Late Lunch at Eighteen Chefs @Nex

I've heard about this casual diner for a while and was keen to try but it always has a long queue during meal times. My opportunity came when I was on leave and had an appointment to fix my hair at Nex.

I arrived at around 3.50pm, there was no queue but the eatery was <80% occupied. Many were youngsters and students, perhaps due to the ongoing student price promo.

This place adopts a self-service model where patrons check the menu and fill out an order chit by themselves and proceed to the cashier to make payment. Dishes will be served to the table when ready. Cutlery and condiments are available beside the cashier for patrons to help themselves.

I ordered their special 'Design Your Own Dish' Pasta in Broth. Patrons can follow a 4 steps process to choose their own soup base, pasta type, main ingredients and optional top up for extra ingredients. There is also a Be Your Own Chef menu for patrons to customize their own baked rice or baked pasta.

My order was a Tom Yum Soup Fusilli w/ Seafood & additional Salmon cubes for $17.30. I topped up $3.30 to make it into a Combo meal with drink (Ice Lemon tea or Soft drink) and ice cream. You can top up more to get Soup of the day and garlic bread to go with the main course.

After several minutes wait, I was served with a huge bowl of piping hot soupy pasta with generous amount of ingredients. The main ingredients consists of fresh prawns, squids and mussels with some veggies like broccoli, cauliflower and carrot in the soup. The seafood were very fresh and succulent. And, the additional pan fried salmon cubes were nicely done as well. The tom yum soup was very rich, tangy and really spicy...delish!

The Homemade Ice Lemon tea was pretty good, and the small serving of Vanilla ice cream was ok, nothing really special.

All in all, I quite like my dining experience at the Eighteen Chefs, food is good with huge serving and prices are down to earth. They do not charge for service and GST, so all prices are NETT. I can see why the eatery is popular with the younger crowd. I would gladly return again during off peak hours to try other dishes.


Eighteen Chefs
Nex, 23 Serangoon Central #01-57
Singapore 556083
Tel: 6634 4642

Business Hours:
Monday to Sunday
11.00am to 10.00pm



Ordered takeaway for dinner...the Putien Shredded Pork w/ Golden Sesame buns were marvelous!