Hey Hive!
We're back with more restaurantours! This was from back in Dec 2024, when we hosted some overseas friends who came to visit us for a few days! It'd been a while since they visited so they wanted to go see some sights, so we brought them around.
While we were out and about in town, it was time to get some dinner and since one of our friends is trying to be vegetarian, we decided to try this Japanese vegetarian restaurant called Herbivore!
It was getting quite crowded when we arrived but thankfully we managed to get a table for 4 people. We were shown to what I thought was a private dining area at first since it was on the other side of the main restaurant. But I think it was just another part of the restaurant across the aisle of the mall with more tables.
Herbivore serves pure vegetarian cuisine prepared in Japanese and Western style and was started by Mr Ho and Japanese Chef Mr Yasui Masa to form Zen, Singapore's first Japanese Vegetarian Restaurant in March 2010. After some feedback for vegan and Western dishes, they decided to merge Herbivore with Zen.
They used digital menus here and you could order from a tablet at every table which was convenient. There were various types of ramen, udon and soba, but also cold noodles and shabu shabu.
I wasn't super hungry but I figured the portion wouldn't be too big so we chose our own dishes. Sean decided on the udon which arrived first.
It looked and smelled good. The noodles were nice and slightly hard since that's how Sean likes it. The soup looked quite light but was pleasant and had a mix between mushroom and soy flavour.
It definitely tasted healthy that's for sure.
I decided on the Tempura Cha Soba set which comes with a bowl of soba, some vegetable tempura and soy sauce.
It looked really good too! I personally prefer thinner noodles so I like ramen and soba better compared to udon. This soba was also special since I think they add green tea to make it green. It did have a slightly bitter tea taste to it but the aroma was very nice. It mostly tasted like regular soba. The soup was quite light as well and not as mushroomy as the udon but still flavourful.
There was a mix of different types of tempura, from eggplant to pumpkin, all fried to crispy perfection.
There was something that looked like an ebi tempura but since it was vegetarian I'm not really sure what it was made of, probably a flour mixture with some vegetables. It didn't taste like prawn but it wasn't bad.
Overall it was a very nice meal and I was quite satisfied after. We eat vegetarian meals sometimes at home but don't normally go out of our way to find vegetarian options outside. Since the prices for vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals are about the same, we figured we might as well eat meat.
But I'm glad we got to experience some new restaurants together with friends! We wouldn't normally try this kind of place so this was definitely a good find. I'd recommend it if you're looking for some vegetarian food in the city that isn't too expensive.
Thanks for reading!
