O' Town - Glen Waverley

There are a few things that differentiates O Town and the rest of the Malaysian / Asian eateries in Glen Waverley as we discovered last week. O Town is the only restaurant in the Glen Waverley Kingsway area and its immediate surroundings that serves Teochew dishes such as kueh chap and teochew braised duck rice. Teochew is one of the Chinese clans with their own dialect and cuisine. Li Ka Shing, the richest man of Chinese descent in the world is of Teochew heritage.

 The location of the restaurant is not ideal, being located away from the main street and the heavy pedestrian traffic on Kingsway. But on the bright side, it is easier to get a park near the restaurant and I did not have to work up my stomach acids being upset at drivers hogging Kingsway while waiting for the elusive car spot.

 We ordered the Teochew braised duck rice which had fine strips of duck and dried tofu, a hard boiled egg braised in five spice braising liquid.

There was not much duck on the plate, and likewise for the tofu. Now, I understand that pictures in the menu are for illustrative purposes etc etc but when I compared my dish with the menu picture of chunks of duck meat and beautifully arranged braised tofu on the side, I was sorely disappointed.

The serving sizes are also smaller than the other restaurants, so I was not full either.

We ordered the fried noodles O Town style which different in that it had pippies as one of the ingredient. The deshelled pippies together with prawns, chinese sausage, egg, bean sprouts and chives are fried with the noodles. The flavour was on the sweet side, but tasted good. My main gripe is that the serving size was smaller than the other places, yet the price is about the same.

I suspect this restaurant may appeal to Teochew people wanting to get a taste of home, but the small servings certainly does not appeal to me.