Bollywood Veggies - Poison Ivy Bistro

Since we were suspended from class, we decided to spend our time doing stuff that we don't usually do, such as driving to the very ulu Neo Tiew road to look at a vegetable farm (and for me, to eat).

The bistro was pretty packed for such an ulu place - 80% of the tables were filled (we went on a Friday for lunch). Service was pretty efficient - our food came really quickly, and the staff knew their menu well, and were very friendly.
The drinks are home made. Fig tea is made by boiling figs (from a tree in the farm) with sugar cane. It was served icy cold and was very refreshing. The lemongrass drink was very delicious - usually I can't resist drinking lemongrass tea when I see it, but the fig tea sounded more interesting (since I've already learnt how to boil my own lemongrass tea).

4 angled beans stir fried with garlic, lady fingers with sambal and fish curry.

We also ordered sweet potato leaves with sambal. I think that it would have been better if we had ordered all the vegetables with garlic, cos they're so fresh and the sambal was very spicy. The portion size is not bad - $4 for something that about 2-3 people can share. (I was looking up hungrygowhere, and the grilled eggplant with fresh flowers looks really lovely! Pity they didn't have it when I was there).

The fish curry was a hot favourite and it was polished off very quickly. We ended up ordering another bowl of it cos everyone wanted to have more of it, despite being happily full.

There's a choice of either white ($1) or brown ($1.50) rice. Being healthy, we chose brown rice.

Chicken Drumlets with Sweet Chilli Sauce ($8 for 8 drumlets). This was rather unhealthy but we decided that we wanted to have more meat (such carnivores we are). The drumlets were suprisingly nice - the batter was crispy and very tasty.

Warriors Chicken Curry ($8). We ordered a big portion of this cos fish and dedrick had this before and said it was v good. The curry is rather spicy (for me) and very tasty. Actually, everything here was extremely tasty, not too oily, not over-salted.

Chicken Stew ($4 or was it $6? can't remember). This is a pretty big serving for $4. Tender cubes of chicken cooked with carrots and potatoes in a slightly sweet gravy.

Banana Curry ($4) - this was the most interesting dish of the day. The banana doesn't taste anything like the normal ripe bananas that you eat, instead it reminds me more of yam (ie. no taste). The curry is very robust - I can imagine it goes extremely well with prata.

3-in-1 Dessert Platter ($7.50)

This is fantastic for greedy people for me who want to eat a bit of everything.

The kueh kosui (brown one infront) is probaly the best kueh kosui I've ever tasted - bursting with gulamelaka taste and it's very soft and wobbly. It comes with a generous heap of fresh grated coconut. Delicious!

Kueh Bingka was a favourite amongst my friends - it's served hot, lightly browned outside, very moist and chewy inside.

The banana bread is served warm, and there's chunks of banana inside the bread. It's not too sweet either.

Of course, the 7 of us won't be satisfied with the small 3-in-1 desesrt platter, so we ordered their daily dessert specials which was chocolate banana cake and banana muffin ($4.50 each). I didn't quite like the chocolate banana cake, cos I thought that the chocolate taste completely masked all the banana flavour, but everyone else said that the chocolate cake was better than the banana muffin. Chocolate and banana is always a winning combination.The banana muffin had a slight caramel aftertaste and the outsides were browned and crispy. It was very moist inside. This was my favourite dessert.

What I liked about the service here was that they give a fairly good recommendation of how much to order, and whether to take the small ($4) or large ($8) portions. We ended up having more of the small portions, cos we wanted to sample more of the menu.

I can't wait to go back to try all the other dishes - on hungrygowhere, other people have eaten banana stalk curry, grilled eggplant with fresh flowers, jackfruit cake etcetc

My spoils from Bollywood Veggies - a full banana cake ($10), which I have been slowly eating over the past few days. Theres none of it left already. The banana cake has chunks of banana inaide, and is not too sweet.

After the satisfying lunch, we decided to take a look around the farm (and had a tour by Ivy herself, even though it was a scorching hot afternoon:)

From Top, left to right:

Banana trees (lots of different species)

Nonni fruit

Fig Tree, where the fig for the fig tea served in Poison Ivy Bistro comes from.

Breadfruit - eat lots of this to run as fast as Usain Bolt

Frog statues

Dragonfruit

Eggplant -it can be grown in pots!
Beware of dogs - she has 2 black great danes :D

I think it's so nice to retire on a farm (though I won't do it cos I don't want to have frogs and toads in close proximity of me).

Overall, I really liked the whole Bollywood Veggies experience - I am going to drag my mother back so that I can eat more fish curry and perhaps try the eggplant and jackfruit cake!

Please note that they only accept cash - and the nearest ATM is non-existent unless you drive back to civilization (as fish found out on her 1st trip there :P)

Poison Ivy (inside Bollywood Veggies farm)
100 Neo Tiew Road
Tel: 6898 5001