街头茶餐厅 - Jie Tou Cha Can Ting

We were walking up and down from Esplanade to Marina Square and back to Raffles City and just couldn't decide on what to eat for dinner. In the end, I brought J back to the place where I had my lunch with my friends on the very same day - Streets Cafe which is located @ Raffles City Basement 1.

The food are quite delicious except their drinks... because there isn't any of the drink can help us to digest or feel better after eating so much. J had the special longan drink with nata de coco and I had the lime cooler which they mixed with soda.



I ate the Portuguese Hotpot chicken and which is similar to those normal Koeran hot pot. It was nice but I was tired after a mouthfuls and I started to chew my food really really slow.



We also ordered Gong Bao Chicken as side dish. It is quite normal but I don't feel that spicy even though there are so many dried chillis and green chilli inside. Maybe the chicken was not miranated and fried together with the chillies.



J's main dish was this Fried rice with Curry seafood. I recommended him this dish as my friend had ordered too during lunch time. But it somehow tasted quite different from the one I tried earlier. Too bad for J.



Next, I think the drinks were too sweet for J's liking so he decided to use some porridge to clear the throat. It was nice and the mince meat was really MINCED.. and you can taste a little bit of the meat here and there.



Overall I think it taste better than the other Hong Kong cafes out there..

Name: Street Cafe
Venue: Raffles City Basement 1

Ambush & the Sausage Bar

Ambush offers some higher class pasta experience than the mania one at about the same price. In short, it's a winner in all areas of comparison. Too bad we don't get commision for selling this.

So there you go choose your pasta from a long list and it will be good to go as set meal or not. The set additions include a combination soup of the day and garlic bread or drink plus dessert. We had all of them!



Meat Ball Linguine looks like any other Linguine except they are not really balls, but somewhat elongated Meat Oblongs, but, doesn't matter.



Mixed Seafood Linguine with slightly bigger prawns than most you can get at other places.



We also got this Meat Loaf from the other side "Swiss German" Sausage bar... anyway, standing side by side, both of this and the Ambush outlets belong to the same owner so customers and carry their food over to either side. We wanted to try this because it's the only outstanding item on the display menu since the rest were all hotdogs and sausages, but sad to say, it turns out to be a little unimpressive. I mean not a bad try, but I bet it can be better for the kind of price.



Ok, then this is some quirky alcholic Tiramisu we have ever tried, but still nice I say.

Name: Ambush/ Swiss German
Venue: Takashimaya Basement 1

Ayam Penyat - The Flattened or so call the Smashed Fried Chicken

Just as L and I were contemplating on the apparent lack of special dining places, we spotted the sign board "Ayam Penyat" across the street while waiting at the traffic light. Inconspicuously hidden under Fu Yuen Building (opposite Shaw Tower), is an Indonesian surprise.

Given that it was already 8pm and it is hidden from view at the basement, we reckon that there were considerably many people dining in still. We later found out that this place was once featured in one of the chinese food programme on TV as well.

We actually felt that the presentation was a big plus, but the big minus is the lack of choices. The menu is a single A4, double printed with a few pictures - not enticing at the least.

Maybe it's just us that's very wrong, I think we didn't know how to appreciate Indonesian cuisine because the rest of the tables cleared every single bit of stuff down to the crisps and crumbs.



The small restuarant offers similar main rice sets with the choice of chicken, fish, beef and mutton. Quite a lot to finish in a set I would say. There is the meat topped with some cruchy stuff which I suspect to be kachang puteh bits, tofu, some boiled kangkong and a piece of tempeh. We had two of these sets - chicken and beef - and almost couldn't finish.

But their popular dish is still the Ayam Penyet. It is delibrately smashed with a wooden mallet after deep frying to loosen the meat from the bone.



We also had Chicken Soto with vermicelli which was featured under Soup. This is nice, tasted as original as it should be, no more diluted Soto!

Name: Ayam Penyet
Venue: 67 Beach Road #B1-01, NTUC Income Beach Junction

Wan Zai Classics

L SO LAZY!! Already we have to back date or posts so manydays she is still procrastinating, don't want to complete the stories! So I have to help her clean up this post now!

