Sliced offers a twist on traditional fish soup. Instead of the usual Teochew or Cantonese-style fish soups, the guys developed a fish broth made by brewing sea bass bones, anchovies, vegetables and garlic for more than six hours. No seasoning or milk is added. They also offer a Japanese-inspired dashi made with bonito flakes and more.
“Everyone has their favourite fish soup stall or traditional flavour that they like. But here we want to build a broth based on what we like and what we feel people will like,” shared Wong.
To “break from the norm”, they also decided to shine the spotlight on the fish farm’s poster fish – sea bass – which isn’t commonly used for fish soup.
“Many people say sea bass is not nice or has a muddy taste, but not if it is farmed well. We love it and we want you to try it. If it is good enough for Michelin-starred restaurants, why not for fish soup?” said Wong.
Sliced uses sea bass that are around 3kg as the meat is most ideal for fish soup. The bigger ones will be tougher, said Goh.
Sliced also offers the usual batang fish soup, as well as seafood soup using la la and prawns. There are plans to introduce specials such as wild-caught local fishes like seabream and orange spotted grouper in future.
BUSINESS HAS BEEN SLOW
Since Sliced opened late December, business has been rather slow due in part to their “ulu”, or remote, location (Wong has a penchant for opening F&B establishments in areas with low footfall). It doesn’t help that the coffeeshop they are in is closed on Sundays.
“We need the weekend crowd. We are speaking to the landlord to see if we can open on Sundays,” said Wong.
They’ve also had to offer more affordable options to cater to the working crowd following feedback that their sea bass soup, previously priced from S$8, was a tad steep.
“There are a lot of foreign workers in this area and to them, price point is very important. So now we have a small portion that starts from S$6. We also added batang fish soup, which starts from S$4, to our menu,” shared Wong.
“We’re a local fish farm, so we don’t have batang (which is wild-caught). But no choice, I have to offer batang to feed the crowd.”
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