Al-Azhar Eating Restaurant

For now they will received 3 stars in my books...

1st - since its conveniently located nearby to Beauty World MRT.. you get 1 star.

2nd - you are Halal Certified and offer variety of food.. though take note, ONLY some items after 11:00hrs aka 11am, then you can order "those food", else the normal Roti Prata, Thosai, "morning food" aka Norm Breakfast food etc.

3rd - what I had was doable. Nothing special just normal Roti Prata with Egg. Our order comes with gravy for dipping aka in this instance, is Fish Curry. Maybe next time may ask whether can have other gravy or not such as Meat Curry or Spicy Indian Dahl. For our beverages, my friend had Teh Tarik, while I opt for Ice Teh Kosong with Limau aka Ice Tea with Lime.

My friend choose this eatery in order, to meet for our mid morning snacks, hence to Al Azhar Eating Restaurant we went. It was a Friday morning about 10:00hrs ish we were there. Once we arrived, we seat ourselves where ever we choose, then the Staffs gave us the Menu or something. They will key in our order with their "technology" devices aka mini ipad or cell phone, ordering systems.

Once you are done eating, go to the Counter say the number or something made your payment. Easy pea-sy. End of story. Will I return, maybe.. BUT NOT in a hurry.

Plenty dining area. Confirmed during the weekends this establishment will be like a ZOO! Hence plan accordingly. By the time we are done almost about 13:10hrs this place tends to be more busy with other patrons, dining in.

3 Generous Stars indeed.

This is a weird review because I'm going to rip this place to pieces.....but will go back to eat.

To say this place is chaotic would be putting it mildly. Staff have no idea what's going on, get orders wrong, forget things, ignore you etc. Kitchen screws up orders just as often, tables who arrive 15mins after us get their food (i.e. The same dish ordered) 10mins before we do.

Complaints and protests are brushed off, greeted with a head scratch, or ignored completely.

In other words, if you enjoy the pain of being rectally probed with a broomstick that has fire ants crawling all over it and would pay money for the privilege, then come here.

I personally don't like that very much, but I do enjoy a good naan and curry once in a while, so will come back here (where the food is actually rather good!) at a less chaotic time of the day.

You have been warned....

They really have a wide range of dishes served here. From Indian (prata, chapati, naan, thosai, uttapam), to your carbo rich dishes like nasi goreng/pattaya, mee/maggi goreng, to ala muslim dishes, to even Western food like steak! For this area I guess the food is pretty reasonable (just that I find the drinks are not cheap $1.80 for a teh tarik i can easily get for a dollar elsewhere)

I had the teh cham/yuanyang, a mutton chapati which really looked like a burrito/popiah and butter naan. I started with the naan. Having gone to India and tried it there, I have high expectations of it. The butter melted on the surface of the bread and it tasted okay at the first bite. However, the texture is more of the crispy side and not soft and fluffy like it is usually is in the Indian version. It's also a little thin and burnt and the butter could have permeated the dough more evenly. I give it a 2.5 over 5.0
The chapati looked puny and quite miserable, but it was actually quite good. The mutton had a rich flavor, was soft and chewy when you sink your teeth in it. And had onions and a sweet gravy. Yum!

There's a narrow alley in front of Cheong Chin Nam Road which you can parallel park and it's free after 10pm. If you are using Nets Flashpay, you need to spend a minimum of $10

I've been transferred to a new site recently, the site office is not yet ready so we are currently stationed at our companies head office here in upper Bukit Timah.
Me and my colleague came here for lunch. Most of us crave Malay/indian food so we decided to eat here.
The place is big (it occupied two units) and well ventilated. You won't have difficulty looking for a place to sit even on rush hour. You can order at the counter, wherein you'll have your food right-away or look at their menu and be serve. I want indian food so i ordered from their menu. I have prata, buttered chicken and pineapple juice (i'm suppose to order teh tahrik but its already hot outside so i opted for a cold drink). The food is good but it took them a long time before serving it. I would have given them a 4star but the slow service is a minus point.

My friend had a craving for Indian dishes and she was wondering where to eat as she had to rush back to meet one of her friends.

Reached the nearby parking lot at around 9.15pm and saw a few LTA enforcers giving summon tickets to some cars. Since after 10pm, parking will be free, I tore out the parking coupons and placed them on top of the dashboard.

When I first reached this open-concept dining area, I was amazed as its size was double or almost triple from previous experiences. I remember my friends will hang out at this place when we were much younger and chit chat.

Even though there were a lot of people dining in when we arrived, we were given a seat next to the cashier. Pictures of food are all around this store and we were also given a menu where it has more varieties of the food they served.

