pork had a bad smell and a strong meatiness. That day, instead of leaving with the savoriness of enjoying a meal, I left with a lingering unpleasant taste in my mouth. I’m not saying the restaurant's ingredients are stale; after all, I didn’t get sick or anything. It’s just that if the quality of the ingredients isn’t great, that can often be covered up with seasoning. Or if the quality of the ingredients isn’t an issue, then it’s a major problem with the seasoning itself. In summary, the biggest problem might just be that I had high expectations for this place. With high Google ratings and typically being able to see a decent number of customers inside, the whole experience ended up feeling like a huge letdown.

Afterwards, I reviewed the low-rated comments on Google and indeed found that many pointed out concerns regarding ingredient freshness. I can only say that overall, it’s not highly recommended. I’ll balance out the review scores!