10 posts tagged “friends”
At Regina's suggestion, the girls treated me to dinner at Alaturka Restaurant. It's a cosy little place between Bugis and Lavender, that sells Turkish and Mediterranean food. Truth be told, though I really loved my trip to Turkey more than 15 years ago, it was my first winter travel then. And back then, Turkey wasn't very developed for touring. While the sights were unforgettable, we spent alot of other time trying not to feel too miserable about the cold, hence I don't really recall much about the food, except the pumpkin pie, the kebabs and the butter rice. So I was really looking forward to this dinner.
It wasn't really difficult to find, and it was nestled right in the midst of several intimate little eateries. I like that area very much, there's so much to explore there!!! The first thing that struck me about the decor was of course all the blue mosaic, that's so typical.
Ultra Magnus gave me an early birthday treat at Sun With Moon at Wheelock Place. It's only the 2nd time I'd been there, the 1st with Saresha years back. The restaurant had some birthday discount of 20% plus a free cake, so might as well lor... heh!
His order was Hokkaido Ramen and Annkake Chicken:
There was deep fried chicken, fried fish and even pork in the ramen soup! I liked the fish. :)
My order was Tonkatsu Tamago Toji and Tofu Salad:
I loved the miso and peanut paste used for the salad. It was very very yummy, though I shouldn't be eating peanuts...
We also ordered a chawanmushi to share:
The chawanmushi was silky smooth and soft - oishii!!!
This was my free chocolate mousse cake:
Which I forgot to eat after I brought it home... :p And I couldn't resist ordering one of the desserts... because they all sounded so interesting on the menu! So we ordered a Sweet Potato Plate:
It was really very delicious! They had 4 different ways of presenting the sweet potato. I'd actually fallen in love with Japanese sweet potato now. :) Anyway, we also decided to be decadent. So after our dinner, we went to the NYDC downstairs to share a.... TIRAMISU MUDPIE!!!
I couldn't really taste any tiramisu... but the ice-cream layers were really great. Haha!! What a great way to end a great power catch-up session with an old friend, especially since he always told me some good news. Thanks for the wonderful dinner and all the best, pal! :)
This is way overdue... On 9 June, I met up with an old friend, Daniel, and spent almost an entire day with him. Come to think of it, in our 16 years of friendship, that was the only time we had spent a full day together, barring the time we travelled along Great Ocean Road together for 1.5 days...
We first met for lunch at the Pan Pacific Orchard. I kept confusing it with the building of Pan Pacific Service Apartments and it was only minutes before I left home did I finally realise that it's actually behind Orchard Hotel. What a muddle-head I was. And then only when I reached Orchard MRT station and rechecked the map, did I realise that it was where the old Hotel Negara - the one with the very famous restaurant "The Drake" - was! Gosh! I had not thought about that place for such a long time and my only memory of that place was a Christmas dinner with XY and JA there many many years ago, when we were still very young and going to restaurants was really a luxury. But anyway, I found the hotel quite easily, although we were walking under the blazing sun and in mind-numbing heat.
We had buffet lunch at 10 at Claymore. It was a nice setting. The tables were far enough from each other, so patrons could enjoy their meals and conversations without disturbing the others. The spread of food was very good. There was plenty of greens, various types of stew, some carbohydrate dishes, plenty of different varieties of fruits, including green apples, etc. The chocolate fondue fountain was quite big, but it was the array of accompanying foods that struck me. There were all kinds of dried fruits imagineable and the usual marshmallows, etc. But I didn't really pay any attention to the chocolate fondue because I was attracted to the several types of cakes and pastries on display. And I have to say... the tiramisho was absolutely fantastic. It was soaked with enough alcohol to taste wet but not soggy and it was so soft, it literally melted in my mouth. I could have eaten the entire cake by myself... And with Citibank's 1-for-1 deal, the buffet was really really really worth it. I liked the place so much, I wanted to go back again with SH & Reg, but the place was fully booked till end of the week! Damn! Thinking of the tiramisho is making me hungry already... :\
After lunch, we went to Asian Civilisations Museum to view "The Kangxi Emperor: Treasures from the Forbidden City" exhibit. We were joined by Saresha. For $8, we got the view the special exhibit for as long as we liked plus whatever else was in the ACM. The exhibition was really amazing. We joined a guided tour which lasted about an hour. The docent was very informative and knowledgeable. She led us through the exhibits and showed and explained to us several of the items. She was very thorough indeed. We got to see a scroll of painting that was actually 22m long (but only 10m was on display), Kangxi's battle outfit, his calligraphy (which I fell in love with at first sight, and almost tempted a heist to get my hands on them :p), several glazed porcelain pieces (not sure if it's the correct word), robes worn by the Manchus, paintings of the 3 top emperors of the Qing Dynasty & Xiao Zhuang Empress, replicas of imperial edicts, etc etc. The exhibition was fairly extensive and we spent about another 2 hours there, just relooking at the stuff after our guided tour. I was very amazed at the amount of details put into the painting and the level of expertise for the glazing of some of the bowls and cups. There's a set of 12 cups which was supposed to represent the 12 months of a year and on each was painted a different flower. What was so special about them was that they were eggshell thin and the words of a poem could be read from the other side of the cup.
