Rose Veranda,Shangrila

 Happy high tea at the Rose Veranda - love their sandwiches but they don't have the quintessentially English plain cucumber sandwiches which I adore. No problem cos they have lots of other choices to keep me entertained, along with a sushi/sashimi station.

 The very out of place highly processed crab claw and more sandwiches.

The laksa was not bad - with a very thick gravy and lots of dried prawns. Added lots of crystal prawns, laksa leaf and fish cake.

I really liked the selection of cheeses (but can't beat St Regis) and I ate so much that I felt full till tea time the next day. My digestive system is growing old.

Rose Veranda
Shangri La
Tel 62134486

Afterglow

Hidden along all the hipster cafes and tze-char places in Keong Siak Street, is Afterglow, which is a really nice chill out cafe.

Raw Nut Cheese ($16)

For the uninitiated, nut cheeses are very popular amongst vegans. I think the texture is creamy and similar to that of a cheese spread but it really doesn't taste like your regular cheddar cheese. But with a bit of imagination, it feels like you're eating a not so creamy fruit cheese.

I particularly liked the dehydrated crackers, which are made with spices such as cumin and vegetables like beetroot. It has the texture of the dried cuttlefish snack (can't think of a better way to describe it).

Raw Cauloflower 'cous cous' salad ($15)

I've never tried raw cauliflower or broccoli before because these are typically cooked most of the time. However, the raw cauliflower didn't have the raw grassy taste that I had expected, but instead, was very pleasant and well flavoured with spices.

Achar Nori Roll ($18)

The nori rolls are made with almond meal, with zingy achar and topped with white sesame seeds. No post lunch carb coma with these 'sushi' rolls.

Raw Tiramisu and Cashew Cream ($10)

 I'm a big fan of tiramisu, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the tiramisu actually tasted vaguely like the real thing. Even though there was absolutely no dairy or egg inside. Incredible. Though I must say the portion is tiny. But then again, I can't imagine how many cashew nuts have gone into this dessert. 

Green Juice ($12)

The Green Juice has cold pressed pineapple, bitter gourd and mint, and comes in two serving sizes. I'd recommend that you take the $12 one, cos the portion is really much bigger than the $6 serving. You get to keep the glass bottle after finishing your juice, but you also have the option of returning it. 

If you haven't noticed by now, the recurring word here is 'raw. Afterglow is one of the newest raw food cafes in Singapore. I'm not vegeterian/vegan but once in a while, I do like to explore and try new foods. I'm really fortunate one and a half friends (half cos one is semi-willing to try but isn't crazy over these kind of things) like to try such cafes with me. For example, I can imagine WKR groaning loudly. 

If you have an open mind, do drop by and try some of the dishes here. And if you don't know where to start, get one of the servers to recommend you some dishes. All the dishes above were recommended by our very friendly server. I'll definitely be back to try some of the other dishes. 

Afterglow

24 Keong Siak Road

Tel 62248921

Next to Muchachos

Uma Uma Ramen

 Outdated post but Uma Uma ramen is still my favourite dry ramen! Saw this in the Lifestyle section in January and couldn't resist going down to try.

 It was Feb so they were having a special Valentines day drinks menu

 Which consisted of appropriately named and decorated drinks

 The obligatory tamago and karaage

 Daikon salad - Uma Uma ramen does one of the most refreshing daikon salads ever! And their bite sized gyoza

 The beef tongue that everyone can't seem to get enough of

 Another appropriately named drink

 The 'Lou Hei' Ramen, which we very unashamedly asked for more chopsticks and then proceeded to do our Lou Hei in the middle of the very quiet bar...

The very delicious dry ramen that I cannot seem to get enough of. With the wobbly half boiled egg, chill oil, char siew with melting fats. Lip smackingly good. 

Uma uma Ramen

01-41 Forum the Shopping Mall

Tel 62350855

Bye Bye MacDonalds at King Albert Park

20+yo photo at KAP

So the Macdonalds at King Albert Park is going to close really soon. My sis dug out this incredibly old photo with the same Hamburglar statue! I used to love the dimly lit 2 storey playground there with their ball pits (which now I think are really unhygienic - thankfully we never had hand foot mouth outbreaks when I was younger).

I used to go there nearly every week (bet my arteries are all atherosclerotic) after school to have lunch and hangout in air-con comfort. My favourite burger used to be the cheeseburger, and when I stopped eating beef it became the MacChicken burger. Plus we used to be so lazy and always take the bus cos we didn't want to walk the 1 bus stop distance. By the time I reached JC, I never really wanted to eat Macdonalds whenever we went out cos I definitely had too much of it.

