Sunday, September 26, 2010

Swirl art @ river valley




Had ice cream yogurt from swirl art along river valley
Rd (same row as spize and ichigo and boon tong kee) it's 30 cents per 10g. It's creamier than yami yogurt, and tastes vaguely like yoguru. Personally I dont quite dig their flavoured yogurt like taro, cookies and cream etc but peach is quite palatable Apparently green apple is quite nice but I haven't tried it myself.


Theres a whole lot of toppings to choose from but if u think abt it, it contributes to the total weight and hence cost of ur yoghurt. Part of the fun is in operating heir yogurt machine and mixing different flavored blobs of yoghurt into ur cup.


Swirl is a nice place to chill and service is pretty good - don't feel shy about asking for samples they will gladly give you a blob of yogurt in a small plastic cup and a small spoon.

Swirl Art
47 river valley rd
68366846
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Sakae teppanyaki




Had an unexpectedly good lunch at this teppanyaki place run by the same group as sakae sushi. Pretty amazing since I have a not so good opinion of the food from that particular chain. The teppanyaki lunch sets are very affordable and start from $10++.


Got myself the venison lunch set which came with squid and a reasonable portion of venison drenched in the pepperish brown sauce for $11.90++. It's not the best cut or extremely tender but for 11.90++ I'm not complaining.


It came with a salad with crabstick for starters, miso soup, vegetables and rice.


There's an option to upgrade normal rice to garlic fried rice which I would strongly recommend as its very tasty ( and I really like watching the chef fry the rice). It even comes with a sprinkling of Sakura ebi.

Lunch ended on a sweet note with a piece of brown sugar peanut mochi. In conclusion, I'd definitely come back for the teppanyaki but never before I fly off cos I don't wan to be reeking from the smell of teppanyaki;).

Sakae teppanyaki
Changi airport terminal 3
03-43/4
Tel 62426378
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Changi, Japanese, affordable

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Eighteen chefs

I've finally gotten myself an iPhone thanks to my mum who so patiently queued up at comm centre last sunday cos I couldn't go down at all as I'm working every single day this month with no chance of a break. Super exciting I will try rly hard to Blog more since I can do it on the go anywhere. Hope it was worth spending usd$2.99 on blogpress.
Anw we managed to get lunch at 3pm today by rushing out to eastpoint. Had eighteen chefs cheese baked rice with chicken sausage ($6.50) and added on chicken strips (+$2) and had the red and white sauce. Lots of gooey cheese. I came back around a year back when the food wasn't as good but didn't blog abt it. But I'm rly glad to say that the food std is back up and met my expectations.
Set meal E has a nice and strong homemade (but a bit too sweet for my liking) ice lemon tea, soup of the day which was a tasty corn chowder, garlic bread and choc ice cream for a total of $4.80. It's net price for everything and the food is value for money.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Cafe Epicurious

I've been wanting to try the Green Eggs at Epicurious for the longest time, but never made it down because it was either very crowded or I didn't have time. So I finally got down to trying it last weekend at Epicurious Cafe at Rail Mall.It was rather dissappointing for something that I had been looking forward to for such a long time - not so sure if it's because it was very simple - I think I could have made it easily at home by dropping a teaspoon full of pesto into my egg batter before frying it. I did like the parma ham tho. The bread was too crispy and tough for my liking. Red skinned potatoes were not bad especially with the generous sprinkling of black pepper. I had the baked eggs with bacon and cheese - somehow one yolk came out fully cooked (just like a hard boiled egg) and the other was runny all the way (including the whites!) so I ended up mixing everything (after throwing out the cooked yolk) and since the ramekin was so hot from the oven, I ended up with a scrambled egg mess.
Their laksa leaf pesto linguini is really nothing to shout about, and it's a far cry from the delicious laksa leaf linguini that I remember from the now defunct Persimmon (which was also opened by the same group). The pesto is very watery, with a mild laksa leaf taste (I really like how laksa leaves smell) and wasn't very tasty. Perhaps I had really high standars, but I definitely won't be getting this dish again.
Just another note - there's a rather newly opened cedele at Rail mall now! But they didn't have my fave maple walnut blueberry cake the day I went. Though their special pandan gula melaka cake sounds really interesting (especially after Tan Hsueh Yun wrote about it in the recent posh nosh section of Urban!). The cream cheese with gula melaka sounds like something worth dying for! And I really like pandan chiffon cakes! Sigh it's 1155pm now and I'm salivating... Maybe I should get a slice for myself after work tmr! Ok I think I'm getting very excited at the thought of sinking my teeth into the newest cedele cake but I better sleep soon cos I've got to be up superrrrr early!
Cafe Epicurious
392 Upper Bukit Timah Road
The Rail Mall
Tel: +65 6894 5926

