Swa Gardens

Attended ieatishootipost's makan session at Swa Gardens. Due to me getting the wrong address (somehow I read 540 as 400 in the sms - I have no idea why - no wonder why I'm so poor at math) we arrived just in time to catch the Cold Crab. I attacked the crab too quickly, and forgot to take a picture before getting my hands dirty :/Braised Goose- Taste wise, it was good but I foud this a bit too dry for my liking. I'm half Teochew (from my paternal side but I can't speak anything besides 'boh hor jiak') and goose is one of the few teochew dishes that everyone in my family likes, so I eat this rather often.
Mayonnaise Prawn - very lemony and oily. The prawns were fresh and the combination of prawn and mayo can never go wrong.
Oyster Omelette - which was my fave dish of the night. The oysters were embedded inside a golden yellow omelette, and there were many many oysters.
Packed with delicious fresh globules of oyster - it's probably the freshest oysters (other than the raw kind) that I've eaten. Not a single piece of the many oysters that I ate tasted grainy. I hate having the gritty feel of sand when I eat shellfish.
Steamed Promfet - fresh, steamed just right and with tasty gravy.

Fried Sweet Potato Leaves - this is one of my fave vegetables because of the texture. Ngoh Hiang - this is probably the fattest ngo hiang I've eaten.
Stir Fried Crayfish - I didn't quite like this dish cos the sauce just masked the taste of everything. One reason why I don't like Chinese food is because they have so much sauce that I can't taste the real flavour of the main ingredient.
Chye Poh Kway Teow - It's supposed to be a teochew dish (though (I've never had it before but then again I haven't tired alot of teochew food). It was an interesting dish, and I'd have eaten more if not for the long wait in between dishes. I didn't like the burnt crispy surface noodles, but other than that, I found the dish quite good (since I like kway teow).
People say this is the best Ohr Nee in Singapore. I'm not a great Ohr Nee fan, because it's so oily and filling. There's lots of pumpkin (my fave part of the dish) and ginko nuts too. The Ohr Nee is very smooth, not too gooey or thick. I was younger, my dad (who hates pumpkin) always ordered Ohr Nee without pumpkin and I never knew Ohr Nee came with pumpkin till very much later.

Its really taxing on the kitchen to feed ~80 hungry people and there were looong pauses in between dishes, which made everyone feel full. I felt that my $32 was well spent. Plus, I got to meet Singapore's most famous blogger and his makan friends.

To the person who got 8 of his friends to come down for the makan session, but couldn't because of a dish washing mishap, hope you get well soon! I'm sure your friends gave you a detailed account of dinner - they took photos of every single dish for you!

Overall, I'll give the restaurant 3 Michellelim stars:

But for the planning, logistics and other people who helped organise this,

Swa Gardens 汕园潮洲酒楼

540 MacPherson Road

Tel: 6744 5009

Akashi - Orchard Parade Hotel

I've just eaten the best Jap meal I've ever had in my life :D After that horrible incident with Akashi (Tanglin Shopping Centre) during Mother's day, I'm glad to say that Akashi has redeemed itself. (*edits on the food, thanks to ice :D)
Small animals are yummy!
Kanpachi in sesame sauce, topped with crispy bits of brown stuff.

Next, we had a momotaro and a yellow tomato each. They were sprinkled with coarse salt which balanced the sweetnes of the tomato. The yellow one is incredibly sweet.
This is a pseudo-onsen tamago (pseudo since there aren't any onsens in S'pore... but alot of other restaurants serve this) with some queer vegetables (can't rem the name) and uni (sea urchin). Onsen Tamago, or hot spring eggs are traditionally eggs cooked in hot springs, and the yolk is slightly hardened whilst the egg white is soft and runny. Makes me think of a microwaved egg since it's cooked from the inside... Of course, it's inside a martini glass so you're meant to slurp it down. Yum!
These are the Sawagani, little crabs that you usually see happily sealed inside packets in Iseatan. They're very small and can be eaten in one chomp. I just did a bit of reasearch online - it's pretty interesting to find that what I've learnt in microbiology has an application. When we were taught about Paragonimus westermani , and it being transmitted by uncooked crabs, I was wondering why the heck people won't cook their crabs well - all the crabs recipes I know of requires the crab being cooked throughly... there have been cases where people developed Paragonimus after ingesting undercooked Sawagani crabs.
2 sawagani crabs each - the crab has a shatteringly crispy shell, and a juicy interior. Beats all the insitant packet snacks I've tried... The legs are very pokey though, so open your mouth big big and don't scratch your face!Fugu jerky with roe mayonnaise. The sweetened meat was soft and chewy, but didn't really have much taste - just that it went really well with the mayo. Our first sashimi dish - Aji (mackerel). The mackerel tastes better with ponzu sauce, as opposed to the usual shoyu with grated ginger and spring onions. The bones were later deep fried and served as a snack.Sashimi platter - with snapper, otoro and salmon belly. Tuna simmered in stock. The part used was the part between the head and the jaw or something like that... very fatty, soft and melt in the mouth. Hope the omega 3 fatty acids can zoom to my brain and make me smarter!
Aburi Salmon belly sushi - some of the delicious fats melt and the oil trickles down into the rice.
Botan Ebi (big head prawn)Deep fried prawn head - don't waste any part of the fish :D
Hirame (flounder) Fin sushi - very ex and coveted.

