Botak Jones

What don't you guys already know about good 'ole American food on this urbanized island! Burgers, steaks, hotdogs, huge pile of fries in fairly large portions... you've heard them all before. We got Billy Bombers doing the diner style thing, Jerry's (long service award) and a plethora of other similar themed restaurants.

So how does Botak Jones differ from the rest ? The first outlet was started in - of all places - TUAS. Well obviously Mr Jones saw fit to provide good quality American style food in our local version of the casual diner - the hawker center/coffee shop. This concept worked so well that he's since spawned a few other outlets around the island.

Botak Jones latest month old outlet occupies a 2 stall space at the corner of a newly renovated coffee shop along Depot Road. A brightly lit neon sign made in the likeness of Mr Jones' famous outline is perched in the left hand corner of the roof edge of the coffee shop. Located just before CMPB (in the direction towards Henderson Road), this place does brisk business catering to the lunch crowd pouring in from nearby factories and office buildings.

The electronic cash register, popular tunes blasting in the background from the 80s and 90s and a bunch of friendly sales staff looked a little out of place in our context of the local coffee shop but it's a refreshing change nonetheless.

Boasting an extensive menu serving everything from soups to burgers, hotty dogs, quality USDA / Australian steaks, there's definitely something of everyone.

We ordered a 200gm lamb chop and chili dog and sat down. Within a minute, a friendly waitstaff (in a coffee shop?!??!) brought the cutlery and an array of sauces - american mustard, HP sauce, chili, ketchup. Impressive huh.

6 minutes later, our meals came. Both plates were similary piled with servings of well seasoned and freshly fried cajun fries, fresh coleslaw (I mean fresh not that KFC crap), some lettuce. The lamb chops were well seasoned.. I think too well seasoned to the point where I couldn't really taste the gamey original flavour of the meat. It came with some creamy shitake mushroom dressing and a small dollop of chopped mint sauce that looked remotely like shredded olives. The next time I order the lamb I'll skip the cream sauce as it makes the dish too... how shall we put it.. rich ??

The hotty dog... I mean chili dog was huge. I mean HUGE. Like baseball game frankfurter huge. The bun was mushy from all the chili lathered in the sausage. Chopped onions, chili, minced beef.. pretty authentic alright.

You probably guess we couldn't finish the huge portions! Another excellent waitstaff brought over 2 styrofoam containers lined with aluminium foil to doggy bag the leftoevers - 1 for the fries, 1 for the hotdog. So polite! Even gave us a copy of the menu to take home and advised us to come for dinner as lunch is quite packed.

Cost us $21 bucks. Not exactly coffee shop pricing - you can have tze char for that kind of dough but the food was pretty satisfying. Can try lah. :)