The Taiyaki

The ION orchard food hall was like a maze to me. Every food store looks so similar (in terms of exterior decoration) to me. After several turns, we still can't decide what to have. In the end, we decided to just settle with the store right in front of us. This store is non other than “The Taiyaki”.

"The Taiyaki” food store basically made use of the ‘see-through’ idea to allow customers to have a closer distance with the chef. In this case, customers will be able to see how their food is being prepared and at the same time, be assured that the chef will not short change them in terms of quantity and hygiene. Personally, I feel that such ‘see-through’ concept is a pretty good idea as one will not need to ask the chef what they are cooking or how it was being prepared, etc.

“The Taiyaki” sells Japanese style crispy pancakes and these pancakes were all shaped as a fish. Wonder why the Japanese liked the ‘Fish’ shape so much as I have saw similar ‘fish’ shape pancakes selling elsewhere. Perhaps the ‘fish’ shape is a pretty simple shape to mould or perhaps it holds some special meaning for the Japanese themselves.

This store sells about six different varieties of crispy pancakes, which can be divided into two categories – the sweet and the savory ones. The sweet pancakes include the red bean, the banana chocolate and the apple cinnamon. As for the savory ones, there are bacon and egg, Italian and german potato. Recently, they also came out a new curry flavor of crispy pancake.

We ordered the Italian flavor crispy pancake. It consists of tuna, cheese, corn, tomato sauce and sausage. Can you imagine how a small size pancakes can packed so many ingredients inside? Well, it sure did and the end product was a big fat fish pancake. :) At first, I was pretty wary that the taste may be weird as each of these ingredients has its own unique taste. After the first taste, I realized that these thoughts were unnecessary. When savoring the mixed product of these ingredients, I find it pretty alright and am still able to taste each ingredients unique taste.

I liked the special batter that they used, making the pancake to taste very crispy. The amount of ingredients was pretty substantial, making the entire pancake to be very filling. For a cost of less than 3 bucks for each pancake, I feel that this pancake is pretty worth the price. To compare with those of very thick batter, I still prefer this pancake over those. However, I dislike the fact that the pancake gets burnt easily with few black patches on the pancake. Perhaps, the temperature of the oven was pretty high that day to accommodate faster time to make the pancakes. However, it would definitely be better if they would slowly bake the pancakes at an optimal temperature.