Though I rarely go to Macdonalds now, I still like the hotcakes and consider them to be my favourite pancake, even with the maple (flavoured) syrup.

I'm going to miss the 24h Cold Storage even more than the Macdonalds, since thats's where I usually go to buy random food items (especially since the parking is free for the first hour). The Cold Storage at Jelita has a tiny carpark, the one at Holland V has a perpetually crowded carpark, and the one at Guthrie house is really small.

Go visit KAP before it closes on 16th March 2359h

C.O.W Ramen Burger

 So I read about the Ramen burger, and a few of my friends tried it and raved about it to me, but sadly, I wasn't able to go down to try it. I was extremely happy and pleasantly surprised to find that it comes to my workplace once a week! So me and my colleague scuttled down to try the famed ramen burgers during lunch.

 The compact menu - prices are pretty reasonable - my colleague had the mushroom linguine which was really quite a good amount for $6.

 My spicy chicken ramen burger in the making! The chicken morsels are really tender and well marinaded - it tastes vaguely like the Korean BBQ hotplate chicken.

I'm not a fan of crispy noodles, so the only interesting part of the ramen burger, which is the ramen patty was lost on me. Though the sauce and the innards more than made up for the not so nice patties. It's a bit heavy going because the patties are pretty greasy, and fried till crispy.

I didn't eat 1 patty, so I decided to get the chicken salad wrap to supplement my meal. It's not bad but the law of diminishing returns applies here.

You can catch them on Facebook to see where their next location is. Hope they keep coming to my workplace!

Savour 2014

Decided to go to Savour last minute on Saturday because MT had tickets but then couldn't find anyone to go with her (or the way she put it was that no one would appreciate it more than me). I had great inertia to go at first, because even though it involved eating nice food, standing under the blazing midday sun was totally not my idea of fun. Which (I am quite ashamed to admit) was the reason why I never bothered to go for the previous events. If there wasn't any aircon (aka al fresco) I'd think twice, and if it involved being under the sun, my standard and predictable response was no.

So now I am 2 shades darker (despite lots of SPF 50 sunblock), with a slightly sunburnt scalp (cos I didn't wear a hat), and $95 poorer (more about that later).

Roasted cow for dinner. Roasted myself in the sun for 3 whole hours. 

So the lunch time tickets cost $45 inclusive of $30 Savour dollars. So it was $60 Savour dollars between the both of us. But since most of the dishes (that sounded interesting) were at least $14-$18, the $60 didn't go very far, and we had 3 mains before we had to top up. Being gullible, and since I had dragged myself under the blistering sun for about an hour already, we decided to heck it and spend more money and enjoy ourselves and eat till we were satisfied, to make the trip worth it. $100 cos there was extra $10 savour dollars with the standard charted credit card.

 I don't how they do this day in and day out in the heat. According to one of the random chefs we chit-chatted with, the kitchen is even hotter :/

 The Slow roasted organic lamb short ribs crusted with five spices was really delicious. It was so soft it fell right off the bone. At least when a craving hits, I know that Blue Lotus is just a drive down to Quayside Isle and not half the world away.

 Mikuni's Kanpachi Truffle Soya. Totally delicious and light. Makes me want to hurry down to Mikuni asap and try Chef Moon's food.

 The Linguine crab and ndudja, which was pretty tasty, though eating this in the sweltering heat made me feel even warmer.

 We couldn't resist having the home cured salami platter cos there was a $4 discount when you ordered both together. Though we were really really thirsty after that.

 Chef Daniel Chavez from Ola - he was previously the head chef at Santi, Singapore. Not that I've been there cos I've been a terrible Singaporean and haven't set foot in RWS before.

 He had a special mushrooms dish - fresh mushrooms from Mycofarms Singapore, which were stir fried with chopped chestnuts, wine, and drizzled with chive oil.

 The best octopus I have eaten to date - the octopus was soft and creamy, very different from the other octopus(es) I have eaten ever! And though I'm a hater of peas, these were sweet and fresh. Completely wiped the plate clean in a matter of seconds.

 We went into the Jasons Marketplace tent to get some respite from the heat. Managed to catch the ending of them dissecting a whole tuna.

 Had some oysters (6 for $18) which were not too bad, but not rave worthy.

 The uni ($20) was really good, but didn't last long.

 We were getting stuffed so we had the Chocolate Violette Earth with Strawberry blossom sorbet ($8) from Stellar @ 1-Altitude. Which was very refreshing. But my ice cream melted so quickly in the heat.

 And the White chocolate mousse with watermelon and ginger sauce from Osteria via Solata. It looked really different from the photo, which had an impressive amount of watermelon.

