Char Seal Bar is located at Havelock 2, less than 5 mins away from Clarke Quay MRT station and is extremely accessible. Being hidden away in a quiet little mall, the shop was quite empty with not much of a crowd, probably due to there being so many other accessible food options nearby.
Char Seal Bar first started off as a passion project by Ashley, a home-based cook with a passion for all things char siew. With a focus on producing the best char siew possible, Char Seal Bar has a wide variety of dishes, all filled with char siew.
With an IG-worthy cafe interior design, Char Seal Bar is fully flushed with cheerful pastel colours, sure to brighten your day being all decked out in pink, blue, yellow and turquoise. It was not what we expected of a shop specialising in char siew as it looks more like a cafe for desserts and the like. We only realised it was Char Seal Bar after seeing the brightly lighted sign it has over the cafe.
Ranging from char seal salad to char seal bao, or even don, noodles or steak, Char Seal Bar even has an All Day Breakfast version and a Happy Meal version for kids! You’re sure to enjoy finding out which is your favourite style of incorporating char siew into your meals when you’re this spoilt for choices!
As we came here for dinner, we decided that we should be having a heartier meal and ordered noodles as our char seal combination. You may also choose to add more rice or noodles as you see fit, the noodles used are the commonly addictive Indomie Mee Goreng and we ordered extra to fill our tummies.
Adding on to our noodles, we ordered additional servings of spam fries, pork rind and fried broccoli to add on to our dinner. Spam fries were thick and nicely fried, the pork rind was crispy and awesome to have, the fried broccoli was nicely charred, but a tad overcooked for our liking.
With char siew being the highlight of Char Seal Bar, how could we not expect more from the char siew? So we ordered an additional platter with extra garlic sauce to enjoy together.
Sliced into thick chunks of meat, the char siew is an awesome highlight to have as it was really juicy and tender, the meat was well marinated and left a delectable taste in our mouths. The portion of meat provided for us was approximately 2/3 fatty and was just so sumptuous as pork bellies go, though we’d have preferred for the meat to be a little bit leaner. Using garlic sauce together with the char siew was fantastic as it adds a different dimension to the taste compared to the original sauce.
Char Seal Bar
Overall, Char Seal Bar really serves awesome char siew, though we’d prefer the meat to be leaner. The meat was soft, juicy and succulent, making it have a melt in your mouth sensation and the sauce really accentuates the taste of the char siew as well. We’d recommend you to try the char siew with garlic sauce as it really makes the char siew taste pop, however, do be mindful that the sauce is quite salty and it isn’t recommended to pour all the sauce into your bowl when deciding to consume it.
