Loyal Dining has a prime location -- four stories from the ground up (the top floor is the kitchen). Yet instead of packed with a hundred diners at the same time, tables are loosely placed and surrounded by spacious comfortable booths under dim lighting, much like a restaurant set pulled straight from a 60s movie. The kitchen produces real food, dishes that are diverse in selection from three square daily meals to afternoon tea items and evening dimsum

The Chinese name "Loi Lo" is a translation from the Cantonese words for foreign imports back in the 60s and 70s. Dishes served at the restaurant lends local influence in Western dishes. Among these dishes are Western dishes with local twists that help morphing these dishes into a new genre all on their own. Here are some of the signatures we sampled.

The "66 Beef Wellington" has a no-mistake title. For those who aren't familiar with this dish, fillet of beef is encased in buttery pastry and then baked until golden. Here at Loyal Dining a Foie gras pate is smothered all over a piece of Angus beef, then jacketed with strips of Parma Ham before encased with the buttery pastry. Baked golden and served on a sizzling plate with a mélange of vegetables and a baked potato, the pastry was as buttery as a local chicken pie, but not nearly as flaky though. The beef within was bland for an Angus beef while the pate melted into the Parma ham, all imparting a homogenous taste of mashed luncheon meat surrounding the meat rather than goose liver and Parma ham as suggested.

Baked Pork chop with fried rice and sunny side egg ($78) is sunny as its name suggested. The eye-catching tomato sauce enrobes a beautifully-done fried rice with golden flakes of eggs within the rice. The sauce is sweet with just enough of tartness, yet the porkchop suffered the same issue we came across with the Beef Wellington - the meat was softer than usual and lacking a meaty flavour to it. We strongly suggest breaking the egg yolk and let the molten yolk mixes into the rice.

The versatility of Loyal Dining's Sweet Soya sauce is well demonstrated with the Loyal Pigeon ($98 each) and with Loyal Fried Flat Noodles with sliced beef ($75). The pigeon is painted in a glossy dark brown coat with extra sweet soya sauce on the side. The soya sauce has a complex taste benefited from notes of caramel from the sugar added. The sweetness penetrated into the meat of the pigeon which is also moist and tender.

The Fried Flat Noodles with sliced beef will inevitably be compared to that at Tai Ping Koon, yet with a similar flavour profile Loyal Dining's version adopts a thinner flat noodles that are more translucent and less fragile than an ordinary rice noodles. The sweetness from the soya sauce used is also taken down a notch from the final taste of the dish.

Deep fried Prawn Toast ($45/ 4pcs) are golden triangles of deep fried toast filled with mashed prawns. While the toasts were perfectly golden, the toasts turned out too oily and the fluffy prawn filling lacked texture. The Loyal Thick Toast with preserved Beancurd with Caster sugar ($15) is simplicity on its own. The toast is the thick but not evenly toasted. A thin smear of preserved tofu is followed by a blizzard of caster sugar - combining salty and sweet with a crunchy texture on the toast which can benefit with a more even toasting and a little more preserved tofu for a more balanced flavour.

>Among desserts we sampled the Loyal Soufflé ($78), a show stopping stunner. While the entrance was spectacular, the soufflé was too brown on the top and the risen sides, which refused to deflate after a couple of minutes. Getting through the jiggly surface came an incredibly soft undercooked centre. It tasted positively eggy and light yet it brought no resemblance to a proper soufflé. Some beverages are blasts from the past, such as Mixed Cream Soda with Milk ($32) simply mixes bottled cream soda with fresh milk - letting the flavours fuse and form a sweet and creamy concoction. The Red Bean ice with Haagen-Dazs ice cream ($35) has the original looks and rightly proportioned red bean and ice cream. The ice would be best shaved than left chunky.

With a high profile opening Loyal Dining intends to take diners on a nostalgic journey through the food of the past with a modern twist, as well as an all day dining outlet that caters what everyone likes from stir-fries to dimsums (at night and weekends). Some signature dishes do require further tweaking to be redefined as new classics.