 Was absolutely dying of thirst so we decided to try out the Nescafe tent - and had a ice mango latte, which was really refreshing. Of course, this wasn't enough to replace the amount of sweat that had evaporated off so we paid $4 each for a bottle of Fiji water (as there was no el cheapo Ice Mountain at the atas Savour).

We also tried the Nitrorita, which was essentially lemonade, frozen with liquid nitrogen, and doused with tequila.

Check out the solar powered fan!

 I was very sad that I couldn't try the Bubble Dogs or the ice cream from Kiin Kiin cos they were only here till Friday. But the aunty in me was happy cos I managed to snag the large white peaches at $2.50 each, an large rock melon at $4.50, and a small and cute Thai pineapple. Some of the booths were very very poorly patronised, probably because the dishes didn't seem familiar with the locals? I didn't patronise them either so I wouldn't know.

MT was happy cos she got her few seconds of fame, when we bumped into a ST reporter who interviewed her. Kudos to her cos even though it was so hot she was standing at the sunniest spot doing interviews. I would have just hidden in the shaded air-conditioned tent and interviewed people. Perhaps thats why I'm not a reporter.

Anyway, my personal take on the whole thing is that though its interesting, I think I still won't go again next time cos it's too hot (despite me wearing the most cooling attire I could think of) and it got really crowded towards the later part of the day.

February Foods

I've been eating lots but haven't had much time to blog. So here's a short update on what I've been up to in Feb, before March ends too. 

I was feeling adventurous and decided to try the Hoji cha parfait from Nana's Green Tea. It's my to go to dessert place at Plaza Singapura cos there usually isn't a queue since the restaurant has lots of seats (tsk Tsukada Nojo, so tiny, always make ppl queue). I'm glad to say that I was fortunate that I decided to stop being a old bore and having my usual green tea warabimochi parfait, I decided to try the Hoji cha one. I really really like the hoji cha red beans, simply cos its doesn't taste like red bean. It reminds me more of lotus paste in moon cakes somehow. Plus I really love the warabimochi and corn flakes (cheap thrill, but Ive tried asking the restaurant many times, they're really inflexible and don't want to give me extra corn flakes, even though I sometimes ask for no red beans).

The Hojicha parfait is much better than the green tea one! Go try if you haven't and stop being an old bore like me.

 Finally tried Tian Tian Chicken rice for the first time in my life! (Benefits of working near town). Really disgraceful for a Singaporean food blogger but then it's not my favourite food. It's not bad, but I'm still not a fan of chicken rice. And neither am I a fan of queueing in a hot, stuffy and oily hawker centre for chicken rice. To be fair I queued for <15 cos="" definitely="" early="" i="" if="" life="" m="" min="" my="" nbsp="" not="" p="" queuing.="" really="" there="" was="" wasting="">
I also managed to try the famous porridge one morning when I was post call. Being disgraceful again, I forgot what the name was. But the queue was really long (I wasn't the one queueing obviously).

 Spotted this Muller strawberry yogurt at cold storage. It's selling for $3+ (nearly $4) per pack but it's delicious! I first ate it in UK on holiday - where it's only 99p at some of the supermarkets. It's my absolute favourite yogurt! The next time I went back to Cold Storage, it was all gone (except for the horrible chocolate flavour, I don't like chocolate in my yogurt!) The next time I see this, I'm going to get myself at least 5 tubs! Please let me know if any of you see these muller yogurt lurking around the supermarkets (especially the strawberry one, since I only like yogurt with strawberry).

 Mushroom and cheese crepe from Saybons - is it just me but it feels like the prices have gone up? I haven't been there for a while and somehow felt that $5-8 bucks for a crepe just isn't justifiable, since it's not particularly filling. The mushroom and cheese crepe wasn't so expensive, and I think anything with cheese in a crepe goes really well together. I'm still partial to the seafood bisque, so I haven't been adventurous with my soups - I think the tomato and seafood bisque are still the best.

Awesome big prawn hor fun from Kok Sen at Keong Siak Street. Super huge prawns, and the very delicious wok hei taste, and super umami gravy. It's mildly spicy, just enough to give it the kick and yet not tongue-numbing. I'm itching to try the big prawn beehoon but it's soupy, so I am still thinking twice if I want to eat it on call cos I'll have to drag it all the way from the car park!

Here's the phone number should anyone want to call for takeaway. I assume that the carpark's a pain on weekends and on Fridays, since the area is so densely populated with good food restaurants.

30 Keong Siak Street
Tel 62232005

Ok that's all the updates. I need to go and sleep before my eye bags become bigger than my eyes.