One corner of The Refinery also had this huge alcohol bottles display, and that's when you realise this place isn't really a cafe, but more of a restaurant and bar.

Turns out that The Refinery is working on a new menu, and we actually got to try their new dishes while we were there! We ordered one item from the original menu which was the Refinery Gyudon (S$17).

The Refinery Gyudon was a delicious dish. It did not look really big at first, but filled the stomach quickly. The meat was tender and flavourful, and the onsen egg added a creamier texture to the rice, which was unfortunately quite dry.

The new appetisers were the Mentaiko Fries and Tamago Men. Both were superb.

The Mentaiko Fries were absolutely crispy and were on the thicker side (although still thinner than the ones at Burger King). The mentaiko sauce was poured on top of the fries and we could not stop ourselves from eating them. The flavour of the mentaiko was also strong, and incredibly umami. The Tamago Men was basically Tamago with mentaiko sauce. It does not look like much, but there was so much flavour in the eggs. The texture was also very fluffy.

I got myself the Mixed Chirashi Don as I am a huge lover of chirashi bowls. Unfortunately, I found this one to be quite disappointing. The food looked shallow in the bowl, and the chirashi pieces were quite thin and small. Maybe I've been spoiled by Omote because their bowls are huge and super worth it for S$19, while the one at The Refinery was almost half the size and had a lot less sashimi (for around the same price). I wouldn't say it was a bad dish, but it wasn't very good either.

We also got the Salmon Don. The salmon was decently sized and I liked the mix of the meat, salad, and egg. I really regretted not ordering this for myself!

The verdict? Well, if I'm totally honest, I think The Refinery is a good place to visit if you're craving Japanese food and are on a budget. The portions are not very big and you're most likely to be hungry again, later on, so do be sure to order tons of sides! Ironically, I actually enjoyed the sides more than the mains. I would probably come back again, but I'm getting the salmon don instead the next time!

Thanks for reading, and see you next post!