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Itacho Sushi at Ion

Itacho Sushi has pretty good sushi if you don't mind the queue during peak hours. I went to Itacho 2x previously, but since I had quite a nice dinner there today, I've dug out my old photos for a pictorial post (also a pictorial post cos I'm sleepy and I have to wake up super early tmr for work...)Our massive amount of Salmon in soy sauce - the picture didn't look too appetising, but at 40cents a piece, I decided to get myself 2 to try and got another 2 more after that. It's a rather thin piece of salmon which is grilled, but it's pretty fatty and the oils drip onto the rice - I also like the charred taste that the flame gives the salmon. It was all sold out the 2 previous times I went. It's limited to 6 pieces per person so if it's available, it's highly recommended :DPork wafu salad ($4.50) is suprisingly good, pork isn't too fatty and the wafu dressing is nice and light, and there's an additional blob of salad dressing in case you get bored with the salty wafu sauce. Pork is tender and juicy, though it's quite fatty. At $4.50, I'm definitely not complaining.Another nice sushi I would like to recommend is the Hirame fin (dorsal fin of a flatfish like flounder). I really like this though it's rather ex at about $2.50 (if I am not wrong about the pricing) and it's flame grilled (aburi). I rather regret that I didn't order this for dinner tonight! One of the set lunch specials I had quite a while ago - it's about $12.50++ for the whole bowl. I think Itacho's scallops are really nice - fresh, plump, juicy and sweet.
Crab leg sushi
Cha soba - not so fantastic can't really taste the green tea
A super fresh prawn (can't remember which one this is ) but it's so fresh it gave me an allergy reaction.
Tempura udon - not as nice as the sushi. I think Itacho's strong point is it's sushi and not really the cooked stuff.
Homemade cold tofu ($5) - not bad but I didn't think it was worth the 5 bucks
Mini Unagi Don - I think the unagi sushi is more worth the money if you want to eat eel.
It's a nice alternative to Sushi Tei (which is getting more expensive and portions are getting smaller) but the queues outside are a major deterrent for me - I think I'm too lazy to queue so I'll just patronise it during odd hours...

Itacho Sushi
2 Orchard Turn
#B2-18 ION Orchard
Tel: +65 6509 8911

Friday, September 3, 2010

En route to MBS - Nantsuttei Ramen

I haven't been to Millenia Walk for super very many years cos there really isn't very much to do unless you're on a furniture buying spree or something... So after spending quite a bit of time getting waylaid by the many shops having sales at Marina Square, we finally made our way to Nansuttei, just as the lunch time office crowd started streaming in. I couldn't decide between Nantsuttei or Keisuke at first (and spent quite some time agonizing over this decision), but the busy lunch crowd at Nantsuttei (we actually queued for about 15min), compared to the very empty Keisuke was the deciding factor.
Not that Keisuke isn't good (can't say cos I've never tried it), just that I'd rather try something everyone else is raving about or queueing up for (typical S'porean mentality:p).
Nantsuttei's selling point is their special black coloured garlic oil, which is made by frying garlic until it turns into a potent, black coloured carcinogenic oil.
The pork bone soup is boiled for many hours, and is a nice creamy emulsion, though, like most Japanese ramen broth which haven't been tweaked for the local palate, it's too salty for my liking. I ordered their full house ramen (no such name but I don't know what it's called cos it's quite a long name), but it has everything including charsiew, seaweed, bean sprouts and leek. The freshly shredded leek partially countered the saltiness and richness of the broth.
I added on an egg to my ramen, but it was not like the nice wobbly half boiled yolks that like - it was overcooked with crumbly yolk. Skip the egg - it's not worth the extra $1 (or is it $1.50?)
The charsiew is not bad, but I don't like the fats (though many others may disagree). Another of their more popular ramen is their Dragon ramen, which is served with a scoop of spicy minced meat. It's a bit too spicy for me since my chilli tolerance is pathetic, so I'm quite glad I didn't get it.
Nantsuttei uses the hakata style ramen, which is straight noodles served in a creamy pork bone broth. I personally like the yellow kind the best, but I eat ramen for the broth and I'd choose tonkotsu (pork bone) broth anytime cos it's richer and more tasty.
Another thing Nantsuttei has is free freshly squeezed garlic juice - being the kaypoh person that I am, I requested for some garlic juice, thinking that they'll provide a bowl of already squeezed garlic juice - but they gave us some garlic cloves and an interesting contraption, which then squeezes all the juice and pulverizes the garlic.The garlic juice you get is extremely fresh as you can squeeze it straight into your soup. Their soup is already garlicky because of their special garlic oil, but for extreme garlic lovers, you can always request for fresh garlic juice.
Overall, it's not bad, and ranks higher than some other ramen I've tried, but it won't be overtaking my favourites, which are still Noodle House Ken and Santouka as well as Tampopo. I won't mind coming back again provided that I don't have to queue for >15min, but I'd definitely not travel all the way to Parco at Millenia walk just for the ramen.
Btw, if anyone goes there, I find it very amusing to watch the waitstaff at Nantsuttei cos they all have white towels tied around their heads and around their necks (stuffed into their tshirts).

Nantsuttei Ramen
No.P3-06, #03-02 Millenia Walk
9 Raffles Boulevard
Singapore 039596
Tel: +65 6337 7166
Some random things
1. I am enjoying myself 10000x more since changing postings even though I have to travel super far
2. I still haven't watched Inception (I think it's closed already) :/
3. I'm quite annoyed that the Stig's identity is revealed
4. I can't wait for the 15th to come cos I'm broke now :(