Bikon Yugo

There was an assortment of tempura ranging from fish to prawns to various types of vegetables!! The batter was pretty thin and not too oily. you can choose between rice or udon.

there was also a promo which gave us an extra 2 tempura prawns if we ordered the assorted set or sth.

Tried out the new Bikon Yugo; a new stall that has opened its doors at the Food Garden food court situated at Asia Square Tower 1; the stall is located around the same area where the outlet of The Soup Spoon is situated there. Decked in a bright yellow facade, the stall features interesting and cute illustrations that gives them a rather cheerful appearance. Serving up mainly just two categories of dishes, Bikon Yugo offers patrons with options pertaining to Golden Porridge or Tempura items on its menu; the variety of Golden Porridge includes the 3 Flavours Golden Porridge, Minced Pork Golden Porridge and the Golden Porridge with Fish, while patrons can choose between the various ala-carte tempura such as the Mushroom Tempura, Ebi Tempura and Fish Tempura, just to name a few. Bikon Yugo also serves up Temdon (the name of their Tendon that is reflected on the screen displaying the menu) and Tempura Noodle — both available in either Ebi Tempura or Mixed Tempura format. Drinks available at Bikon Yugo includes a variety of canned beverages that are prominently displayed at the counter.

Since porridge isn’t quite our thing, we found ourselves going for the Temdon instead — it was needless to say that we decided to end up with the Mixed Temdon so as to have a wider variety of tempura items as compared to going for the Ebi Temdon. Included with the Mixed Temdon would be the ebi, shiitake mushroom, sliced carrot, long beans, eggplant, lotus root and Shimeiji mushrooms — all deep-fried in a golden brown tempura batter as one would have expected them to be in a Tendon. It is also noted that the rice of Temdon is drizzled with teriyaki sauce that gives the rice sweet-savoury flavour as well. Overall, we felt that this was a Tendon offering that was of a reasonable quality at its price point — there are elements that didn’t really gel well with us personally; the most stark of the lot being the use of regular rice grains for the bed of rice beneath the tempura pieces. While being quite understandably so given its price point (we paid $7 after a 20% discount in-line with their grand opening promotion), there was just this odd feeling with the rice that it wasn’t sticky nor flavourful enough — something that using short-grain rice would have fixed. That being said, the drizzle of the Teriyaki sauce helps to moisten the rice up a little; would prefer if they could do with more of that teriyaki sauce for a better balance though. The tempura items were largely decent; we liked how all the tempura elements had a batter that was not too thick — all that whilst maintaining the tempura’s light and airy crispness without soaking up all the grease if being left aside for a while. We also found the quality of the ebi used pretty commendable as well; it does carry the natural sweetness of crustaceans, though the size of the ebi can be said as small for some — definitely something got to do with the price point of the Temdon here (we can’t ask for too much when it’s $7, right?).

Considering its price point at $7, the Temdon at Bikon Yugo does seem to be able to scratch some cravings at a wallet-friendly rate if one were not to be too much of a nitpick on the details — the tempura pieces can be said to be executed better than what some commercial tempura-specialty chains serve up, though there are some pretty obvious trade-offs on other aspects that answers to how they were able to price their Temdon as such. That being said, Bikon Yugo probably does have some teething issues for a brand new establishment that we wish they could get sorted out as they go further into their operations — one obvious example would be the long waiting time for their food; we took around 20mins for our order to be served with less than five pax ahead of us. This is despite them being significantly less busy as compared to the other stalls, who are seeing longer queues, yet clearing the crowd way quicker — a bit of a concern considering the crowd at Asia Square comprises of office folks who usually have time constraints on having their meals. Otherwise, Bikon Yugo does offer an interesting option to folks in the Downtown area for an affordable Temdon — if one is not too picky, of course.