The exhibition basically showed that Kangxi totally lived up to his reputation as one of China's greatest emperors. He was not only an astute king, he was also a warrior and he was also a keen scholar. Above all, he was a patron of the arts and sciences - to me, he was the ultimate patron of the arts. He not only commissioned many artworks but he also practised calligraphy religiously and he was also very keen to learn more about the sciences from the west. In fact, it was recorded that he did so many things in his life, I started to wonder where he found all that time! But the thing was, he also had a rather sad private life. He outlived 3 of his empresses and at least 20 of his children. In fact, he was so sad after the death of his 3rd empress, he never promoted another concubine again. The saddest part was to learn that his favourite son - the original crown prince - was so impatient to be the emperor, he actually conspired with some other officials against his own father, Kangxi. For all that Kangxi was worth and contributed for the country, his private life was beset with various tragedies indeed. The museum didn't allow us to take photos of the special exhibition but we were allowed to take these:
After we were done with the exhibition, we decided to walk to the Esplanade for a cup of coffee/water. Along the way, we took more photos. I was again reminded of how pretty this part of Singapore was - with all the colonial buildings and tall beautiful trees - and how much effort the government had put in to style this region into a heritage/cultural/arts site.
The Victoria Concert Hall: Where I had spent many a memorable day with my Chinese music friends
The Esplanade: The emblem of quality and success and the pride of the arts in S'pore
Raffles Place: Symbol of Wealth
We cooled off at Haagen Dazs in Esplanade where Daniel showed me some of his photos. He's a really serious hobbyist photographer indeed! And I must say, he's got a pretty good eye. Some of the photos had really cool or interesting perspectives. It's really refreshing to see photos that are thoughtfully and artfully composed, rather than the whole slew of hundreds of photos of similar things which I always see people upload on FB, Flickr, etc. If he gives me permission, I'll post some of his photos up here for viewing. :)
We ended the day with a really good local dinner at Food Republic in Wisma, where JA joined us. We had chicken rice, laksa, char kway teow and hokkien mee. Yums! And we sat and chatted till the foodcourt was closing. Actually for the whole of the 1st half of 2009, I was so tied up at work, besides taking time off on the 3rd day of CNY, I didn't take any leave or time off at all. So, being able to enjoy a few days of rest, finally, and spending one of the days with some dear lifelong friends was a real precious treat indeed. Here's hoping there'd be more of such days in future.
We celebrated Saresha's birthday at this gem of a place in China Square. The restaurant's recommended on this site and TimeOut. We found it with little difficulty, but it was a rather terrible walk from Chinatown MRT because of the sweltering heat. Usually we would order warm water when we go to restaurants but it was so bloody freaking hot that day, we both ordered iced water, which was a very welcome respite!
Anyway, the restaurant had set lunches for only $20++! All set lunches started with 3 types of appetisers & a salad:
From left: Seaweed with slices of mushroom delicately seasoned in some (I-don't-know-what) sauce, chawanmushi and battered Japanese fish cake. The chawanmushi was so silky smooth, it was almost creamy. I liked that they put edamame in the egg too. It was a really great way to start the meal. The fish cake was very delicious too, I liked the soft texture and the light taste.
The salad was good too, I always rather enjoy Japanese salads - well, those that don't use Thousand Island as dressing anyway. The mashed potato was yummy, as was the dressing they used - very nice!
