Wednesday, July 28, 2010

PeraMakan @ Keppel Club

We were suppose to go to a restaurant in VivoCity for dinner last Saturday evening. We placed a booking just in case the restaurant was packed. When we were on our way there, we noticed that there is a huge jam at VivoCity. Chugging slowly along Telok Belangah Road, we noticed on the parking lots availability sign that carpark spaces in both VivoCity and Harbourfront were full. Hmm what's happening. We thought we will try to look for a lot there anyway. We realised it was a bad idea after like 15 minutes. We barely moved.

So we changed plans and called up PeraMakan to book seats instead. We told them we will be there in 15 minutes. Glad we changed our plans. We got to eat delicious peranakan food instead!

***

We noticed on the menu they have the usual Babi Ponteh - Pork Rib at $14. Then we noticed on the specials menu, they have a Nyonya Pork Rib Stew at $16. Out of curiosity, we asked the server. He said it's stew lah meaning more gravy! You get bigger pieces of meat too. Ah... sounds good, so we ordered it.

It was not bad. The gravy was excellent on the rice too. You can wallop plates of rice just by pouring gravy over it! :-)

Nyonya Pork Rib Stew


***

The people dining with us were not so 'adventurous'. We were planning to try the Sayur Nangka Masak Lemak. In the end, we got the more familiar Nyonya Chap Chye ($10) instead. ;-)

Nyonya Chap Chye


***

A familiar but very much loved dish amongst all of us, the Cincalok Omelette ($10).

Cincalok Omelette


***

This was on the specials too. The Ikan Sumbat ($16).
Mackerel stuffed with fragrant spices that was grilled. The inside of the fish was moist and really the spices made it really fragrant. I have not eaten ikan sumbat for the longest time!

Ikan Sumbat


***

One thing about peranakan food servings is that it is usually smaller. But if you look at it from a positive way, it means you get to order more desserts! Here are the desserts that we shared:

The icy cold chendol.

Chendol


***

The warm bubur cha cha.
(It's very very sweet by the way, but it's nice.)

Bubur Cha Cha


***

The warm bubur terigu. For those who loves wheat.

Bubur Terigu



***

And lastly, for those who love durian, the durian puffs!

Durian Puffs


PeraMakan
Level 3, Keppel Club
10 Bukit Chermin Road
Singapore 109918
Tel: 6377 2829



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Brotzeit - German Bier Bar & Restaurant @ VivoCity

Our friends (CK and Kenny) from KL came for a visit recently and we met them for lunch. We decided to meet at Vivocity because they will be traveling back to KL via coaches in HarbourFront Centre later in the afternoon. Meeting here would be much more convenient logistic wise.

CK & K had eaten earlier (in fact, they have been eating non stop since they came to Singapore) so they shared a Currywurst. ($17.50) That's German pork and curry sausage with chili-curry sauce and potato wedges. It smells really really good.

You know the dish is coming because you can smell the whiff of curry in the air.
(in fact, I think many people ordered it because we keep smelling it!)

Currywurst : German pork and curry sausage


***

Momo and I shared a Würstelplatte. ($32.50) This was one of the many platters for two. The reason we had this was because we wanted to try the different sausages available!

There were spicy chicken sausages, Nürnberger pork bratwurst, mini pork-beef cheese sausages, weisswurst sausage and garlic sausage. It was also served with sauerkraut and mustard. Their version of sauerkraut surprisingly is a version I would eat! It's not as sour as most places and it tasted rather pleasant.

Würstelplatte : Mixed Platter of Sausages


***

I am not a beer drinker, but our visitors were. I can't remember what was this beer they ordered. ;-p
Many people come here just to have beer. It's after all called a Bier Bar!

German Beer


***

We were joined later by LadyIronChef and Camemberu.

While the rest were chatting, I had the toughest game of Scrabble ever with CK! Oh man, this guy was damn good. I was later told he plays scrabble online with sometimes 8 or 9 people simultaneously!  You guessed it, I lost!

If you are wondering, we played it on the iPad and used iPhones as the tile deck.
If you got an iPad and iPhones around, download it!

After CK, Kenny and LadyIronChef left, I had a 3 person game with Camemberu and Momo. It's addictive!

***

Camemberu and Momo got a little hungry after a while, and they decided to order more food.
They ordered the Riesenschnitzel ($45).

It's really a big huge gigantic breaded escalope of pork served on a wooden board. It comes with 2 choices of side dishes. That's the usual size fork for your comparison.

Haha, I was tempted and joined in to eat as well. Not bad! How can you resist schnitzels.
These schnitzels special sets are only available on Sundays.

