Nakajima Suisan at the Food Hall

The BFF and I had to run errands in town, and lunch was convenient at Ngee Ann City/Takashimaya's basement food hall. I rarely eat at this food hall it’s always crazy crowded. Today, we popped in at 11.30am and it was fairly empty. The BFF decided on having grilled fish at the furthest corner stall in the food hall at Nakajima Suisan Grilled Fish. 

The eatery was packed. Social distancing meant that seating capacity has been cut by half; even at 11.30am, there was a 20-person queue to eat. One has to queue to order food, get a seat number, then get into a second queue to wait to be called to be seated. Apparently Nakajima Suisan has been quietly serving up affordable grilled fish teishoku for years. I've never eaten here. The menu stayed through to its name and offered quite a wide selection of fish done grilled in salt, teriyaki or miso. No other seafood or chicken was available. I liked that. 

The BFF picked a S$14 silver cod grilled in miso. She said the fish wasn't as tasty as a black cod. The BFF can only eat this kind of fish. Hahahaha. She can't deal with bones in fish. This means she doesn't know how to eat an unfilleted whole fish. She can't do fish head or tail, and she definitely can't do even a yellowtail collar. For S$18, my salt-grilled yellowtail collar was decent. There was no finesse about it. It was simply seasoned with salt and grilled nicely without drying out the flesh. The collar is the fattiest and juiciest part of the fish. It tasted fine to me. The soup was okay, and so was the cabbage salad. I'd skip the tsukemono and kinpira gobo. It's a brainless meal lah — nothing to scream about but nothing to complain about either.