We ordered different main courses. I decided to go for Saba Shioyaki:
The mackerel was grilled to perfection. The skin was very lightly crisped and melted in my mouth while the meat was still juicy and tender. It must be the first time I've ever eaten such a fabulously prepared mackerel. I liked that the husband-wife team were thoughtful enough not to give patrons too much rice in the set meal. :)
Saresha had Saba Misoni, or better known as mackerel in miso sauce:
Perhaps she can comment on her meal later. :)
Anyway, besides our set lunches, we ordered Yaki-Gyoza and Hotate Guratan (scallop gratin) as sides.
While the gyoza was nothing really out of the ordinary, it was still well prepared. We were impressed with the size of the scallops and that they gave us 4 whole ones - so, so, so yummy! *slurp*
And to round up the meal, they gave us homemade Peach Sorbet. While it was quite nice, I rather felt as if I was eating crushed peach-flavoured ice. Heh!
And we weren't totally satisfied with just that, so we also ordered Daigaku Imo (sweet potato in sweet sauce). It was really a highlight of the meal and the best way to end it.
Of course, to end off the post, I'd usually declare that I must go back to the restaurant because of such a wonderful first experience and such delicious food. Unfortunately, the day we went was also the last day of busins for the restaurant. It was with a tinge of regret when we stepped out, knowing there'd never be a chance for us to return. But I guess, some of the best things is life can only be experienced once, so that we can savour that experience over and over again in our memories. So, through my little blog, I jot down these little details for posterity. I wish the owners all the best for their future endeavours.
Finally met up with Saresha and JA for our super belated Xmas meal. We went to Shimbashi Soba at Paragon. The restaurant is part of Kuriya and specialises in soba. This is part of what Saresha ordered:
Quail egg with sashimi: Quite delicious and sinful. :p
I ordered one of the set meals (forgot the proper Japanese name for it). But it had fried chicken, salmon and swordfish sashimi & tempura. I ordered the set only for the swordfish sashimi, which I recently have been very much in love with. :p:p
The fried chicken was very delicious! Some of the fried chicken I'd eaten in Japanese restaurants tend to be too dry and over-fried. But this was just nice. I love love love the mushroom tempura too. Heh! The mushroom was light, soft and yet had a full cotton-y 口感 to it. Yums! The highlight was of course the chilled soba. It was very good too - when I bit into the strands, the "springy-ness" was just nice. *Slurp*
JA loves Japanese desserts so after dinner, she ordered this to share:
There were fruits, soba balls (very nice to bite into!), and ice-cream. All in all, a very lovely meal.
We proceeded to Canele for tea and desserts after dinner. I had been craving macaroons for the past week and NOTHING was going to stop me from having them. Haha!!! So we ordered 1 violet (Saresha), 1 Chocolate (JA) and 1 hazelnut (me) for ourselves, with a pot of tea (different flavours, of course). Oh and on top of that, we ordered a slice of Caraibe to share. Super sinful right? But who cares? Hahaha!!! It was so empty (huge surprise!) when we reached there, so we almost had personalised service. And we sat there for nearly 2 hours, and the crowd was very small too. Perhaps people really started cutting back on such indulgences the moment the bell tolled on 1 Jan 09?
The macaroons were super delicious, as usual - thanks to Saresha for her rec! I love it when the cream inside have tiny little specks of chopped nuts. The caraibe was simply amazing!!! The amount of chocolate and nuts - awwww... I went into ecstasy after my 1st mouthful. Haha!! All in all, a simply amazing and delicious dinner. That diet and cutting back of financials and calories? That can wait till Monday. Hiak Hiak!!!
Met up with Reg and SH at Suntec's Tang Dian Wang (汤点王) for our gathering for X'mas. I've not been to Suntec for ages, and everything's changed...
The restaurant's deco was rather special. These lamps hung from the ceiling, and they just reminded me so much of pumpkins & Halloween:
The menu was also rather interesting. The signature dishes were their soups, of course. We ordered the Golden Crisp Salted Fish & Minced Pork Pancake. It was like deep fried pork cutlet actually, but saltier and slightly less dry.
Our mains were:
A) Ginseng with Bamboo Shoots & Chicken Soup:
B) Glutinous Rice Siew Mai Dumplings:
C) Signature Stir Fried Bee Hoon with Preserved Meat:
(No photo, cos forget to take. Plus it wasn't remarkable visually - it looked like any normal plate of economical beehoon. Haha!!)
