Sunday, August 24, 2008,9:22 PM
brought the OH to Hotpot Culture at Marina Square for our 23rd mth-versary. originally wanted to give a Fireworks surprise as it happens to fall on the Singapore Fireworks Festival, but we arrived late at the restaurant, so i couldnt get the alfresco table dat i reserved, and had to sit indoors instead. urgh. but the OH still managed to catch the fireworks by going out for awhile when it started, while i watch over our "pots". lol.
anyway, the food there was not too bad though. we had the ala carte buffet steamboat, with more quite alot of cooked and raw items to choose from. there are 5 soup bases, kimchi, hot and spicy, chicken, fish and herbal, and each person will have their own hotpot, so no clashes of soup base!
there were too much food dat filled our small table, so i juz snapped a shot of as much food as i can. we only ordered 1/3 of their menu there as we were both, sadly, not too big eaters. the usual suspects are there, like raw fish (which was pretty fresh), prawns, beef, pork, sotong, liver, chicken, fish dumplings, vegs, mushroom, etc.
our individual hotpots! we both had herbal soups, and i mixed half of mine with chicken soup later in the meal.
and for desserts, we had their signature choc fondue! which comes with marshmallows, bananas, strawberries, and also watermelon and honeydew for fruits! we had to stop ourselves from over-eating and keep to our "80% full" principle! and all these for $24.80++! not too bad wor...heh.
It has been a long time since i updated my food blog, haven been to anywhere special these days, so heres some snippets of 3 places i went to (and remembered to take pics of):
went to amoy street food ctr (oso known as telok ayer hawker ctr) to grab a quick tea break on a weekday, but too bad most of the stalls are still closed. found this fishball noodle stall dat has a Certificate of Food Excellence in front, so decided to give it a try
fishball mee "tah" with mee pok
but honestly, wasn't too impressed by it. other den that there is A prawn, and the fishballs are quite bouncy, the rest of it tastes like any other fishball mee out there. oh well. and no thanks to the grumpy old auntie too.
Next place i tried with the PL gang is Tian Jing Lou in Chinatown along Mosque Street. Name rings a bell? yupz, its the 1 with its ad featuring Thomas Ong in front of a whole table of food! but i realised its ad is abit misleading, coz i have frenz telling me they serve shanghai food, frenz telling me they do steamboat, and me thinking that they serve dim sum! so to set the record right, they supposedly specialise in Shanghainese and Beijing food, and prob serve dim sum in the day.
tried a few dishes, and i was quite disappointed by their standard.
1 of their 招牌菜，三杯鸡 (loosely translated as 3 cups chicken). 1 of the better dishes dat nite, i felt, but sum my frenz might not be too interested in it, judging by the slow rate this dish takes to finish. prob 1 drawback is dat they chop the pieces into too small pieces, resulting in every piece having a meat to bone ratio of 60-40. thats abit too much bones for a piece rite? and i dun really taste much of the wine that is supposed to be added in?
stir-fried kailan with garlic. 1 of the dishes i dun like, coz of 2 words, BORING, and GARLIC. 'nuff said.
next is 麻婆豆腐, another classic Shanghainese dish. hmmz ok only lah, not as numbing as i tot it would be, but juz as well, since i cant really take spicy food. so in general, it tastes like tofu cubes in 豆敆浆 (fermented beancurd sauce) with chilli to me.
den we tried their take on oatmeal prawns, called Deep-fried Prawns with Salt and Pepper (i tink). the style of cooking is pretty similar to dat of oatmeal prawns, juz dat they prob coated the prawns with salt and pepper and sprinkled sum onto them after cooking too. not much complaints abt this, coz the prawn is still relatively quite fresh, and it was fried quite crispily such dat u can still eat it with its skin intact (but abit hard though, needs abit of thorough chewing to make sure u wun choke on it).
