Counting down to a new year has always been an simple affair for me which always seems to involve watching the count down program on the TV, messaging ‘Happy New Year’ to all my friends through Whatsapp and then heading to bed right after but this year it was a little different for me.
W took me to the place for our countdown dinner to my surprise but I wasn’t very enthusiastic because I had quite a filling lunch and the place required quite a bit of walking (my legs were very sore from excessive walking over the festive season) but, I was still quite happy to be finally able to try Dojo.
Background story:
I am a huge fan of pork. However, Singapore is a multicultural society so many makan places are always Halal which really disappoints me. (Also find it a tad unfair because I don’t eat beef but there is no non-beef equivalent of halal) Hence, whenever I go overseas (except Malaysia which I don’t usually count as overseas), I would always choose to eat pork as much as possible because I am perpetually deprived of pork in Singapore, especially Pork Burgers because fast food joints in Singapore are all Halal.
Imagine how excited I was to find out that there is a restaurant serving purely Pork Burgers. *salivates* This place is called Dojo and it is located at Circular Road which is at Boat Quay.
W took me to the place for our countdown dinner to my surprise but I wasn’t very enthusiastic because I had quite a filling lunch and the place required quite a bit of walking (my legs were very sore from excessive walking over the festive season) but, I was still quite happy to be finally able to try Dojo.
Upon entering the place, we were greeted by the counter staff and offered the menu.
W picked Little Dragon and I picked Kaiju. Menu can be found here from Dojo’s FB page.
Food took quite awhile to come but the ambiance was not bad. There were very few people dining there as we waited for our food to come but a big group of 8 came after we finished our burgers and the staff was very accommodating.
Each burger came with fries and a drink so its kinda like a set meal. The buns were really soft and nice but the size of the burgers were really quite small. o.o Both W and I were surprised by the small size and frankly we didn’t feel quite full eating the burger. The fries did most of the filling and thankfully their fries were decent.
Little Dragon – I took a bite out of W’s burger and thought that the meat was too tough and did not really taste as nice as what some reviews described this Must-try burger to be.
Kaiju – Again I was not impressed. The cheese was mediocre, the pork was not very juicy and frankly the entire burger was not very memorable for me even though pork and cheese are two of my favourite food. The burger could probably benefit from a better cheese.
Chilli cheese fries – Dojo’s fries tasted very similar to that of KFC’s however this upgrade option was very disappointing because I did not find it tasty at all. It merely taste like minced meat in some kind of slightly spicy sauce which tastes really generic. =/ I wouldn’t recommend it.
Komba bao – W ordered this so he was responsible for most of the eating but we both agreed that the bao was overcooked and soaked with oil. Being unhealthy is one thing, but I feel like it’s not worth it to waste my calories on such a meh dish.
In conclusion, we were both very perplexed by how a place with such good ratings can end up being so disappointing. I love the idea of an all-pork place though. Maybe it was because the chef was in a holiday mood and wasn’t performing up to scratch? If the mood strikes I would give this place a second try but for now if I want a quick non-halal gourmet burger fix I would go to Fat Boy’s at Dhouby Ghaut which is much more accessible than Dojo albeit slightly more expensive.
The Shake Shack burgers I had in London are still the best burgers I have ever tasted. I wonder if Shake Shack will ever come to Singapore?
Dojo is located at 72 Circular Road. Their FB page can be found here.
Omoshiroi desu yo! 