I loved the glutinous rice siew mai dumplings - very special. I especially like the very thin wrapping they used - a must-try! The soup was simply amazing! It was very very sweet and yummy. We were in soup heaven after drinking it. :) Ahhhh.... This is a restaurant I'm definitely going back again. :)
I'd been staring at this blog for the past year, before I finally plucked up the courage to make some orders. So I ordered 2 dozen cupcakes for the folks in office. The lady lives in YCK, it was really a stretch going all the way there, but I made it nonetheless. :)
And the cupcakes were great!!! Let the pictures do the talking:
The lady was really nice. Besides giving me an additional cupcake, due to packing arrangements, at no extra charge, she also gave me a box of super yummy macaroons, 3 nicely wrapped muffins & 3 huge cookies with pretty icing. Some of the very nice freebies:
Since I won't be around for X'mas, I'll just take the opportunity to wish everyone a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Last Friday JH was supposed to pass me the finished product. We wanted to have lunch initially then I cancelled as I realised I simply couldn't afford the time to go out and eat for an hour. These days, it's been sit down at 9am and work till 8pm non-stop, while munching on bread or beehoon or whatever I brought in the middle of the day. My mind is going crazy and my eyes are dying of exhaustion too.
So when he brought over the CDs and gave me a packet of 3 mini buns (white, green & brown some more!), as he knew I wouldn't have time to go out to buy food, I was more than touched.
A little gesture - with a big heart. :)
And I'm finally almost at the finishing point of accumulating enough to get myself a MegaMini (emerald) Butterflye on my (fluff)Friends in FB. Yay!
You know you've reached Auntie-hood when it seems perfectly normal to meet a girlfriend or 2 for lunch, go shopping then end up in a supermarket buying groceries.
Saresha and I spent nearly 3 hours trying to shop at Isetan and Metro today (ok she tried, not me). We ended up at the Paragon Market Place - its gourmet supermarket and I ended up with this:
It's an amazing supermarket with absolutely super fresh sashimi. The baby octopuses - my favourite - and chuka wakame (seaweed), etc also looked extremely fresh and well-prepared. It's amazing how therapeutic shopping for groceries can be... :)
In the past few months, I managed to try out a few restaurants which I had never been to. Here's a quick review of them:
2 days before my birthday, my dear Allis brought me to the Marche at Vivocity. Actually I didn't even know there's one there till she pointed it out. :P We had a wonderful time catching up with each other and she fed me the scandalous-est stories about her workplace and people there. Boy am I glad I no longer work in a bank! I've heard too many of such stories and witnessed too many of such horrific happenings. The money might be potentially better, but the work environment is definitely less than desirable for me. Anyway, she was in such a good mood, she over ordered. We had calamari, crepes, rosti, steak and fruit crepes, washed down with watermelon juice. The queue to get in was horrendous, but the staff at Marche made it up with fantastic service. They served complimentary sorbet to the waiting people (it was hot and humid then) which helped to bring down temperatures and also made the waiting more bearable. Great thinking guys! Foodwise, the stalls still served similar fare to what was offered at The Heeren, except that the ham and cheese crepe now also had shreds of vegetables in them. I felt it was kind of weird. I like my ham and cheese (shall I say neat/kosong? haha) as they are - no additional garnishing needed. I also didn't like the calamari too much - too much flour. Otherwise the rest of the food was not bad. The company was more important, of course!
The next day, Reg treated me to a fancy French manicure and high tea at Straits Cafe in Hotel Rendezvous. The food was decent, though not terribly exciting but she had her fill of prawns. I had the usual cold stuff like sashimi and also normal hot food - dim sum, century egg porridge, spring rolls included! :P The dessert was more fun and their durian cake was rather good. I don't eat durian but I do enjoy durian cakes once in a while. A few tables away from us, between 2 of the 4 patrons, they swiped about half of the durian cake each time it was replenished. Amazing!
For Dad's birthday, I actually ordered a durian cake from Goodwood Park Hotel for him - his request. It was pretty good too, I rather enjoyed it. Heh! We also had Peking Duck, soup and fried noodles for dinner from the Chinese restaurant at RTC. The quality of the food that night was really good - the duck's skin was crispy and the soup (forgot what we ordered) was really flavourful.
