Ramen Santouka

my hp is giving me alot of stress - the camera sucks even though it's supposed to be 3 megapix but then the photos come out so horrible. So I have resorted to making Annalisa take photos with her sony ericsson hp. I like sony ericsson hps - the next phone I buy will confirm be one of the K series cos their cameras are super super good! Boo to HTC (the camera part)! Photos in this post courtesy of Annalisa's hp.Went to Central (last week I think) and had ramen from Santouka which I have been hearing about (for eons already, just didn't have the time) and dying to try. I think we happened to have an early day and zipped down - didn't have to pay for ERP either since we were there before 12 :)Of course, since lunch trips are a rarity now, I got myself the highly recommended Tokusen Toroniku (Choice Pork) Ramen ($18++). It's the must-try dish here - roasted pork cheeks which are tender and bursting with flavour and melt in the mouth. According to the menu, pork cheeks are really valuable since only 200-300 g of cheek meat per pig. The ramen base comes in 4 different flavours: Shio (salt flavour), shoyu (soy sauce), Miso (soybean paste flavour) and kara-miso (spicy soybean paste flavour). I tried the miso flavour, it's not too salty, very milky and robust and incredibly satisfying.
The ramen comes in 3 sizes, for a smaller bowl you take $1 off the menu price, and add $2 for a large bowl. Small on the left and regular on the right. The special basket from Japan that was featured in life! sometime back... its not my bag though.



Though I really like the 9 nuts (or was it 7?) ramen from Marutama, I think this will be a better place to bring the not so ramen inclined people to cos they have a wider selection of ramen and there are other mains besides ramen.

The restaurant is brightly lit and overlooks the Singapore River. Cold water is provided in abundance - a huge jug of it is left at your table for your convenience.

Ramen Santouka

6 Eu Tong Sen St

#02-76 The Central

Singapore 059817

Tel 62240668

Kyomomoyama

Look at the lovely glistening roe, uni (sea urchin), shredded crab and succulent scallops!
Ah Im backlogging madly and I have no time to blog (until I got inspiration by the news that my 'food mecca' blog has linked me! Go figure...) so I have decided to once again start blogging more regularly and stop being procrastinat-ish and lazy.

This is the Seafood Don (or Chirashi Don or something like that I really can't remember the name it's $25++). I was a bit weary about the freshness so I went to the extent of asking the waitress to help me check if the uni (sea urchin) was fresh. I had a really bad experience with bitter uni (stale and diarrhoea-like uni in a restaurant I shall not mention but it was much cheaper than this...).

The uni was sweet, wobbly and delicious, and melted into a sweet puddle of very expensive liquid uni coating on my tongue!
And the scallops were sweet (it's so wonderful how seafood tastes sweet) and smooth. I think the best way to eat scallops is raw - no steamed-with-garlic nonsense (but I don't mind grilled with gooey cheese yums! For the not so fresh ones of course!)

The uni and scallops were so wonderful that I can't even remember how the crab and roe tastes like - but roe isn't one of my most fave things...

This is what my brother ate - some beef udon thing but of course, I'll strongly recommend the seafood don:D

The interior is very woody - I don't know what kind of wood but it smells like Ikea to me (makes it more Jap if you think of those Ryokans and wooden stuff...). The staff are friendly, helpful and knowledgable. If you make a booking, you'll probably get to have the brilliant river view, but since we walked in that day, we got the next to the entrance shopping mall view.

I'm finding more and more places more expensive than Akashi! Shrinking wallet!

Kyomomoyama

6 Eu Tong Sen Street

#03-87/100/101/110

The Central @ Clarke Quay

Tel: 6534 8001

Grains - Central Clarke Quay

Appetiser - some oily salty crispy thing...

After reading reviews on Grains on so many blogs, I finally had the opportunity to eat dinner at Grains. I tried the Individual Sampler menu (B) which costs $25 per person, min 2 pax.

Starters was a bbq special which consisted of charsiew, and roasted duck with a sweet plum sauce.

I particularly liked the Chicken and Ginseng Clear Broth in Yunnan Steam-Pot - the pot is quite interesting cos there's a little hole in the middle to let steam pass through. The soup is clear, not salty and filled with all the healthy chinese herbs.

Many restaurants seem to be serving the Spinach Tofu, which is usually braised tofu with green spinach on one side. And after that, there was sauteed fish slices with kailan and garlic - this was quite nice and there was the wok taste - just like a tze char stall.

For carbo, there was the Grains Fried rice - it's no ordinary fried rice cos it's actually a mix of white and brown rice, and there are little bits of meat inside and it's topped with dried wolfberries which gives it an interesting texture - a bit like having raisins but not so sweet.

