The first good thing about Sushi Tei is the location. Go to Holland Village which is on the yellow circle line. To find the new (in 2022) Raffles mall you take the first, nearest exit to the ticket office (and platforms), exit A. You come out facing the Raffles mall which is across the car park.
Raffles Holland Village. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
A few steps and you are at the front entrance. The mall is small and easy to find your way around. You are on the ground floor. The upmarket supermarket is in the basement. On the ground floor you have a Japanese cafe and a bakery (and toilets up four stairs.) The escalators are in the centre.
Escalators
A narrow one up and beside it a narrow one down. Up one level on the escalator and there's an expensive dress shop. Up a second escalator and you have the Japanese Sushi Tei restaurant.
You have a choice of window seat tables or secluded inside tables. We had a bright, light window seat table.
We were offered two printed laminated menus. One was the larger regular multi-page hard cover picture menu including some more expensive items. The shorter but large one-fold menu showed a few seasonal dishes and one drink and two desserts on the back.
We ordered
Salmon sushi
Chicken in a bowl of rice with sauce
Chicken on rice bowl. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Salmon (with mayonnaise served on the side)
Vegetables
Tempura deep fried vegetables. The orange was sweet potato. Very nice.
Except that I got two of them. I would have liked smaller pieces. That way two, three, or four people would get some of each vegetable.
The dark grey was mushroom. The white was another kind of mushroom.
I got the stringy white mushroom which I didn't like. Somebody else got the solid grey mushroom which I would have preferred.
To my mind deep frying vegetables ruins their health qualities. But it makes a change.
Made a change from salad.
Delights
1 The ice cream was walnut. Nutty.
2 Being given two spoons to share the dessert.
In retrospect, it should have had a decoration. But at the time I did not notice. You could buy the same or similar in the supermarket downstairs. (I suppose you might say the same of the cold sushi.)
I would have liked to have tried the matcha (green tea) ice cream. I had that at another restaurant and liked it. The matcha would have been more Japanese.
Summary
1 Location - mall near MRT, restaurant near escalators
2 The chicken on rice bowl in a great sauce.
3 The novelty of deep fried tempura vegetables. Lots of salads on the menu.
4 The walnut ice cream was the less expensive of two options and all four of us liked it.
5 Water, warm or cold, provided fast and replenished.
Disappointments
1 Price charge for water. 50 cents.
2 Canned drinks instead of fresh. The grape juice was a Coca Cola brand drink, not freshly squeezed. It was pleasant enough, according to the ingredients list on the can, grape mixed with apple. I didn't mind. The more types of juice the better. I like mixed juice.
3 All the grills were unavailable because, they said, they were short-staffed. Our Singaporean dining companions told us that since the ease of travel restrictions a few days earlier many workers had returned to their homes in Malaysia.
4 Nobody smiled or welcomed us. Nobody smiled or asked if everything was okay or did we want anything extra. (I wanted a spoon. A knife to divide the vegetables. Or knife and fork.)
Toilets
The public toilets outside the restaurant were lovely and modern. Best of all, the shower attachment at knee level behind the toilet. Anything missing? No way to dry your hands after washing them. Those on the ground floor were up four steps, if you have mobility problems, use the ones on the upper floor.
Their other branches include 12 in Singapore. (At Changi Jewel, Nex and more.) Also in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Vietnam.
Useful Websites
https://sushitei.com/
https://www.facebook.com/raffleshollandv/
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