lastly, their 招牌菜, the 1 dat got every1 to sit up and pay attention when Thomas Ong was eating this on tv! i forgot the exact name, but its called sumting like 排排站, which is LONG porkribs marinated in a sweet char siew-like sauce and brought to braise/grill. not bad though, ribs were quite tender, so not much trouble separating the meat from the bone. best eaten with bare hands coz its quite hard to control the bone with chopsticks (unless u r expert with them), and u can lick the bone (and ur hands) after dat too!
the last place is a seafood restaurant in Tuas dats supposedly recommended by Moses Lim, called Tan Chin Lee Sea-fresh Restaurant in Tuas Amenity Centre, along Pioneer Road. but for the price u pay, not worth it at all!
they supposedly specialise in seafood, but its quite ex, so we gave it a miss and tried their meat dishes instead.
Deep-fried Spareribs in Beer. $7 per portion (for 1 person). probably the nicest dish of the nite. the spareribs are pretty tender (maybe due to the beer), with thankfully, more meat den fat. the sauce is mainly sweet, with a little spiciness from the black pepper, but no hint of beer at all (which is why i tink it went into marinating the meat instead).
next is Ostrich meat with honey and pepper. a plate of stir-fried black mass. pretty average dish, ostrich was not very tough (thankfully), but there were loads of black pepper in it, which led mum to wonder if the meat wasnt fresh enough dat they have to use black pepper to conceal it. luckily there was honey added to help balance the spiciness of the peppers.
Hotplate tofu, a classic tze-char must-order dish. same thing, ok only. nothing very special, basically juz deep-fried egg tofu pieces in an egg-and-minced pork sauce on a hotplate.
another plate of black mass. this time is Venison with asparagus. however, i really dun rmb the menu stating the presence of black pepper in this dish, so i was abit surprised when i saw the blacky colour of it. oh well. and its quite salty though, and not to mention oily, as with all the other dishes too. sigh. other den dat, venison wasn't too tough, so no probs with chewing and swallowing it.
dad and mum ordered Hokkien Mee Sua to share, and i tried a little of it, and it tastes like fried beehoon to me. and pretty oily, as usual. nothing too interesting.
bro had nearly a whole plate of Yang Chow fried rice on his own, and as usual, no comments from him (he juz woffles down his food, btw), but at least he says it isn't tasteless. and basically, is juz a plate of 蛋炒饭.
all in all, i dun tink the dishes are worth the price, and the portions r pretty small. so dun tink we will be coming bk here anymore.
quotes from "Life and How to Survive It, by Adrian Tan":
"You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There's very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap. "
"Forget about your life expectancy. After all, it's calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don't need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average."
"Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway."
"The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth........It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence."
" It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart. Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don't, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology."
this guy is damn cool! although i dun quite know who is he though. heh.
Saturday, August 02, 2008,6:14 PM
the problem with singaporeans: too 自以为事
the problem with foreigners: they forget this is Singapore
weird-different from self.
no wonder there are weird pple everywhere.
work has the wonder to make u forget unpleasant things.
becoz it is even more unpleasant.
managed to cut short my round-Singapore tour to juz pasir ris-bukit timah-lavendar-pasir ris.
it was originally supposed to be pasir ris-bukit timah-lavendar-woodlands-pasir ris.
phew.
now i feel abit like a tour guide, running all over singapore.
gimme 3 more months, and i can prob tell u how to go from 1 place to the other without referring to any guide of any sort.
by public transport, dat is. :)
but i still. dun. seem. to. get. slimmer??
maybe i should skip meals sumtimes.
nway jan says its a waste of time and money. hmmz.
tmr is finally sun! and i m not supposed to work on sun, if not for an appt dat got postponed from 2day. oh well, its in pasir ris nway. :)
better enjoy my sun, b4 mon comes. urgh.
there were too much food dat filled our small table, so i juz snapped a shot of as much food as i can. we only ordered 1/3 of their menu there as we were both, sadly, not too big eaters. the usual suspects are there, like raw fish (which was pretty fresh), prawns, beef, pork, sotong, liver, chicken, fish dumplings, vegs, mushroom, etc.
