You Can Still Order These Tasty Grain Bowls From Uber Eats

British hotel chain Yotel recently opened its doors in Singapore, and with it comes its all-day diner Grains & Hops. As its name suggests, grain bowls and craft beers are on the menu. There are nine bowls served here, including a vegetarian option and deep-fried kurobata pork loin. But if you want to be good, order this relatively virtuous grilled chicken one, with succulent grilled chicken breast drenched in a savoury house-made Marmite sauce on top of multigrain rice and tangy rocket salad. Flavourful and yum enough for those who can’t do hardcore clean-eating.

Grains & Hops is at Level 10 Yotel Singapore, 366 Orchard Rd, S238904. Tel: 6866-8067. www.yotel.com. Takeaway via Uber Eats and Deliveroo.

“Healthy-ish” and cool halal online meal delivery website Grain offers a lunch menu that can be conveniently delivered to any location in Singapore. Their Thunder Tea Matcha Rice may be thunder tea rice by name, but it’s a mod riff on the traditional Hakka dish (which is eaten by pouring a bowl of tea-soup into a veggie and rice bowl). Grain’s version boasts al dente brown rice heaped with baked shimeji mushrooms, braised white cabbage, sauteed French beans, celery and chye poh, plus fried tau kwa and toasted sunflower seeds. The best bit is a lovely soy-kissed wobbly hanjuku (Japanese for soft-boiled) egg crowning it. Instead of the usual Hakka-style tea broth, a small container of more concentrated earthy housemade matcha dressing is included. Clean, delicate and yet fairly flavourful. A decent meat-free meal.

Grain's grub is available via Uber Eats and www.grain.com.sg.

This Keong Saik cafe by the Sarnies folks specialises in house-made pickles — paired with healthy grain bowls. The ordering system here operates like an economy rice stall: the ingredients for a customised bowl are displayed, and each pick comes with its own price tag. There are 11 kinds of house-made pickles here ($2 each), and you can order as many as you like for your bowl. We got the more exotic-sounding options like prettily pink beet-pickled quail eggs, pickled fennel that tastes like softly crunchy cabbage, plus sauerkraut and juniper, which reminds us of a less dense version of zha cai, Sichuan-style pickled mustard plant. All on a bed of quinoa with baked salmon. The pickles are tasty, but sadly, the baked salmon is dry and overcooked. We’d order more yummy pickles next time to go with the crunchy quinoa topped with cashews and a creamy coconut ranch dressing.

Pickleville is at #04-00 The Working Capitol, 140 Robinson Rd, S068907. www.facebook.com/picklevillesg. Takeaway via Uber Eats or CaterSpot.

Halal cafe Santap in Little India is opened by the owners of the also-halal cafes Working Title, Afterwit and The Mad Sailors. This shrimp rice bowl, which we spied on their website’s menu, looked promising enough. Cauliflower florets and wholegrain brown rice mingle with alfafa sprouts, red daikon and spinach, topped with three fat prawns and good-for-you stuff like avocado, pineapple and raw carrots. But when our bowl arrived, it was unexpectedly smothered in garlic butter sauce that made the delish grain base, springy grilled prawns and everything in its creamy path extremely jelak. Way to ruin a diet? Not bad, though.

Santap is at 16 Madras St, S208414. Tel: 8742-8456. www.santap.sg. Takeaway via Uber Eats.

This Japanese takeaway kiosk chain offers fuss-free takeaway onigiri (rice balls) and bento boxes, like this Saba Shio set with a slab of mackerel, lumpy Japanese brown rice from Akita Prefecture and so-so pickles presented on a nifty plastic tray. The mackerel from Norway is grilled and lightly salted. To be fair, its skin would probably have been crispy if we’d eaten it freshly cooked. But since the bento was delivered to us, the skin got rather soggy along the way though the fish was still fairly juicy.

Samurice has five outlets, including #B1-46 Wisma Atria, 35 Orchard Rd, S238877. www.samurice.sg. Takeaway via Uber Eats.

This chic five-month-old addition to Holland Village’s enclave of cafes makes eating healthy easy: there are four types of customisable bowls that lets you choose your own combination of ingredients from a list. For instance, this Super Balanced bowl offers one low-carb base, one type of meat, two helpings of veggies, and two toppings. Yep, it’s like ang moh cai png. And it’s more atas: other than the standard chicken and salmon, the casual eatery also serves more interesting proteins, like swordfish, turkey and duck. Superfudo counts Ch 8 star Romeo Tan as a fan: the actor spotted us munching on the Super Balanced bowl (heaped with fluffy multigrain rice, swordfish, crunchy kale and kimchi topped with a gooey-yolked egg and crispy shallots) and opined that he liked the swordfish and kimchi. We agree. The swordfish is marinated in a spice mix, which includes onion, garlic, pepper and chilli before being vacuum-sealed with capsicum strips and sous-vide. The result is tender fish that’s juicy and tasty. And the piquant kimchi from Korea is plenty garlicky. We like that our bowl is healthy yet not bland, and filling enough. Wash your meal down with cold-pressed juices by Squeezed. However, you’ll have to make a trip down to tapow your food here — or just dine in the airy, designer-chic space. ’Cos Superfudo doesn’t work with any delivery partner at the moment — they say they want to keep prices down as the latter requires a large cut of the profits. Pity.

Superfudo is at 15 Lor Liput, Holland Village, S277739. www.facebook.com/superfudo.sg. Takeaway in-store only.

This popular CBD casual grain bowl joint has started offering a ‘grain of the month’. When we ordered this, it was a vegan-friendly tagine (a bright yellow Moroccan-style casserole dish) made with low-carb, high-protein millet seed with carrots, celery, zucchini, raisins and a spice blend with cumin and red pepper. It's like a healthier version of biryani, though no less yummy. Make it a permanent item on the menu, we say. We pimped up our bowl with some slices of unfortunately tough roast chicken breast, plus veggies that fared better: smoked cauliflowers and zucchini, a caramelised fennel salad with yogurt and roasted ratatouille. We doused everything in the hot pink beetroot feta yogurt dressing, which is as shiok as always. This month’s special grain is Black barley and Jasmine rice with pandan, ginger and cabbage — think a vegan chicken rice. Or try the permanent grain picks like the tasty bulgur wheat or the barley and shiitake mushroom risotto.

Grain Traders, two outlets including 01/02/03 CapitaGreen, 138 Market St, S048946. Tel: 6384-6559. Open daily except Sat & Sun, 8am-8pm. www.grain-traders.com. Takeaway via Deliveroo.

Other than sinful chips, chocs and biccies, the British department store also offers healthy ready-to-eat salad and grain bowls that come conveniently prepackaged. All you have to do is to tear open the plastic seal, and tuck in. This no-frills vegetarian Balsamic Glazed Beetroot & Goat’s Cheese bowl has a buckwheat base. It may look like grains and taste like grains, but buckwheat is a type of gluten-free super seed that’s crunchy, earthy and more commonly used to make Japanese soba. It’s also loaded with do-gooders like fibre and antioxidants. Included in the bowl are veggies like green lentils, roasted onions, steamed broccoli and spinach that taste as clean as #eatingclean can get. We find ourselves digging around for the tangy balsamic and honey dressing for some flavour. The slices of milky low-fat and low sodium goat’s cheese are a nice touch if you like the characteristic funk of the cheese. At 326 calories, this M&S bowl is a low-calorie option (eat less than 400 calories a meal if you’re fighting flab).

Available at all Marks & Spencer outlets including #01-01 Wheelock Place, 501 Orchard Rd, S238880. Tel: 6733-8122. www.marksandspencer.com/sg.