After having an uninspiring and forgettable Salmon Mentai Don at some ‘not worth recommending’ place, I was determined to look for a good one elsewhere. Hence when I came across Salmon Warrior on Xiaohongshu, I immediately arranged for a lunch date with my foodie friend who’s a big fan of anything mentaiko. ?
Location & Ambience
Salmon Warrior is a casual eatery located at Level B1 of Singpost Centre (nearest MRT station is Paya Lebar). They have a small seating area with high tables and regular tables for dining-in.
We were here on a weekday afternoon after peak lunch hour and there were practically no customers.
Easy Ordering Via A Self-Ordering Kiosk
I would suggest that you use this self-ordering terminal to place your order because I noticed there were food items on its menu which I couldn’t see on the physical menu. For example, side dishes like salmon sashimi, yakitori, tamago, edamame and maki rolls too.
Once done, just make payment and wait for your receipt number to be called. You can then collect your food from the counter.
Menu
Main Bowls
A good variety of main bowls that will suit most palates. Vegetarian. Seafood Salad. Sashimi. Poke. Unagi. Soups. They even have Keto Bowl! Ketogenic diet is slowly gaining popularity but not many restaurants in Singapore offer keto options so it’s really a nice touch. For those of you who don’t take carbs, you’ll have to bookmark Salmon Warrior in your to-eat list!
Bowl Sets
Each bowl set includes a hot or iced green tea, miso soup & a small dish of wakame (seasoned seaweed). Prices are pretty reasonable.
Build Your Own Bowl
If you don’t like the fixed bowls, you can always customise your own. Flexibility appreciated. ?
I ordered the Salmon Mentaiko Bowl set for myself and K got a Mentaiko Combi Bowl Set.
Also added two sides – Tamago Platter & Salmon Mala Avocado – to share.
Tamago Platter (6 pieces) $8.00
I’m so in love with this rolled omelette! I never got to enjoy a proper tamago dish previously because it was always made too sweet for my liking. For this, it wasn’t. Could really taste the egg and of course the mentaiko sauce on top just shone through. So much flavour. So shiok!
Salmon Mala Avocado $8.00
Creamy avocado with fresh salmon cubes. This was insanely good too! I mean, avocado already tastes so nice on its own, what can go wrong? My only gripe was that there wasn’t much of a mala flavour as there was just a sprinkling of dried chilli peppers on top.
Mentaiko Combi Bowl $14.90/set
Kani (imitation crab), yakitori and salmon aburi drizzled with mentaiko sauce on sushi rice, topped with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, onsen egg, ebiko, pickled ginger and wasabi. For the rice, you can choose between white rice or brown rice. We had the brown one which was cooked al dente.
Our way to enjoy this bowl is to break the egg, add the wakame and mix everything up thoroughly. Just got to make sure there are no big bits of wasabi, otherwise you’ll burn your nose, lol.
Everything tasted good. The mentaiko sauce really brought all ingredients together. Surprisingly, they did a pretty decent chicken yakitori too. Meat was really tender and flavoursome.
Salmon Mentaiko Bowl $14.90/set
This was similar to the Combi bowl except there was only salmon in this.
I changed my base to shirataki noodles at an additional $1.20 as I didn’t fancy rice. The only issue with shirataki noodles is that it doesn’t absorb flavour or get coated with sauce. But after mixing everything up, I polished the whole bowl in no time, haha.
The miso soup was flavoursome but not salty and was mildly sweet as there were sliced carrots in it. Iced green tea was rather diluted and weak in flavour.
There is no GST or service charge.
Though there were no other customers, we had to wait for more than 20 minutes for our orders to be ready as there was only one person manning the kitchen. Well, at least the food was freshly prepared upon order.
Final Thoughts
Left with happy bellies. Good food doesn’t need to be sinful all the time. This meal was healthy and hearty and left us super satisfied. I love salmon and I like that Salmon Warrior has good selections of salmon bowls done different ways.
Hopefully one day Salmon Warrior will expand and open more branches, then I don’t have to keep travelling to this sole outlet in Paya Lebar. ?