Swatow Seafood

This old-school dim sum spot in Toa Payoh is often packed, especially during lunchtime. Making a reservation is highly recommended to secure a table. We ordered the dim sum set lunch for three, which was a great deal. It included four dim sum items, one main dish, one vegetable, one meat dish, soup, and dessert. Since we had four people in our group, we also added a few à la carte items to share. The food was satisfactory, though it didn’t particularly stand out. It’s a decent spot for casual dining, but I still prefer my go-to dim sum places. Total bill was about $175 for 4 pax.

Had the Hi-Tea Dim Sum buffet on a Saturday. Combination of push cart dishes & self-serve food (take your food ownself). Food was not bad, staffs paid close attention to pouring tea and clearing the bamboo baskets/plates regularly. The cookies n creme cheesecakes & fried yin yang (banana & red bean paste) spring roll was my fav 🥟 Ice-cream section is in between the self-serve station. It was yummy. All in all is not bad, but still prefer Cantonese Dim Sum as more flavourful and dishes taste more strong :)

Had a dim sum lunch here during Easter Friday and the queue was so long that the customers queue all the way to the stairs. Really glad that I made a reservation and they led me to my table within minutes upon arrival. The dim sum dishes and desserts came in traditional carts which were pushed around by the staff. You can see the dishes clearly and it’s served right to your table after you selected them on the spot. The dining hall was noisy on my day of visit as it was very crowded. Overall, was satisfied with the food and service, as usual.

Wonderfully fresh and tasty dim sum with great variety brought to the table on push carts. One can also order ala carte items from the menu including specialties like pig trotters in vinegar, chilled pork jelly etc. The servers who look like old timers are patient and helpful. Restaurant is bright and renovated though it has been there for years.

A taste of traditional teochew cuisine in this nostalgic restaurant. Food is great at the price point, service staff are friendly and accommodating. Always come back with family for a dim sum lunch.

An old restaurant situated in the heartland where everyone was celebrating their birthdays. The food was OK, but nothing really stood out. We had a roasted chicken, which was super salty, but the restaurant was gracious enough not to charge us. You can book a VIP room with karaoke. At about 10pm, the captain will come chasing you to settle the bill. For the records, there is even a very slow glass lift for the elderly. Apart from these, there is nothing much to highlight, except they do serve ORH NEE!

We came here for the dim sum. As we didn't book and arrived during their last orders, the service was very fast and efficient. Food wise, I think the dim sum is acceptable. The reason for the not high rating is because pricing of the dim sum is similar to other Chinese restaurants but the taste wise did not match.

Swatow offers a generally good dining experience with a variety of tasty dishes, especially their dim sum and traditional Teochew offerings. Prices are on the higher side, but the quality of the food mostly justifies it. The service, especially from the elderly staff, is warm and polite—they add a charming, homely touch to the meal. One downside is parking; it can be quite a challenge to find a lot at the nearby HDB carpark during peak hours. Overall, a pleasant place for a hearty meal if you're willing to spend a bit more and don't mind the parking hassle.