Dessert was Chilled Herbal Jelly which was bitter >.<>

It seems to be in fashion to charge for water...

Sea Salt Caramel Ice Cream

They have this new flavour - Caramel and Sea Salt Ice Cream

Normal caramel is usually too sweet

And so to make it not so sweet, there's sea salt

And it's very yummy and unique!

Apparently Sea Salt is the bestest salt in the whole world - and it's 'cos we came from the sea??' but i quite sure that any salt is bad cos of HYPERTENSION!

And of course, I had my usualy favourite Green Tea Ice Cream

Azabu Sabo Desserts

Central

Waraku Pasta

Ah i went to waraku pasta cos we were so un-inspired and nearby. And since i wasn't driving up that whirly whirly ramp up 5 levels....Calamari with some very nice spices - lots of salt and yummy tartare sauce. I think this was like $8.80++? Annalisa's Doria - Macaroni with chicken and prawn. Crystal prawns! Yum!

And I had my fave dish - the cod roe and scallop doria ($14 something ++)

The service wasn't so bad this time round!

Waraku Pasta
Central

Pasta de Waraku

Tried Pasta de Waraku (finally) at the central. It's Japanese Italian with lots of interesting dishes such as lots of roe with pasta and wafu sauce. It's also where doria means baked rice. So amusing - Doria = Baked Rice!!!

All the main courses come with a salad (so healthy!).
This is the Mix Cutlet ($8.80) appetiser. It's deep fried assorted seafood (I think there was salmon, fish etc etc not too sure) which comes in a delicious creamy mayonnaise like sauce.

I tried the Half and Half set with 2 different kinds of pasta.($19.80). (Cos I couldn't decide on what to eat, and i wanted to try more). It comes with a salad, Hokkaido cream of corn soup (very thick, creamy and nice! I think this is the nicest corn soup i've tried) and either Japanese Wine or a soft drink. No guessing which one I chose.I tried the Wafu Cod Roe pasta, as well as the Cabonara Waraku. I quite liked the Wafu Cod Roe pasta, which wasn't too salty and with lots of little balls of roe.

The carbonara wasn't very impressive - the egg was well cooked (as opposed to runny and stirring it into the sauce) and the sauce tasted very normal. Anyway, the egg is the ex kind i think cos it's so orange - not like the usual eggs you eat else where. This is Annalisa the poster girl posing with her Wafu Scallop and asparagus. Check out the seaweed garnish as opposed to the usual sprig of parsley. ($12.80)This is the Scallop and mentai (roe) gratin ($12.80) which is really good and stole the show - I'm going to eat this the next time i come here! The sauce is creamy and sweet cos of the scallop, and there's lots of roe floating aorund. Really lots and lots and lots of roe. And the cheese is baked to a brown crisp too!This is the Kimchi peppercorn which comes with this interesting hair like garnish. ($12.80). The guys think the portion for the pasta is a little small, but I found it ok. Be warned that the pasta comes in HUGE plates, though the serving isn't very huge. It's about the portion size of pasta mania.

Here's the Carbonara oyster and bacon - the oysters are very fresh and when you eat it, the oyster smell will warft aroud and make everyone salivate. However, there are only 4 oysters which wasn't enough for the person who was eating it...

Another interesting thing is that they always ask you if you want garlic with your pasta - I think it's probably cos Japanese don't really like garlic??

Okay (rather intersting) food with less than okay service - I don't know how the not so junior employees are so retarded - especially when it comes to seating - I suppose if they were any smarter they won't be working here... I think they were just junior to the manager, and more senior than the usual waiters.

But we had really good service by the waitress (I think her name was Elsa)

Ah this is one of the last few pictures I'm taking with my nice Sony Ericsson K750i! It's retiring after 1.5 years and it was my first camera phone! The camera rocks! Nearly all the pictures here are from it:(

Pasta de Waraku

#02-82 The Central

Tel 65348085

Gobi

Gobi dessert not desert.

I like Central - it's bursting with so many stalls which I've yet to try! And it's really exciting! I want to try Ma Maison (which has another branch at Bugis but I still want to try it), the Waraku pasta, Grains, and more stalls at the basement. And they have so many dessert stores :D Apart from the very pink design, the deserts look really good! A carousel menu

This picture reminds me of the Never-ending-insatiable-appetite in the Bishibashi game. You can either have a box of 6 or a box of 12. The box of 12 costs $23.80. Not bad for a gift - it's pretty impressive and tastes good.

