Friday, February 29, 2008

Aroy Thai

I really like Thai food, and I've found a very nice Thai restaurant which has good Thai food at reasonable prices. I've been there twice within a week already. When I go to new Thai restaurants, I will always order the Green Curry with Chicken, and Pad Thai, cos these are my two most favourite Thai dishes.This is the Green Curry with chicken. For me, a good green curry has to have the 'correct' ingredients such as cilantro, basil, eggplants, the green-coloured eggplants (which are small and round and have lots of seeds. ma-keua bprawh) and this pea-like green plant (I have just learnt that it's a specific type of eggplant called ma-keua puang). Most Thai restaurants in Singapore tend to omit the pea-like eggplant.

Aroy Thai serves Green Curry with all the eggplants. They're even so accommodating and even have the option to make the curry less spicy. The curry was slightly salty, thick with coconut milk and delicious. The chicken pieces were juicy and there was baby eggplants were well cooked and infused with the curry flavour.The pad thai had the right texture - slightly sticky and chewy. The first time I went there, it tasted really good cos there was enough fish sauce to give the pad thai its distinct smell and flavour, and it had just the right amount of tamarind paste and sugar for it to be sweet-sour. The second time I went to Aroy Thai, the taste was quite off and it was way too sweet. But at only $6.90 for an ample portion it's a steal.On this plate, there is the Poo Ja on the left and the prawn cakes on the right. The Poo Ja is crabment mixed with chicken (or pork?), marinaded and stuffed back into a crab shell. It's then deep fried to give a crispy goodness. It's served with pickled cucumber and shallots.

The Thai Prawn Cakes were thick and juicy, and went really well with the tangy-sweet plum sauce. The batter was light and crispy, and when eaten dipped in plum sauce just out of the fryer, they make you forget you're paying $3.50 per piece.This is the Stuffed Chicken Wing ($3.90)- it's sold per piece, and there is NO minimum order required. (Which is quite good, most restaurants make you get a minimum order, even those BBQ chicken wings in hawker centres - I mean, they're already bbq-ing it already so why is there a need for a minimum order?)It's completely boneless and stuffed with minced pork. The minced pork tastes likethe one in the Poo Ja. I really wonder how they manage to keep the chicken wing in that shape while frying - how come everything doesn't just disintegrate and fall into bits in the fryer? This must be the bestest way ever to eat chicken wings- no need to tacle the two bones in the wing! :DFried Seafood Rice ($6.90) which tasted somewhat like normal fried rice with seafood.Olive rice ($6.90). The olives were salty and gave the rice lots of flavour, but I didn't quite like the garlic - maybe the garlic was overcooked so it was slightly bitter.
This is the Steamed Seabass with Lime. The fish was much huger than I expected - and I was dining with my mum only so we were quite overwhelmed. But I didn't regret ordering it as it was really delicious. For $25, you'll get a large fish which is fresh, and lots of the special 'soup'. The soup has lots of lime and is sweet-sour. There's lemongrass too, if i'm not mistaken. The soup isnt too salty, and it complements the fresh, clean tasting fish. Red Ruby ($3.50 per bowl) nothing very spectacular but I kind of thought the red rubies had a rose after taste - may be my tongue playing tricks on me cos I was eating this to cool down my very very hot and painful tongue after eating all the spicy food.
Mango Sticky Rice Dessert ($10.90). It's a whole mango - ripe enough to be sweet and juicy, and yet not mushy and bruised like the overripe kind. The sticky rice was soft and chewy (not dehydrated at all) and served with a splash of coconut cream.
tThe furnishing of the place is simple, but the restaurant is very clean - no grimy floors or oily tables. And the aircon is strong enough so that the air isn't stale and heavy with food smells.

The service here was quick and attentive, and they serve cold water, which is great cos the food was a bit too spicy for me. I tried the East Coast branch, which is supposed to be the original branch.
A-Roy Thai Restaurant
81 Upper East Coast Rd, Goodwill Court Spore 455220
Tel 64430373 *Closed on Monday

109 North bridge Road #04-06 Funan the IT Mall Spore 179097
Tel 63383880

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

COFM's over!