(When I was studying for pre-U long long ago in Melbourne, 3 out of 5 days, I had schnitzels for lunch!! I shudder now thinking I could eat them so often then!)

Riesenschnitzel : Giant breaded escalope of pork served on a wooden board


***

The sides, this was the Kleiner Salat (Mixed Salad).

Kleiner Salat: Mixed salad


***

The Kartoffelhappen (potato wedges).
These wedges tasted really good!

Kartoffelhappen : spicy potato wedges




Brotzeit - German Bier Bar & Restaurant
VivoCity
1 HarbourFront Walk#01-149/151
Singapore 098585

Tel: 6272 8815
Hours: 12 pm - 12 am on weekdays. 12 pm - 1 am on weekends and eve of PH and PH. 
Web: http://www.brotzeit1516.com



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Monday, July 26, 2010

Sign up for Citibank Credit Cards via Keropokman and receive up to $40 TANGS vouchers.

[This is a part advertorial by KeropokMan and Citibank.]


Ladurée Macaron

Macarons. These are not just any macarons.
These little delights are macarons from Ladurée on Champs-Élysées, Paris!

Ladurée @ Champs-Élysées

I was fortunate to be in Paris a few weeks ago and had the opportunity to try them.
Did I like them? Of course! Many have claimed that it is one of the best in the world.

Ladurée Macaron


Now, would you like to try them?
Let me share how you can get opportunities to fly yourself to Paris for free.

Do you know that if you have a Citibank card and for every $10 charged to your Citibank card, you get a chance to win a trip to one of 10 exciting gourmet cities in the world. The good news is that Paris happens to be one of the winning destinations!

In addition, if you use your Citibank card to pay for restaurant meals, you get 10X the chances of winning it! All these to celebrate 10 great years of Citibank Credit Cards Gourmet Pleasures!

Do you have a Citibank Credit Card? If not, would you like to get one? Keropokman and Citibank have whipped up a sweet deal for you.  The deal is probably as sweet as this luscious Carre Chocolat. That’s dark chocolate macaron biscuit, dark chocolate crispy thin leaves, dark chocolate smooth cream, dark chocolate soft biscuit and chocolate zabaglione mousse. Decadent?


Ladurée

So what’s the deal?

  • If you sign up for Citibank Credit Card and a Citibank Ready Credit, you will receive a $40 TANGS shopping voucher.
  • If you sign up for either a Citibank Credit Card or a Citibank Ready Credit, you will receive a $20 TANGS shopping voucher.
Do you think it’s a steal? You get a card and you get shopping vouchers too! If you register offline, you do not get any vouchers.

Is there a catch? No, but you would have to apply for the card via THIS LINK.

But wait, there's more! You also get double chances for the "Win with Citi" promotion for applying via this blog.


Ladurée


You would probably have seen many of your relatives, colleagues and friends holding different types of Citibank Credit Cards. Everyone gives you reasons why they choose a particular Citibank card. Don’t you think it is probably easier to choose what other desserts to eat at Ladurée?

If you want recommendation for desserts, try their Millefeuille Praline! Look at the photo of it above, that’s caramelized puff pastry, praline cream, almost praline and crispy hazelnuts. Have those layers of utter goodness tempt you yet? You will not want to try Millefeuille from elsewhere ever!

For recommendation of which card to choose, I will recommend you click through the Citibank Credit Card Recommender. It’s probably the best place to start your cards research.

If you already a Citibank Credit Card, you can still apply for other cards and get yourself the vouchers too!



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Hubalicious: Naturally Viet with Chef Luke Nguyen

[This was an invited session by Word of Mouth Communications Pte Ltd]

If you are a Starhub customer like me, you would have received emails from Starhub about their Hubalicious Food Festival 2010. I procrastinated and forgot to register. Procrastination was a good thing this time because a few days before the event, I got an invite by PR Company Word Of Mouth Comms asking if I am interested to attend the Hubalicious event. 

Naturally Viet with Chef Luke Nguyen


***

If you are wondering what these Hubalicious Food Festival 2010 is about, visit http://hubalicious.starhub.com/ to read more about it. In short, you get to meet the chefs in person! Hear them speak, see them cook, taste their cooking, get them to sign autographs and take photographs with them! Who knows you might also win some prizes at the event!

For our TV at home, the channels that we watch are mostly the Food Channels or Lifestyle Channels. We were really happy when Starhub started offering a new food channel called the Food Network Asia. We were even happier when it was in HD! On High Definition, food looks even more delicious!

If you have been watching Food Network Asia, you would have caught the series "Luke Nguyen's Vietnam". I have been watching his show so I was really glad when I was invited to see him in person!