Swatow Restaurant is quite a popular with the older generation and it is well known for its teochew cuisine. On friday night, the restaurant also offers teochew opera show, which is quite rare to see these days. The restaurant is located opposite the library, on top of the supermarket. Although the building is quite old, there is a small lift to the restaurant which can fit 2 persons in it. This is great as a lot of people coming to this restaurant are quite old. The restaurant is decorated in quite the old school and no frill way, with traditional opera clothes at the entrance. As the restaurant is quite popular, it is best to make reservation before coming. Today the family is coming here for the hi-tea buffet which costs $22.80++ for an adult and $16.80++ for a child. Although the family have made reservation for hi-tea buffet which usually occurs from 3pm to 5pm, we have a rude shock when the staff tells us the last order for the buffet is 3.30pm. It seems that there is an event tonight. The restaurant will be closing the buffet earlier in order to prepare for the event. I am annoyed that the staff should have called up to tell us about the problem so that we could come earlier. The buffet style here is quite different from outside. There is no buffet counter or menu for one to look at. One just picks whatever one likes from the various push carts going around the dining room. Within a short time, the table is easily filled up. Kueh Pie Tee, Shark's Fin Soup and Duck meat roll are part of the buffet, but is limited to one serving per customer. The kueh pie tee is not filled with the traditional vegetable filling. Instead it is filled with calamari salad. Interesting. For the steamed dim sum, there is items such as xiao long bao, siew mai, bean curd roll, steamed pork ribs, crystal bun, chive dumplings, vegetable dumpling, seafood dumplings, chee cheong fan with assorted fillings and chicken feet. The crystal bun has savoury rice filling in it. Tastes not bad. For buns, there is cha siew bun (BBQ pork bun), pan fried pork bun, black sesame bun and everyone's favourite Liu Sha Bao (流沙包). The Liu Sha Bao (流沙包) is uniquely green in color, and the filling really flowing out easily. The black sesame filling in the black sesame bun is a bit too sweet for me. For deep fried items, there is shrimp roll, shrimp dumplings, seafood balls, goyza, and fried durian shrimp roll. The fried durian shrimp roll is covered with deep fried noodle like crust, inside filled with rich and chunky filling. Although one cannot smell the durian in it, the taste is pretty strong in it and surprisely well with the juicy shrimp. Besides these, there is also fried ee fu mee, century egg porridge, lotus leaf rice, chilled pork in jelly, chilled cheek in jelly, baked pork pastry, deep fried fish skin with salted egg and black sesame paste. The deep fried fish skin with salted egg sauce is quite nice with the mayonnaise, although I wish that the salted egg sauce could be thicker. The black sesame paste is quite rich and flavourful. Too bad that is the only hot dessert available that day. For cold desserts, there is ice jelly, almond jelly, herbal jelly and mango jelly. The herbal jelly tastes quite bitter. The ice jelly is quite refreshing with a hint of tea taste. Overall the food is not bad with quite a huge range although mother feels the various is less than the usual dim sum menu. Although there is a lot of staff running around, it is quite difficult to get their attention. Besides the hot tea served on the table, one can also help oneself to the ice lemon tea and ice cubes at the counter. Yes most of the times we seem to be helping ourselves to the various things around. Even when the staff has a push cart full of desserts in front of us and we request that we would like some, the old staff answers that it is not for us, but the tables behind us. Funny especially everyone is having the buffet too. The staffs here seem to be choosy in serving customers. Although at the end of the meal, one feels like having gone through a very fierce battle. Feeling super drain out.

There are few things more amorous than the runny yoke of a just-poached egg cut open. The Liu Sha Bow at Swatow seafood comes a close second with its gooey filling just ready to spill out in all its sweet and savory goodness. You NEED to order it if you're here. Swatow Seafood is an unassuming dim sum place away from downtown which means reasonable prices, little to no wait (we had no wait at all on a Saturday afternoon), and the charm of the old school push-cart dim sum experience. This culminates into a very satisfying brunch experience with minimal stress so you can focus on enjoying the food. I thought everything we had was good from the standard siu mais and har gows to the century egg porridge and fried shrimp rolls. And of course end the meal with afore-mentioned Liu Sha Bow. The sweet custard is nicly balanced with the saltiness of the salted egg yolk. Such a treat! They have a buffet for high tea which looked like a great deal but our meal wasn't that much either which makes Sawtow Seafood a good value, and a tasty one at that,

Had lunch at Swatow Seafood Restaurant in the heartland of Toa Payoh and i was pleasantly surprised. The old skool ambience of the place was really charming, with old skool ornate decorations at the reception. We ordered the prawn roe fried rice and it was really quite good. The different textures of prawn roe, crab meat and the vegetables created quite a stir in my mouth. We orderd the sharks head on the menu as it is quite an uncommon dish. It tasted really good but i felt really guilty for indulging in that dish with all the anti sharks fin campaign going around. The dim sum were good and overall it left me very satisfied. The prices are very reasonable and its alot cheaper than restaurants in town. I will definitely be back to sample the traditional Teochew dishes which I did not manage to taste this round.

