Nihon Mura

I must confess that I'm not as domesticated as Chris. I don't know how to make popiah or cook glutinous rice. I only know how to eat. But even so, Chris always says that I am a poor food-taster because I have proven to be unable to tell good food from bad. Unlike Chris, I am certainly no foodie because I eat to live and not live to eat.

I also don't help out much with the house work (my in-laws do most of that). Neither do I tutor my kids much as I can afford to pay for tuition.

It is an irony that while I can bring home the bacon, I can't cook it. Neither can my wife. However, I can always bring my family out to eat cooked bacon and all kinds of other food.

Last Saturday, my wife asked me to try out this new Japanese restaurant at Revenue House.




I don't like to visit the Revenue House where the Inland Revenue is located. I believe a lot people share my sentiment because visiting the Inland Revenue is like visiting the Integrated Resort - you will lose a lot of money. (No wonder both share the same initials IR, haha.) So I used to visit Inland Revenue only once a year, very close to 15 April each year, the traditional deadline for submitting my tax returns. Ever since on-line submission of tax returns was implemented several years ago, I have been submitting my tax returns on-line.

Usually, the Revenue House is desserted after office hours. But since the restaurant opened its doors last month, diners have been steadily streaming into the restaurant even after office hours. The restaurant can seat about 200 diners. When I was there last Saturday, the restaurant was about three-quarter full which is quite an impressive feat. In fact, we met one of my wife's colleague at the restaurant. (She lives in Tampines where there is another branch of the same restaurant.) She told us that she made her way to the Revenue House branch because the Tampines branch had a very long queue of customers waiting outside it.

The restaurant is called Nihon Mura. (The name sounds like a Japanese ship, doesn't it?) It belongs to the Suki group of restaurants. All types of Japanese foods are served - tempura, udon, ramen, sushi, sashimi, charcoal grilled food, nabe yaki, donburi, etc. Worth highlighting is the sushi - all of them are selling at only 99 cents per plate.


They are displayed on moving conveyor belts just like in Sakae Sushi. You just pick what you fancy off the conveyor belts.


For other types of food, you just need to pick up 'ice-cream sticks' from the food display and hand them to the waitresses. Food is served quickly enough to justify the 10% service charge.

Our family of four ordered:

Yasai Miso Soup - $3.90
Fried Tofu - $1.50
Enoki Bacon - $4.90 (told you there was cooked bacon)
Nabeyaki Udon - $9.90
17 plates of sushi - $16.83

Together with service charge and 5% GST, the bill came up to $42.75, very attractive pricing by all standards. So I didn't lose a lot of money for this visit to Inland Revenue, hehe. Ah... the 'Mura' in the restaurant's name could well have been 'Murah' which means 'cheap' in Malay.

As for the quality of the food, I would not say that it is out of this world. But for the price that you are paying, the food is good enough. Especially to Elaine who loves Japanese food, go try out the restaurant for yourself and prove Chris either right or wrong that I am no foodie.

Nihon Mura

55 Newton Road #02-02 Revenue House
Tel 62532469
Operating
hours: 11.30 am - 9.30 pm

505 Tampines Ave 5 #01-03/04 Tampines Swimming
Complex
Tel 62608197
Operating hours: 12.00 noon - 9.30 pm