We had this meal at IMM the day we embark on the journey to search for the "Huggy Pillow" which cost me a hefty sum of $40+!! ARgh!

Wan Zai Classics occupies a stall space in front of DAISO the $2 shop, which appears to be the reason why it has rather good business. Many aunties and uncles were very willing to wait in queue for the lower middle-class food.

However, there are some things we can be picky about. First, queueing for a table is fine, but we have to share tables after all the wait - that is not a great idea. Then we have to queue to order and pay.

Everything tasted mediocre. The beef brisket would be better if it is not that sticky.



The beef and egg and rice is really just beef-egg-rice. Though all in the same bowl, they just does not blend with each other and hence tasted bland altogther.



They two mains each came with soup. We took a shot at the radish soup here.



If these were normal fried chicken, then I would highly recommend. Too bad they labelled themselves as prawn paste fried chicken. Tasted quite far from it.



Finally, vanilla in yuan yang is a nice try. But, that's not what we ordered. We recall vividly its "Yuan Yang" and not "Yuan Yang with Vallina". When L came back from the counter after placing orders, telling me we have to pay for sugar (for the yuan yang) I actually believed! I believe that their service is that bad! oops~



I think if you don't mind some lower middle-class food and service, then this place i still quite decent. Otherwise, there are other places worth visiting in IMM.

Name: Wan Zhai Classics
Venue: IMM

Ministry of Food

Valentine Day.. everybody queuing to eat dinner at the restaurants while me and J went to bugis FOODCOURT to avoid the crowd. And oh yes.. there were really not many people around and we really enjoyed our food. After the dinner, we gave ourselves dessert treats @ MOF.

They serves a wide range of authentic Japanese food and appetizing desserts which are reasonably priced. They have other outlets at Marina Square & Raffles City.





Name: MOF My Izakaya
Venue: Bugis Junction

Thai Accent

It was my 22nd birthday and we thought of going out to have a nice dinner. Oh well FEBRUARY is a torturous month for J, because my birthday falls on the 13th and the next day is Valentine day. Haha. We went to Vivo to look around for food.. and we took quite a long time to decide until we pass by this Thailand restaurant name Thai Accent. There were not much choices left so we just went in to have a try.

I had thai food for lunch too as well. Bangkok Jam @ Greatworld city. Honestly saying the food is much more tastier than Thai Accent but overall still ok. J ordered the usual pineapple rice and I chose the olive rice. J commented that the pineapple rice was nice.. but I still prefer the olive rice. Maybe because I had a bad experience in eating pineapple rice so I don't really fancy that anymore. =\



We also ordered my favourite dishes like the Thai fish cake, Pandan Chicken, Kang kong and of course the spicy Tom Yam soup! The fish cake doesn't really taste good whereas the chicken and the spicy kangkong taste normal.









I still prefer the Thai restuarant at Greatworld still. Maybe one day I should bring J there to have a try..

Name: Thai Accent
Venue: Vivo City

Reunion Dinner 2008

We just had our reunion dinner with our families this weekend and now we are going to let you take a peek at some special and nice dishes we had at the chinese restaurant.

The thing on the table at every reunion must be the fish salad, and this year we thought it's special because it's the first time we have fried fish skin in it. Usually we would go dig for those crispy, bloated square "gold coins", but this time we prefer the fish skins.



Next, I'm going to reveal something cruel to all the protectors of the seas: we had shark fins soup. I personally noticed that we are getting lesser and lesser fins per serving as the years go by, all thanks to the heroes. Our soup this time has got milk in it! And it was not bad at all, but still not enough to compensate for the lack of the core ingredient.



Then we had some nicely fried prawns. I love prawns. And love this lovely pair of prawns has got salted egg yolk in its recipe, making it even more tasty.



But just as we thought the prawns are going to top our list, here comes the Golden Rat (lotus) and some yam-peanut thing. Just look at how cute it is... it just fares greatly above average in both looks and taste.




Name: The Cathay (Chinese) Restaurant
Venue: The Cathay Building