Shime Saba (Vinegared Mackerel)
Seared Aburi Toro sushi - like the salmon, the oils oozed into the rice and made everything so yummy.
Uni sushi - unis are my favouritest shellfish in the world! They are soft, wobbly and sweet and tastes of the sea. But beware - stale uni looks like diarrhoea and taste like crap.
Hamachi (yellowtail) soup with clams. The clams were soft and tender, and and gave the soup a slight metallic taste and sweetness.
This is the first time I'm trying the Japanese musk melon - I've only tried the $6 Thailand-grown-Japanese-strain musk melon from NTUC so far. The juice spurts out and the aroma of the melon is fantastic. I think all Japanese fruits are delicious - strawberries, grapes (taste like Qoo drink!), peaches, tomatoes, cucumber ahhh I wanna live in a farm in Japan and eat all the food :D:D:D
The counter was empty when we came at 6.30pm, but filled up and the place was packed by 8pm. The branch at Orchard Parade Hotel was actually set up because Tanglin Shopping Center was rumoured to go enblock. Akashi Orchard Parade Hotel beats Tanglin shopping Centre hands down - even though they're just next door to each other.The chef Don Goh who fed us the delicious food.

Michellelim star rating:

Because it's so ex and now my tastebuds won't be satisfied by just Cha Soba at Akashi anymore.

Akashi Japanese Restaurant
1 Tanglin Road, #01-01A
Orchard Parade Hotel
Singapore 247905
Tel 67324438

HOUSE and CAMP @ Dempsey - SUCKS BIG TIME

The following is a rant about HOUSE @ Dempsey:

Went to try house with my friends on a Wednesday Night. This isn't my first time there (went there previously for a spa esprit event as well as for tea), but it was my first time going for dinner and drinks. I must say that this is the worst restaurant/bar of the year.

By the time we sat down and started looking at the menu, it was around 8.55pm. We asked the waiter (who wasn't even fluent in English - had to ask hime a few times...) for the 1-for-1 drinks (from 5pm to 9pm), and he wasn't sure if we could have it at the restaurant area, (according to the first waiter, it was only valid at the pub area). So after a few mins, before he came back, we checked with another waitress. She wasn't too clear on it either. The first waiter came back and informed us that we can't have the 1-for-1 drinks at the restaurant area, even though every table in the dining area had a broucher advertising the 1-for-1 drinks. When we finally caught hold of the manager, the manager very unhelpfully said "TOO BAD it's past 9 and the offer is over" (the too bad was in his own words!!!) Of course it'll be past nine if we had to go through 3 people just to check if we could have the drinks with our dinner!!!!!

'Best' of all, they gave us the drinks menu at the restaurant area. If you can't have drinks at the restaurant, then what's the point of giving us the menu? Ridiculous!

So after that, we went to bar area - where my friend ordered a $22 'Mint berry gin freeze' which supposedly, and I say supposedly, has 'bombay sapphire gin, fresh berries, mint, pressed lemon, and berry liquor. As far as all of us could taste, there was hardly even a drop of alcohol inside. And all for $22 bucks too! In any other bar, for $22, you'll be expecting at least something which tastes alcoholic, but the drink tasted more like a mocktail. (AND the person drinking this drink was actually scared that it'll be too strong since we were all driving).

On top of that, their drinks menu is sadly very very very limited to a few house speciality cocktails and wines. They have lots of other hard liquors, but then they only come in shots ($10 per shot). When we asked if they could do a simple mix for us (specifically an Amaretto Sour) we were told that the bartender wasn't allowed to mix anything other than those drinks on the menu. We were like HUH isn't this supposed to be a bar?????

I will definitely not go back to house, camp or barracks!!! Definitely NO. On my previous 2 visits, I found the food mediocre and the service passable. But not for this time. I will never recommend anyone to go to House or Camp - it's just a pretentious bunch of people running the place. In fact, I will strongly recommend people not to patronise this place.