My friend and I agreed on getting the plain Thosai and beef soup. For the drinks, we decided to go for fresh lime juices. The dishes come pretty fast even though there were quite a number of tables who are waiting for their food to arrive.

The plain Thosai came with a few other sauces (not sure which is which). The Thosai was crispy and thin. All I could say is that I was addicted to it after a few bites with and without the sauces. It was quite big too and I am glad that we shared as I had my dinner a few hours prior to coming here. The beef soup came with quite a generous portion of sliced beef. The soup tasted like Tom Yum but was much spicier with the chill padi or pepper that was added to the soup. It was like a combination of Vietnamese pho without the rice vermicelli and Thai's Tom Yum soup without seafood. We ordered the $7 worth and there were at least 7 sliced beef in it. Worth it.

We decided to go for another round of plain naan. The plain naan looks big but we were able to finish consuming it and had to go another round of garlic naan. I prefer the plain naan. After ordering the dish, I realized that this place served quite a bit of different types of pratas/naans/thosais, etc.

Price wise, it is reasonable price. You have to actually walk to the cashier and let them know your table number before proceeding to payment. Will definitely be back soon.

I had high hopes! I used to come here, but I guess it was mostly for prata. Tried the thosai the other day and was somewhat disappointed. The thosai wasn't as crisp/thin as I would've liked, the sauces were okay. Lentil curry was pretty gd!

Soursop juice was pretty gd, a bit sweet though. Really fast service (this was after 1pm on a weekday).

It's the current go-to place for malay eats in the west. Along the Chun Tin Road stretch, Al-Ameen used to be the hangout a decade ago, occupying at least three shop lots at its peak! Now, I'd prefer Al-Azhar.

I'll usually have the Mutton Chop and Teh Halia. The mutton chop is kind of gratifying, while the Teh Halia tends to be sweet for my taste most of the time. It's a pity that there needs to be a minimum spend before you can pay by NETS - but for a muslim "ze-char" I can't ask for more...

Al Azhar, which I was told means 'the most glorious', is one of the most popular eating houses along the Cheong Chin Nam stretch. There is no surprise why this place is popular- their menu is extensive, and contrary to common misconception, not at all limited by the Halal requirement. Apart from good (indian) muslim food, they also serve everything ranging from chinese to thai to western. Definitely a supper to-go when you are meeting up with indecisive friends wanting to have different food.

Service here is super efficient. Orders are taken by a palm devices/pdas, waiting time for food is usually short and there is hardly a queue at the cashier counters. The waitstaff here are also very diligent, and you will hardly experience any problem with getting their attention.

I really enjoy their mee soup (just yellow noodles in clear soup). The broth is flavorful (especially late into the day), they are generous with the seafood, and its just about satisfying and light enough for a good late night snack. On days when I'm feeling hungrier I will opt for their nasi mui fan, basically rice drenched in thick soupy gravy. The chicken chop with mushroom sauce is also pretty decent, and especially satisfying if you have a protein craving. In general, the food quality is at the very least pretty satisfactory.

Note: this is not really a food based review as I only had 1 plain prata and Bandung drink. Considering the size of the menu, the review of a plain prata won't do justice to the entire shop.

That being said, the prata is ok-ish. It is not the crispy type, but it is also rather tough to eat. I had to use my spoon to cut the prata ($1 for 1 plain) into smaller sized pieces. The curry provided to go with the prata was simply spicy and had no "deep favour".

Al azhar offers a very casual ambience and you can sit there with your friends and chit chat. It might be a tad noisy for some but I enjoyed the lively atmosphere.

However, since it's so crowded and popular, there seems to be not enough staff, so you might feel that service isn't very stellar. For instance, I had to spend at least 1,2 minutes just to get the attention of a waiter, and they mistook our orders about 3 times (there was 7 of us)

But parking is ample and nearby, and with the recent Beauty World MRT opened near it, this place has become even more accessible.
Still an ok place to come if you want supper into the 2am time period.

I've been here a couple of times for lunch and because I come with colleagues as a group of five, we often get a couple of naans to share, with a few curries. They do decent naans - get the garlic and onion ones. I'm not a fan of the butter naans and the cheese ones, but my colleagues like them. The cheese ones I've seen tend to have more cheese than dough, be warned!

We like the palak paneer, egg curry, mutton vindaloo, chicken masala. Drinks here are hit or miss, as they have a wide, wide range of drinks. My advice is to stick to the mainstream drinks. We eat here a fair bit and we average 10$ per person, but that's because we eat a lot. Affordable food, don't be fussy.