This is my v boring set of Cofm notes! This is my pretty after exam cofm notes :D
pharmaco in a days time! argh!








Frolick

hoho I actually heard of Frolick from another food blog (much more famous than mine, those that I visit are anyway), and being confined sadly to my house studying away (and growing old) I didn't know where it was apart from it being in Holland V (Lorong Mambong to be specific, but the whole place is lorong mambong dunno which side either...) but it's really very easy to find even though its just a hole in the wall. It's between the two Crystal Jades. Its Yami yoghurt's competitor - but it's slightly more expensive. I really like ice cream yoghurt - there should be more ice cream yoghurt places then there will be competition and it'll be CHEAPER. The cup i'm holding is Cup B (eee now that I'm blogging it it sounds quite gross, anyway it's $4.50) and it comes with one free topping of your choice. Got lots of stuff like raspberries (I chose this cos it's the most ex! One box of raspberries in Cold Storage costs like 11 bucks!!!!!), strawberries, blueberries (much cheaper than raspberries onl $5.60) etc etc

So how does the ice cream yoghurt taste? It's slightly less sourish than Yami Yoghurt - I don't know why I think of Yami yoghurt as more of a Japanese kind (even though it's not maybe cos it reminds me of yakult?) but this one is slighly runny, icy and creamy. But it is sourish like yoghurt ought to be.
Everything yummy is so expensive! Yikes!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Macarons :D

Oh yummy! I was chomping away like cookie monster on these yummy macaroons :D
I already planned the order of which I would eat when I got home - the Lychee Strawberry first, then strawberry, followed by the green tea and lastly the chocolate :D I didn't even put them in the fridge to wait for the insides to harden (cos the weather was so hot today). Well, but I did spend time taking lots and lots of shots of them, as well as taking out my (sister's) pretty plates.

Macarons in the colours of the rainbow + chocolate :D
They're delicately crispy on the outside, soft and crumbly to bite and chewy and soft inside, with a delicious buttery layer inside.
I really liked the Lychee Strawberry one - cos they're my 2 favouriter fruits. But my fave is still the Ispahan Rose :D:D:D I like rose flavoured stuff (including Bandung)
The photos look v nice right? Cos I took out the big fat camera (it's a Canon - I like Canon Cameras!) Makes me feel like a slug cos I hardly bring out my ixus and rely on the pok hp camera which doesn't do the yummy food justice - I shall be more hardworking and bring out at least the ixus when I go to good food places!! This is my current wallpaper - just ytd night I was telling pok that i feel like I can reach into my screen and pull one out - and Pok thought I was mad but Claire was thinking the exact same thing!!!!
Yummy yummy yummy macarons in my tummy!

I got my macaroons from http://bossacafez.blogspot.com/ - it's cheaper than Canele - oh why are macarons so ex? (cos if they're cheaper I'd eat more and get diabetes!!!! hoho cofm in 5 days! yikes!!!!)

COFM - This is NOT a food post

Me and Pok just had a pseudo cofm tys discussion
aud says: discuss the factors you would consider in assessing a 60-year-old man for fitness to drive a taxi.
aud says: then the second part is, if he has hypertension, what advice would you give him?
m says: we did tt for the om tut what
aud says: we did DM!
aud says: this is not dm excuse me =P
aud says: got other factors
m says:HAHA
m says: I KNOW
m says: you must tell him
m says: stop being so angry on the road
m says: and cutting and horning nice civillians like ME
m says: so he wont' burst an artery
aud says: yikes!
m says: and not to get stressed
m says: give way more
m says: be courteous!

yikes i really hope i dont get vivas/supps for anything this yr! I wanna go on HOLIDAY and slack around and go to the zoo to see Randall the Californian sealion, Inuka the polar bear, and the capybara (which are on display now! :D) And the white tigers too! And i want to go to the lib to borrow a billion lib books, watch tenthousand movies and pack my horrendous room.