I quite like the pink macaron, which is called Sweet Somethings. It's a pink macaron shell which encases fresh strawberries and cream. THe Smell The Roses, which has the purple swan like thing is also nice, and it has almond tupip, lavander infused cream topped ith voilet meringues.

This is called Cupid. It's light cheese mousse piped into a handmade white chocolate hat. Pretty unique.

Gobi

6 Eu TOng Sen Street

#01-27 THe Central

Singapore 059817

Tel 65348187

(They have another outlet at Katong Mall)

www.gobi.com.sg

Paisley and Cream - Life with Passion

Ok, we've walked past Paisley and Cream before, but today, for the life of me, we walked so many rounds round central (actually, not complete rounds that's why we kept missing it). We spent at least 15 min walking round and round trying to locate Paisley and Cream >.< It faces Eu Tong Sen Street btw. And you can only access it from outisde Central.
Happy Sale Signs :D 30% off ALL food items :D
Nice table and menu. The menu is really unique, with lots of names of famous people inside - I really want to go and try the breakfast menu!
Light Cheesecake with Fresh Strawberries $6. This is the first cheesecake I've seen that has real vanilla beans inside. It will be described as a light cheesecake with a really great taste - I think this will be my favourite cheesecake for the time being. It's not like the rich ones, and it's still really creamy and tasty.
I really like the strawberry sauce - I'm not sure if they make it themselves, but it's really full of strawberries, slightly tart to balance the sweet cheesecake and with lots of strawberry hair (or fur, whichever you might want to call it). Does strawberry hair = to lots of real strawberries used?
I ate the Double Chocolate Cupcake ($5). I thoguht it was pretty steep for a cupcake, but they give a good scoop of fresh cream (for those of you who are indulgent). The chocolate cupcake is really really chocolately. I would say don't eat this by yourself it's really very filling! I'm not quite a chocolately person so this would be average. Cupcakes are $2.50 after 5pm, so that's the best time to zooooom down and get some! $2.50 for these wonderlfully iced cupcakes is a real steal!

They also had some desserts not on the menu, such as a Red Velvet Chocolate Cake, which sounded really unique but I wasn't feeling too adventurous today (which I regret now). They have English Bread and Butter Pudding laced with apricot glaze and topped with fresh strawberries ($6), which I would definitely try the next time. They have minature cupcakes as well, and different flavours of the big cupcake.These are the Snow Capped Lemon Muffins - which are full of lemon zest and topped with white sugar and lemon icing. Reminds me of a circus:D The strawberry muffins looked really yummy but then I didn't get a shot of them T-TPaisley and Cream

6 Eu Tong Sen Sreet #01-09/10

The Central

Singapore 059817

paisleyandcream.com

Tom Ton @ Central

Since it's Friday and I had quite alot of time inbetween the things-i-must-attend and the 730 ward rounds, I took the opportunity to zooom to try new foods at the Central, and since it was before 12pm, I didn't have to pay for ERP either :D
So we decided to try Tom Ton, which is another restaurant by Tampopo (at Liang Court). Tampopo serves a really good spicy black pig ramen (kurobuta), we wanted to see if the other restaurant they opened up good. I tried the Grilled Black Pig Steak and Niku Tofu Set (I think it's Lunch Set B, $16.80++). The pork was tender and juicy, with that extra crunch with spurting juices. The tofu had thinly sliced pork pieces and topped with lots of spring onions. The tofu was smooth and silky, and the pork with the sauce tasted really clean and nice. The rice they use is the good quality japanese type, not the pseudo japanese rice. It's nice and glossy unlike the low quality kind.
This is the Gindara Set (Lunch Set D i think, $15.90++), which is grilled cod fish and tamago. The cod fish is nicely marinated in a sweetish sauce and grilled to perfection - it's soft and flaky.
The service is efficient and attentive, and the ambience pleasant - lots of wood and with more space than Tampopo in Liang Court. (They serve very different kinds of food, with exception of the Black Pig)

Tom Ton

No6 Eu Tong Sen Street

#03-88/99

Singapore 059817

Tel 63277887

Sho-U Modern Japanese Dining (2)

Set San ($25 i think)

Comes with fried prawns wrapped in some crispy noodle thing, unatama don, sashimi (salmon, kampachi and hamachi) and Sho-U salad



Japanese Beer Sherbert (about $8) - Not very alcoholic tasting, and more sweet than bitter. It's quite refreshing.

Sho-Cha Ice Cream ($9++) (I think it's some alcoholic thing with a sour plum inside, but I'm not sure if i got the name correct >.<) It's quite unique, and has plum (which I like) bits in the ice cream. Doesn't taste very alcoholic, infact, doesn't taste alcoholic at all.