Purple Taste: taan 炭 @ 30 Liang Seah Street

炭 means charcoal. Not sure if they really are using charcoal to grill the skewers but this place is quite happening! The shop itself is smallish but come weekends, when evening falls, taan's staff will setup more tables and chairs along the road. Streetside dining, in essence. The shop gets busy as early as 6pm and if you're any later, the wait time for a table will be depending on luck. Reservations are encouraged.

shopfront

Staff are young and the place has a lively vibe. Plates after plates of skewer mountain could be seen emerging from the kitchen and landing on tables after tables. Never ending. Expect a table to be seated for at least 2 hours.

There is an on-going promo where skewers goes for $1 before 8pm. Price ranges from $1.50 to $3 per skewer and mininum of 2 skewers per flavour. The flavours or rather the seasoning on the skewers are original, chinese spice, spiced salt, teriyaki and spicy miso kimchi. Chinese spice tasted like the xinjiang grill seasoning with cumin.

menu with pictures

order skewers via this sheet

flavoured Kirin beer

If you're new to the place, the staff will take about less than 2 minutes to explain the ordering system. Which is just to indicate on the order sheet the skewers that you wish to have. There is buffet option as well. One would have to eat about 20 skewers in order for the buffet to be worthwhile. Hence, we decided on ala-carte.

buffet option and reservation number

There's non-alcoholic drinks as well as alcoholic beverages. My friends ordered fruit juice and green tea while some of us had beer. The drinks are served prettily.

non-alcoholic drinks; green tea and watermelon juice

Nothing beats ice-cold beer on a hot and humid evening. The Kirin here is the frozen foam top version and surprisingly, it has about 5 flavours to choose from: cranberry, yuzu, original, lychee and apple. I had the lychee version which is sweet (just as I liked it) while Ivan had the apple beer which is veering towards the tangy saltish.

Kirin beer

Let's start with satay! We had beef and chicken satays. Even for promo of $1 per stick, these would come across as pricey. Normal satay that one could get anywhere else. The chicken ones are better. The ends of the satay stick would be coloured differently to differentiate the meats.

chicken and beef satay (5 sticks each) @$10

Next up was selections under the Meat category. We got beef, chicken gizzard, chicken wings in special sauce, house special chicken ball, fresh prawns and shishamo and quail eggs. Some of the items such as shishamo, prawns and chicken wings in special sauce, it is better to order at least one stick per pax as these are single items and not quite shareable unless it is you one bite, I one bite that type. Hahaa!

pork, beef, gizzard, prawns and shishamo

I'd recommend the gizzard in spicy miso sauce. Nice chewy crunchy texture that's not overcooked. The spice level here was pretty mild so no worries even if you can't take spice. The beef and pork were generally rather tough.

chicken wing in special sauce

oyster mushrooms

broccoli

Enjoyed the broccoli and oyster mushrooms. Very likeable! The chicken balls were peppery and has a crunchy cartilage in it.

quails egg

chicken balls

There are non-skewer items as well and we ordered the eel rice and also non-buffet items such as the Yunan grilled pork neck and teriyaki cuttlefish. I'd say skip the teriyaki cuttlefish unless you wanted a jaw workout.

Yunan Grilled Pork Neck @$10.80

The pork neck was rather lean and sliced thinly. The sauce was a mixture of tangy, salty with a slight spicy kick towards the end. Lovely. Oh, not forgetting the salad that was served along with this dish. That was yummy as well.

teriyaki cuttlefish @$6.80

Best dish of the night were the eel fried rice and the fresh grilled oyster with minced garlic. The fried rice was of a single-pax main portion or sharing portion for two-pax. The oyster was served piping hot and the combo was similar to the chinese restaurant type of seafood.