Old school would be the right words for it. And this is the kinda thing I like. I went on a weekday but I was made to understand that over the weekend, the place gets packed and there are still push carts for dim sum service. We ordered a fair bit and finished all that was placed before us :) Siew Mai is my usual "standard setter" for a dim Sum place and they did their quite well. And most of their item came in 3s so it it was just nice for the company that I was with. Both their fried and steams items were good. We finished off with a big bowl of steamed mushed up yam (o ni or however you spell it) and it was great! All round good experience.

Don't be fool by the name ("seafood"). Swatow Seafood serves fantastic dim sum breakfast and brunches! Located in the heartlands of Singapore, this restaurant has been around for quite some time now. While the restaurant has not been advertising aggressively nor received the hype over some other star restaurant, it has been well patronised by those in-the-know. On weekends, this place is flooded with people, especially in the morning right up to noon. If you are coming as part of a large group, it is advisable to call ahead and make a reservation. While there has been a shift towards "high end" dim sum, i.e. ordering your dishes off a menu, Swatow Seafood still does it the "old fashion" way, i.e. service via a push cart. This is a nostalgic experience not to be missed (given that there isn't many such restaurants left). In addition to the old school experience, the dim sum served here is of a high standard comparable with many fine restaurants.

Our first dinner here and ordered a few dishes. Essentially the food here is not bad (like the Braised Goose) but the price tag of the dishes is a tad too high for me to return. I can easily find similar tasty food in other restaurants that won't cost me an arm and leg. But having said that, this Swatow Restaurant has been around since way back so I guess they have their own following. Just not me in that queue then. Heh...

My family went for the Swatow (which means Mountain Top in Teochew) Seafood Restaurant for the dim sum buffet. This place used to be Fortunate Restaurant and Lucky Restaurant before that.. so you can say it was a location where weddings and CNY reunion meals were held at when I was young. The only thing that remained the same were the toilet areas and those big curtains where they hide away the spare chairs and tables from public view. I remember playing hide and seek with my cousins there when I was young.. so it was really nostalgic. Anyway back to reviewing the food.. the way the dimsum buffet works is the trolley with piles of food and dimsum will be rolled away. Sounds reasonable but the problem lies with that. As this place is huge.. I personally feel that they are short handed.. so to the two dim sum trolleys that were going around.. it's like there's 30-40 tables waiting.. so sometimes when the trolley comes by.. it's nearly empty.. and the servers sometimes miss our table as we were seated in the middle. We noticed the chances of you getting your plate filled were higher if you were seated at the outside. Food came out one by one.. so we ended up spending a lot of time waiting for the trolleys to come by. Even the drinks were not properly organised.. if we didn't ask we wouldn't have known that we had to go to an area and get the drinks as the dim sum and the fried food were served by trolleys. Servings were depressing.. it's a buffet but the servers usually give us the exact headcount and said that she will come back again later if we should want a second helping since this is a buffet... but often the food runs out and we don't quite see the same food again. Food wise was so-so... I guess I only like the liu sha bao (salted egg yolk custard bun). That's about it.