*Disclaimer: Obviously this is not applicable for ALL taxi drivers and don't use this for your COFM answer! :P

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Bao Gong Fish Head

Haiz we had sooo much trouble looking for Bao Gong Fish Head Bee Hoon Coffeeshop! Cos we didn't have any idea where it was, and didn't have an address, except that it was near the market, and must cross the road?!! Anyway, we stumbled upon Sheng Xiong Supermarket (which I have never seen before, but its very cheap! It's like a supermarket-market) where we found this guy who know where BAOGONG was. The Clementi ppl kept giving us weird looks when we asked them where BAOGONG XO fishead beehoon was (o-_-o) sounds so horrible right

We ordered their famous fishead beehoon, the main reason why I went was because I wanted to go and compare it to the Commonwealth/Holland DriveXO fishhead beehoon.
We also ordered the mushroom kailan. Which wasn't very fantastic actually, and I think it was Chinese New Year so it was more expensive.
Prawn Paste Chicken. There wasn't enough prawn paste cos we could barely smell it, but the chicken was very nice, as all deep fried chicken wings are.
The much anticipated awaited XO fish slice beehoon. The XO smell was quite strong, but we all found the soup too sugary sweet for our liking. They must have put lots of sugar inside, cos the soup was really sweet. No wonder why all the diabetic patients can't eat outside food - cos there's really to much sugar inside, wanton mee also add sugar... The fish wasn't as fresh as the HV one.

Even though the XO fishead beehoon wasn't as nice as the HV one, I think this place wins hands down for the service. The boss and employers at the HV place are always so black faced and rude and grumpy! This place has happy employees.

BaoGong

Tel 67789301

Near Ginza plaza area

Friday, February 15, 2008

La Fondue

This is my current fave restaurant at Dempsy! Not that i've been there enough times to say, but it's really nice! They specialise fondue, from the starter all the way to desserts. Yums! They have ala carte or set meals, and we tried 2 set meals so we had super alot of variety:D
Starter was either caesar salad or garden salad. The Caesar salad had just the right amount of dressing - unlike those where you'll be eating halfway and realise that the whole bottom part of your leaf is completely drenched and coated with too much dressing.
Our first fondue - Cheese Fondue which came with a platter of vegetables like broccoli, baby corn, carrots, asparagus and bread for dipping. Of course, the vegetable part is just to make you feel healthier while coating it in cheese. I particularly liked the mushroom cheese (maybe cos it reminds me of burger king's Mushroom Swiss burger?). It was creamy and warm, and very cheesy, with morsels of mushroom. It's exactly what you imagine your nachos topped with melted cheese to be. Obviously, the cinema synthetic nacho cheese is a far cry from this...
The chedder beer was slightly bitter, which probably explains why the mushroom cheese fondue was mopped up before it.

I thought that the bread pieces were a bit dry, and they kept breaking off annoyingly into the fondue. But once coated with the delicious cheese, it was more palatable than expected.
The next was the mains - choice of 2 meats per colum (there are 3 columns i think) in the menu. You can choose to have it on a grill (hot plate), 100% olive oil, or steamboat style. We tried lots cos we had 2 sets :D What we tried:

Lobster: We were very excited about the lobster because it was *lobster* but it was quite dissappointing and we didn't even finish it cos it was very hard and tasted nothing like lobster, please don't order this it sucks!
Crystal Prawn: Mmm like crystal jade one... according to the internet, soaking the prawn in bicarbonate solution will make it loose it's sweet prawny taste, but then it will be juicy and crystaly. It's very yummy when fried in the 100% olive oil.
Pork: I liked this cos it was sweet and sliced thinly
Chicken: Nothing special. Not really worth trying
Fish: All the fishes we tried was supberb. The lemon fish, spicy fish, cajun fish(?), salmon were all tender, fresh and juicy. Didn't want to waste them deep frying, so we used the grill. The fish here was supberb.