These are the 'famed' truffle oil fries ($6++) but that day, there was only a smattering of truffle oil - hardly even enough to detect on sniffing. I see that they've become very stingy on their truffle oil since my last visit. It is completely not wroth it to pay $6 for such a small portion of fries with hardly any truffle oil.This is the macadamia crusted pumpkin with arugula salad ($15++) which was mediocre and not worth having again since it is so expensive.

This place gets ZERO out of five stars.

Camp @ House (Dempsey House)
8D Dempsey Road

Singapore 249672

Phone: +65 6475 7787

Ice Cream Gallery

Another east side entry...
Ice Cream Gallery is one of those numerous ice cream parlours popping up around Singapore. But, I'm happily blogging about this because it has Teh Halia Ice Cream. Iced Teh Halia is my fave drink - if I'm passing Adam Road Hawker Centre, I'll always think of the yummy Teh Halia and Halia Susu (Ginger milk - for those days that I need to sleep early and can't afford the caffeine). So, when I saw that they had Teh Halia ice cream, I was very happy - and I would have ordered a tub, only that they didn't even have enough for 2 scoops.The Teh Halia ice cream has lots of candied ginger bits inside, and they're really nice to chew on. However, I thought that the tea taste of the Teh Halia ice cream could be slightly stronger - it tasted more like Halia Susu, but since I like all gingery drinks, I still liked the ice cream overall.This is the brandied cherry ice cream - juicy bits of brandied cherry (with lots of alcohol) embedded in a creamy ice cream. ($3.50 per scoop) Other flavours they had that day were vanilla, strawberry, brandied cherry etc etc. It costs $3 for a scoop, $4.60 for a double scoop and $6 for triple. For the alcoholic flavours, such as rum and raisin (their best seller), brandied cherry etc, there is a surcharge of 50 cents per scoop.

The ice cream sold here is homemade, with reduced fat sugar and fresh ingredients.
Rating:

Outlet: 20 Eastwood Road
#01-13 Eastwood Centre
Singapore 486442
Tel 62462926


Main Branch: 491 River Valley Road
#01-20 Valley Point
Singapore 248371
Tel 62350870

Cafe Oliv

More east-side food with my east-side friends...
I didn't realise that I was visiting the same place tha ieatishootipost had his trios burger, till I sat down and opened the menu. It's a little casual eatery tucked into one of those conservation shophouses which has horrendous parking. We got there around 6.30 to 7pm on a Saturday, and to our suprise it was completely empty (we even booked in anticipation of a que). But the restaurant did fill up later on. I suppose that if I lived in the east I'll come here more often.
Quesadilla - not ordered by me, neither is the starters. The quesadilla was not bad, but nothing to rave about. I found it a bit too dry for my liking, and the cheese was too scarce.

Starters - Chicken wing, Calamari rings and Deep fried battered whole mushrooms. Overall, I thought this was not bad, and the people ordering it didn't expect such a large portion.

What I like about cafe oliv is that they're really flexible about the set menus. I wanted to try the salmon linguine with pink sauce, but it wasn't available as a standard set. I was pleasantly suprised to be told that every main course in the menu could be made into a set meal by topping up $6. Set dinner consists of a drink, soup and dessert (choice of brownie with ice cream or creme brulee)This was the soup of the day - we were told it was mushroom soup, but I think it's chicken soup cos there were little bits of chicken and no mushrooms at all. Nevertheless, it tasted very homely and the presentation was nice.
Salmon linguine with pink sauce ($12.90, $18.90 for the set). I really like pasta with pink sauce - so whenever I see pink sauce on the menu, I will confirm order it. The sauce was slightly creamy, and tangy at the same time. It somehow reminded me of thousand island sauce, but not as creamy or sour. Maybe it was because of the appereance? The salmon fillet was done just right, and it wasn't too dry or raw.
Braised Lamb Shank ($23.90 for the Set Meal) It's a good sized portion of lamb, in a meaty gravy and with fluffy mashed potatoes.
Brownie with ice cream - A good sized dessert (not those small measley kind that you'll expect with most set menus) drenched in chocolate sauce topped with a huge scoop of ice cream. I was very full after eating this.
Creme Brulee - It's the warm version. I thought it was not bad, with a soft wobbly smooth texture but I think my brownie was better (cos it was cold).Overall, I quite liked the restaurant - food was good and reasonably priced, very value for money and the place was clean and brightly lit and very conducive for dining (and phototaking). Service was quick and efficient too.

Michellelim stars:
Cafe Oliv

220 East Coast Road

Tel: 6344 3114