our individual hotpots! we both had herbal soups, and i mixed half of mine with chicken soup later in the meal.
and for desserts, we had their signature choc fondue! which comes with marshmallows, bananas, strawberries, and also watermelon and honeydew for fruits! we had to stop ourselves from over-eating and keep to our "80% full" principle! and all these for $24.80++! not too bad wor...heh.
fishball mee "tah" with mee pok
but honestly, wasn't too impressed by it. other den that there is A prawn, and the fishballs are quite bouncy, the rest of it tastes like any other fishball mee out there. oh well. and no thanks to the grumpy old auntie too.
1 of their 招牌菜，三杯鸡 (loosely translated as 3 cups chicken). 1 of the better dishes dat nite, i felt, but sum my frenz might not be too interested in it, judging by the slow rate this dish takes to finish. prob 1 drawback is dat they chop the pieces into too small pieces, resulting in every piece having a meat to bone ratio of 60-40. thats abit too much bones for a piece rite? and i dun really taste much of the wine that is supposed to be added in?
stir-fried kailan with garlic. 1 of the dishes i dun like, coz of 2 words, BORING, and GARLIC. 'nuff said.
next is 麻婆豆腐, another classic Shanghainese dish. hmmz ok only lah, not as numbing as i tot it would be, but juz as well, since i cant really take spicy food. so in general, it tastes like tofu cubes in 豆敆浆 (fermented beancurd sauce) with chilli to me.
den we tried their take on oatmeal prawns, called Deep-fried Prawns with Salt and Pepper (i tink). the style of cooking is pretty similar to dat of oatmeal prawns, juz dat they prob coated the prawns with salt and pepper and sprinkled sum onto them after cooking too. not much complaints abt this, coz the prawn is still relatively quite fresh, and it was fried quite crispily such dat u can still eat it with its skin intact (but abit hard though, needs abit of thorough chewing to make sure u wun choke on it).
lastly, their 招牌菜, the 1 dat got every1 to sit up and pay attention when Thomas Ong was eating this on tv! i forgot the exact name, but its called sumting like 排排站, which is LONG porkribs marinated in a sweet char siew-like sauce and brought to braise/grill. not bad though, ribs were quite tender, so not much trouble separating the meat from the bone. best eaten with bare hands coz its quite hard to control the bone with chopsticks (unless u r expert with them), and u can lick the bone (and ur hands) after dat too!
Deep-fried Spareribs in Beer. $7 per portion (for 1 person). probably the nicest dish of the nite. the spareribs are pretty tender (maybe due to the beer), with thankfully, more meat den fat. the sauce is mainly sweet, with a little spiciness from the black pepper, but no hint of beer at all (which is why i tink it went into marinating the meat instead).
next is Ostrich meat with honey and pepper. a plate of stir-fried black mass. pretty average dish, ostrich was not very tough (thankfully), but there were loads of black pepper in it, which led mum to wonder if the meat wasnt fresh enough dat they have to use black pepper to conceal it. luckily there was honey added to help balance the spiciness of the peppers.
Hotplate tofu, a classic tze-char must-order dish. same thing, ok only. nothing very special, basically juz deep-fried egg tofu pieces in an egg-and-minced pork sauce on a hotplate.
another plate of black mass. this time is Venison with asparagus. however, i really dun rmb the menu stating the presence of black pepper in this dish, so i was abit surprised when i saw the blacky colour of it. oh well. and its quite salty though, and not to mention oily, as with all the other dishes too. sigh. other den dat, venison wasn't too tough, so no probs with chewing and swallowing it.
dad and mum ordered Hokkien Mee Sua to share, and i tried a little of it, and it tastes like fried beehoon to me. and pretty oily, as usual. nothing too interesting.
bro had nearly a whole plate of Yang Chow fried rice on his own, and as usual, no comments from him (he juz woffles down his food, btw), but at least he says it isn't tasteless. and basically, is juz a plate of 蛋炒饭.