There were 6 dipping sauces with the mains, and the tartare sauce is really very delicious. It's very creamy.

Dessert was chocolate fondue!
It looks so glossy and decadant right? The chocolate was so rich and luxurious. We chose this one cos the milk chocolate is very sweet. This is the dark chocolate i think. It's quite sweet already! Dipping stuff - Ice cream balls, strawberries, grapes, pineapples, marshmellows, brownies and orange segments.
We also had the baileys mint chocolate fondue. But I prefered the Chocolate Oreo one. Cos it was sweeter i think. Anyway, the chocolate oreo was infront of me so i kept eating that one :)
Even though there was hardly any carbo, we were all so stuffed by the time dinner ended.
No more chocolate left!

This is how the restaurant looks like - it's quite small actually... The service is attentive and knowledgable, and our ice water was always topped up. After every course, the waiter would ask us if it suited our taste.
It's pricing is quite steep though - it's no Seoul Garden - they use good quality cheeses and chocolate so I guess you're paying for that... and the rent too.

La Fondue
01-0425 Dempsy Rd S 249670
Tel: 64740204

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Sweet | Salty | Spicy - Food Market & Thai Cusine

There's this new thai restaurant (it's only 2 months old) at Rail Mall, which till now, I have avoided cos it was such a crappy and run down place last time. But then it has alot of new and interesting restaurants now!
I've wanted to try this place since about a week ago, but it was closed cos it was a weekday and it was at 3pm. It looks very clean and nicely done up, and I really like thai food! Yay to finding more thai food near my house.
For the soup, we had clear chicken and prawn broth with young coconut and shitake mushrooms (eeps I can't remember the price it's about 10??). There was egg tofu inside too. However, I found the soup way too salty. Haiz should have tried the tom yum soup...
The next dish that came was the Tasting platter ($24, for 2 -3 persons), which is a selection of the starters. There was crispy soft shell crab with light curry sauce, which was very delicious cos they were juicy and meaty, unlike those cheapo kind that are dry hard and mostly batter. The light curry sauce went very well with the crispy crabs and it wasn't overly spicy. In the middle, there's the traditional prawn and vegetable rice rolls. The rice rolls were thick and chewy, and it was drenched in a sweet tamarind dressing. I liked the prawn and pomelo on betel leaves with palm sugar dressing and shredded coconut. There was just the right amount of dressing to coat, but not overpowering the sour pomelo segments and prawns. The shredded coconut also gave the dish an intersting texture. It's eaten wrapped up in the thick, waxy betel nut leaf. There was also rice cakes with warm chicken and prawn chilli dip. The rice cakes were a bit too crispy, and a bit dry, but the chilli dip was perfect - coconutty and with juicy morsels of prawn and chicken. This goes quite well with plain rice too.
I also enjoyed the tumeric chicken ($15), which was char grilled chicken marinaded with lemongrass, coriander root and coconut cream. We liked the sauce so much that we requested for another serving and they gladly gave it to us. The chicken was juicy and not dry, and well exceeded our expectations. The sauce was slightly tangy, a little salty and sweet.
I also ordered pad thai ($12), which I always get whenever I go to a new thai restaurant. It's my favourite thai dish ever! I didn't quite like the way the pad thai was done, because there wasn't enough fish sauce - so the noodles ended up tasting way too sugary sweet. Maybe the taste was attenuated for the mostly non-local clintele. The noodles were done just right - slightly gooey and translucent, with bits of scrambled egg, dried prawns and tofu, and it was a pity that there wasn't enough fish sauce.
We also tried the Baby Snapper green curry($14), which was a refreshing change from the usual chicken green curry. The curry sauce was thick and had lots of fragrant coconut cream. It is cooked with holy basil and apple eggplants (small, round little eggplants). The snapper was fresh and flaky, and went well with the thick spicy curry.

