The Bugis Singapore restaurant The Bailey's Hotel: Review

It’s set on the ground floor of the Bailey’s Hotel in Kensington, and has dishes influenced by Malaysian and Chinese cuisines.

The food was absolutely incredible, and there’s honestly not much more I can say that would do it justice.

I love Chinese food, but where I don’t eat a lot of meat I rarely have it because I don’t want to eat the same vegetable dishes over and over again.

This, though, was different, and in my two years of living in London it was the best Chinese-style meal I’ve had so far.

The restaurant is classy, relaxing and doesn’t have the hotel school dining-room like feel that sometimes hotel restaurants have.

The hotel is located in a gorgeous area, and the way its lit up and decorated florally outside makes it look stunning.

The restaurant has a different entrance to the main hotel reception, and we were met with really friendly staff who helped us to our table.

The menu is really big, and has a nice mix of different cuisines to choose from, although it’s actually difficult to limit yourself when everything sounds so tasty.

To start with I had the vegetable spring rolls and crispy tofu, and my friend had crispy duck and the dim sum basket.

I didn’t try any of hers, but the duck was shredded in front of us next to the table, and it looked succulent and appropriately soft with a crispy outside to go with the pancakes, cucumber and spring onion it came with.

The vegetable spring rolls were really big, and I like ones that aren’t too spicy so these were perfect.

They were golden, crunchy and filled with vegetables and I was so tempted to order another three once I’d had them.

The crispy tofu was a good alternative to a battered meat, and came with some spice on the top for flavour.

For main course my friend ordered the crispy king prawn coated with passion fruit sauce, and I had a fillet of seabass which came in soy with some pak choi.

The prawns came on a bed of salad, and although my friend was admittedly unsure about the crispy prawns and passionfruit mix in the first place, she said the flavours went together really well.

My seabass portion was really generous, and it was cooked to absolute perfection – it was one of the nicest Asian fish dishes I’ve had in a while.

We shared some broccoli and asparagus and egg fried rice on the side too.

The egg fried rice was another moment where we debated ordering a second portion just because it was so delicious and we didn’t want it to end.

I know that you can’t really go wrong with egg fried rice, but this one was extra nice.

I appreciate it sounds like we had an absolute feast, and we did, but we literally could not resist dessert because we couldn’t get enough of the food.

I had the chocolate lava, which was a decadent cake with chocolate ‘lava’, or sauce, inside.

It was scrumptious, and although it’s hard for me to not enjoy something with chocolate in, this was really really delicious.

My friend ordered a more traditional dessert which was the sago gula Malaka, which incorporates a similar tasting to bubble tea.

She really enjoyed this too, and we left with full stomachs and very happy taste buds.

I’d go back in a heartbeat, and I’ve been craving the meal again ever since I left.