This is a JIU LOU. Not ninth floor. It means a proper Chinese restaurant where big dinners and feasts can be held, especially for weddings. It was also the place of my childhood. Or more accurately, the restaurant that used to be there, formed parts of my childhood. The previous tenant was Xin Fu Lou, which formed memories of piping-hot dim sum pushed around in trolleys. Swatow also has dim sum, but only in the day time and we were there for dinner. The place was all white covers and folded napkins; sitting there I had an urge to give a $120 ang bao to a man and his wife. The Braised Slice Goose Meat in Teochew Style (~$17) was very savoury, especially the sauce. However the goose portion was too small, beneath the top few slices it was all tofu. The scallops and broccoli ($20) was fresh, but the portion was even smaller. Being hungry gluttons we ordered the oyster omelette ($8) from their Teochew Porridge just in case. Their signature Deep Fried Crispy Pig Trotter (~$25) is a must-try. The skin looked dark and the meat looked dark but it was GOOD. The skin was crispy and crunchy and yet easy on the bite. You know some crispy pork skin fried too hard until it tastes bitter and has so hard a centre it feels like biting on rocks? Not this. The meat was tender and flavourful. If you can only afford one dish, THIS IS IT. (Yes their dishes are pretty expensive IMO.) The oysters in the oyster omelette were huge and easy for me to pick out (I don't eat oysters) to give to my family members. The rest of it wasn't as starchy and gooey as I'd liked. A set of tea came with our dessert to clear our throats. I voiced out loud thinking it was syrup meant to be poured over the yam paste, asking why it wasn't poured. The affable head waiter corrected me, so yes, please don't embarrass yourself like me. I must also mention that Swatow refers to the Teochew province of China, and my heritage-proud father has claimed the food at Swatow to be quite authentically Teochew. Overall I feel the food is standard fare, and is overpriced; Swatow is evidently no Xin Fu Lou. I've heard good reviews about their dim sum buffets though.

Went there with co-workers for Chinese New Year celebration. The service was okay, typical Chinese restaurant standard. The food wise, I love their steam crab very much. It's fresh. The fried oyster with egg is one of their signature, I like it. Will go there again with my family.

What a disappointment! As a teochew nia, I expected a lot more of the teochew dishes in a restaurant like this. The chaipo kuayteow didn't have the wok hei I loved, and hardly had any chaipo! Sigh...

It's far and few left with such tradition that serve early morning Dim Sum with nice variety of choices. As written by others, they have good Dim Sum that we wonder how they have kept this tradition for such a long time. I have been there since my early years. It beats any of the modern names we used to know. The prices have kept to a reasonable level. Located at Toa payoh, it's easy access to everyone tuck away in a non conspicuous location. No frills though... We only head there for the food rather than the environment.

The dim sum buffet is value for money. I wish they could change it to an ala carte system though

We ate there 2 years ago and we were very pleased with the service, price and food. However, we went today and was extremely disappointed. The price for buffet lunch was about $27 including tax. We have 2 hours tome span to eat starting from 3pm to 5pm, however, the food was not out for us until close to 4pm. We will told to pay even before we had food on the table. The varieties were limited, in fact, we were repeatedly asked if we have to eat the same dim sum. I have seated below and air conditioner and it was dripping water on my head. When I told them about it, server just said move your chair slightly to the right. The red been soup was so sweet, is like eating sugar. A lot of their dim sum were not made by kitchen, tasted like either frozen or mass production ordered from suppliers. There were chairs & tables stacked up at the narrow hallway going to toilet. This could be a fire hazard if it by the fire exit door. The elevator was not working at first and had to ask the staff to turn it back on so that my 97 years old dad can get up to restaurant. One waitress just took a plate of dim sum from our table without asking ask just to show the next table that the dish looked like. We were discussing what is their marketing strategy to attract customers. I think they started the dim sum late so we we only have an hour to eat and therefore, won't be able to consume more. And we were provided with limited varieties of dim sum to pick, therefore, we will get sick of the same dim sum with will not consume more. All in all, their strategy is to make more money and providing less, perhaps they are struggling to survive, who knows?!?!? We will not go back there again and will not recommend others to do so. We will also inform friends and relatives who thought they were good like we did, that the standards and quality has dropped. We went there with high expectations and what we got was sub standards in terms of quality, service, quantity and we certainly did not get we deserve with such high price range. I hope the management is made aware of this so that they can work on getting the restaurant back to where it was.