Saresha and I had lunch at Brotzeit the next day. It was one of the top 20 restaurants listed in The Sunday Times last year. We, unfortunately, felt that it didn't live up to its name. Although the wait staff (mainly foreigners) were nice and polite, they were really blur about alot of things. Their signature dish was pork knuckles (not on the menu though) and when we enquired about it, one of them actually claimed that the restaurant didn't serve that - but it was listed on the blackboard outside the restaurant and my uncle had it like at least 3 times there!!! -_-" But I was coming down with a cold then and I didn't really fancy trotters (deep fried) so we ordered a Gartensalat (mixed salad with tomatoes, potato salad, carrots, boiled eggs, fresh cucumbers tossed with extra virgin olive oil and herb dressing) to share and she had a Lammwurst (lamb sausage on mashed potatoes and two types of German cabbage) while I had a Weisswurst (3 pieces of traditional Munich veal and pork sausage served with a brezn). Admittedly, the food itself was fairly decent. I loved the mashed potato and also the pretzel but I didn't think much of the taste (or lack of) of my veal and pork sausage. The lamb sausages were much tastier. Our dessert of traditional chocolate cake was very very very satisfying though. All in all, not a place I'm likely to prioritize for a re-visit.
Always adventurous with food and willing to try anything (with maximum amount for minimum amount), what better place to have the dinner buffet at The Rice Table where PA could eat tonnes and I could have my tahu telur (Tofu
Omelette). Heh! Given the variety served, the price was very worth it.
I rather like Indonesian food, especially tahu telur. It's so yummy!!!
We also liked the Ayam Panggang (Grilled Chicken) very much. In fact,
we liked all the dishes, with the exception of the lady's fingers in
curry. Bleah! And though I didn't really care for the ikan bilis, the various other curries were really nice too. Yums! :) Definitely will go back again!
Look at the beautiful spread of food!!... *stomach growls*
Though the next big meal I had wasn't a treat for me, it was a treat from Reg and I for SH's birthday. Eversince I read about Indulgz from Xiaxue's blog, the food sounded so good that I badly wanted to try it. We liked the ambience and atmosphere the moment we stepped in. The lighting was warm and dim and the wait staff polite and personable. For starters, we ordered Chicken Bolognaise Melted Cheese Fries and Tempura Battered Prawns (the favourite seafood of the other 2). The cheese fries were like a little piece of heaven. The hot fries mixed with the melting cheese and the bolognaise made for a really yummy combination indeed! Brilliant!
And also because SH loves soups so much, we wanted to order 2 types of soups - Wild Thyme and Crabmeat Soup and Seafood and Wolfberries Soup. Unfortunately, the latter was not available, but the first more than made up for it. It was very delicious! It tasted a bit like lobster bisque, but more flavourful and also less salty. Yums!!
Somehow the wait staff made a mistake and forgot to serve the soup before our mains. So we had the soup with our pasta. The 2 of them ordered Slipper Lobster and Wild Crabmeat Pasta while I decided to try the Chef's Crispy Pasta with Chicken Mushroom Cream Sauce.
Anyway, throughout the really filling dinner, Mdm SH kept harping on about going to MOF across the road for their Japanese desserts. And that's what we really did! After a round of shopping at Bugis, we then went to MOF to fill up our already stretched stomachs...
KR brought me to this French restaurant at Greenwood Avenue - Sebastian's Bistrot. I never knew this part of Singapore existed. Greenwood Avenue has this row of laid-back but not cheap restaurants, nestled right in the middle of a not-poor neighbourhood (Bukit Timah). It was almost rustic and for a Saturday afternoon, it was sleepy and quiet. I also spotted MediaCorp Honcho - Lucas Chow - dining at one of the restaurants there.
Anyway, Sebastian's was empty when we arrived. Perhaps we were late? It was nearly 2pm when we arrived but we had personal service. The decor place reminded me very much of the restaurants I patronised in France - it was so nostalgic. And the menu was flexible - out of their 3 course meals, we could choose to have all 3 courses or any 2 courses at a slightly lower price. Cool! I chose to have soup and steak. KR had pork loin (I think) with dessert. He also ordered escargots to start. The food was simply amazing! The dozen escargots were mouth-watering - love the garlic! Our mains were also very satisfying. My steak was tender and juicy and the wedges were fried to perfection - crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Yums!!! I'd love to come back again, if I have personal transport and if I could find the place again. It's such a nice neighbourhood too - very reminiscent of the row of shop houses and restaurants at East Coast Road.
Next up for me... more Japanese food and local fare like chee cheong fun and black carrot cake - which I had been craving for days. Hee!