The dessert ended my dinner on a sweet note - We had Pavalova with brown sugar cream and mango ($9), as recommended by the manager. The pavalova was crispy and brittle on the outside, and it melts once in your mouth. The mango was sweet and juicy, and coupled with the brown sugar cream and toasted, shredded coconut and a piece of pavalova, was a winning combination.

Although the restaurant is a mere 2 months old, business was brisk on the Sunday night that I visited. The ambience is relaxed and there's very nice decor. The service is very good, with staff who are knowledgable about the menu, as well as attentive and filling up the water glasses once you're done. Despite the 2 misses (pad thai and soup), I would return to try other dishes that the restaurant has to offer.

Sweet Salty Spicy

392/392 Upper Bukit Timah Road

The Rail Mall Singapore 678046

Tel 68772544

Sweet Salty Spicy serves lunch till 4pm on weekends (I think, but do call to confirm)

Sunday, February 10, 2008

the cathay restaurant

I've kept this post for about a week cos I wanted to show you all this cute rat custard pastry :D

Tried the Cathay Restaurant (after a year after reading a review about it... I'm super snaily and slow! But I hardly even go to The Cathay to begin with... So of course I went with my mum (cos can shua ka! yayness!) It's so ex I'm so glad I didn't venture there myself! Not that I will be going there anytime soon cos I hardly ever go there.It's quite prettily done up inside, with lots of mordern decor and the service is a notch above average. The restaurant was quite empty when we got there cos we were quite early, starting just when the restaurant opened at 6pm. My first dish was Sharks Cartilage Soup (I think it was pretty ex - about $15 per person). I think I'm a cheapo and I prefer the Hei Se Hui one better (cos it's $12.80 and milkier). This one wasn't that thick and there wasn't that funny collagen-ey texture (I don't know how to describe it properly but then your tongue feels a bit sticky after drinking the soup).This is one of my favouritest Chinese dishes ever - but it's very mordern - it's scrambled egg white and scallop with white truffle oil! <3>
I quite like the presentation (I'm a sucker for presentation as you all already figured out - that's why I can stand to go back to Macaroon even though the service is really shitty!). They used the wolfberries to make cute plant decoration. The portion is quite small and I really can't remember how much it costs >.<This is the vermicelli and scallop noodles, this little portion was $7. It was quite light and tasty, and there was egg white and some chicken broth sauce in this dish too. My description sucks!!! omggg :\This is the handmade noodles with seafood. It's the stewed kind, so it comes with sauce. I quite like the texture of the noodles, it's like ban mian, and hence it's firmer and chewier than the normal kway teow that you get. The prawns were the crystal prawns so they were nice and juicy! I just found out how to make crystal prawns!!! All along I always thought the prawns my dad buys from the market weren't fresh! But its cos we weren't cooking them properly! Haiz!
This is my dessert! It's a CNY special - Custard Rat and Peanut coated nian gao! I also tried the mango pomelo sago - nothing fantastic cos it was too watery. The only saving grace was that the mango was quite fragrant and it wasn't too sweet.
The Cathay
2 Handy Road
#02-01 The Cathay
Singapore 229233
Reservations Hotline Number : 6732 788
Tel : 6732 6623
Fax : 6732 1203

Anyway, I was reading Urban today (yes i'm very behind...), and omg! DId you know that one Bak Kwa is 370 calories!!! 1.2km burns 100 calories only! So you'll have to run like 3.6km to get rid of that misearble not even filling piece of meat!!!
And pineapple tarts are 82 calories per PIECE! Maybe the open top kind has less calories??? HAHA cos I don't even like the tart I only like the pineapple :D
And my favourite Kueh Bangkit is only 23 calories!
Omg to the ppl who ate all the kueh bangkit and the yucky mango tarts at Pok's aud****! HAHA I mean if a mango tart has the same calories as pineapple tart, then kenrick must have like over 15 tarts? and not counting Kueh Bangkits(sssssss) HAHA nvm those skinny poks need it!!!