Naturally Viet with Chef Luke Nguyen


***

For Luke Nguyen's Hubalicious session, he cooked one dish from each of the courses we were going to have. The rest were all done with the help of the kitchen hand in the restaurant.

The menu of the night had 2 Entrees, 1 Middle Course, 2 Main Courses and a Dessert.

For the Entree:

Luke demonstrated how to make "Pan-fried turmeric and dill sole fillets, rolled in soft rice paper and mint leaves".


Pan-fried turmeric and dill sole fillets, rolled in soft rice paper and mint leaves


I tell you, everyone was salivating as the sole fillets were being pan fried in front of us. The smell of food with tumeric pan fried always smells very very good! How did he make it so easy peasy?

Well, making something looks good is easy, making something taste so wonderfully delicious is real skill!

Pan-fried turmeric and dill sole fillets, rolled in soft rice paper and mint leaves

***

The next entree was "Beef scented lemongrass rolled in wild betel leaves and char-grilled". We did not get to see him prepare this. But it sure look tempted us when it was served. There's a layer of rice paper below the vegetable. You wrapped it all up dip it in the dipping sauce and let the flavour blast in your mouth!

Beef scented lemongrass rolled in wild betel leaves and char-grilled


***

For the Middle Course:

Luke showed us how to prepare Banh Xeo. Banh Xeo is Rice flour crepe filled with Mung beans, prawns & Enoki mushrooms (wrapped with lettuce and fresh Vietnamese herbs).

He manage to make it look so simple! He chats with the audience, jokes a little, get someone to share the kitchen with him and before you know it, the food is ready and looks absolutely stunning! How do they do that? You know how some of us fumble in the kitchen?
 
For the middle course, the food was served with Beringer California Chenin Blanc.


Banh Xeo – Rice flour crepe filled with Mung beans, prawns & Enoki mushrooms (wrapped with lettuce and fresh Vietnamese herbs)


***

Vietnamese food is always so healthy. They use lots of herbs and vegetables. As you can see in the photo above, a mountain of 'leaves' was served together with it.

The Banh Xeo was really crispy on the outside, and moist inside with all the seafood and mushroom. I guess sometimes you really got to have patience and let the outside brown and crisp without disturbing it. For most of us, we tend to always want to check and flip the things on the pan ya?

I was quite fascinated by one of the mint that was served. It was called Fish Mint! Why Fish Mint? Because it tasted a bit like fish! That's the big dark green leave show in the following photo.

Banh Xeo – Rice flour crepe filled with Mung beans, prawns & Enoki mushrooms (wrapped with lettuce and fresh Vietnamese herbs)


***

For the main course:

Luke showed us how to prepare the "Salt and pepper soft shell crab, served with green mango salad". The Green Mango was all hand shaven! He proudly proclaimed, the mango salad that we all will be eating is ALL hand shaven by him! Don't waste it!

Who can resist crispy soft shell crab? The crowd absolutely loved it. Aha! He taught us how to make sure they were crispy inside not still moist (but not oily) inside. ;-)

Salt and pepper soft shell crab, served with green mango salad


***

The next main was the "Beef ribs, slow-braised in young coconut water." We did not get to see him prepare this in front of us. I guess it would take too long.

Just look at the beef ribs. Absolutely gorgeous don't you think?
It was well marinated and executed so nicely. ( I took thirds! Shh.....)

The mains were served with jasmine rice and Beringer Founder's Estate Merlot.


Beef ribs, slow-braised in young coconut water


***

For Dessert:

We were served the Trio of Dessert: Caramelised grilled pineapple, Lemongrass gelato in shot glass and Baked Cassava Square.

Luke told us, desserts in Vietnam have always been loads of fresh local fruits. So this is not really the usual dessert. It's something special he prepared for us. These so called 'desserts' are Vietnamese snack all day long!

I particularly love the lemongrass gelato!

Dessert was served with Beringer California White Zin.

Caramelised grilled pineapple, Lemongrass gelato in shot glass, Baked Cassava Square



Oh wow, what a great meal! Thanks to Starhub and Word of Mouth Communications for presenting me the opportunity to attend it.

Here are some info that might be helpful:

  • Food Network Asia is shown on Starhub TV Channel 433.
  • Food Network Asia in High Definition is shown on Starhub TV Channel 468.
  • You can read more about it on www.starhub.com/entertainment/channel/foodnetworkasia.html 
  • Robert Rainford, Bobby Chinn and Rachel Allen will be next on Hubalicious Food Festival 2010. If you are fans of them, click through to http://hubalicious.starhub.com to sign up for the event. 
  • The wine and the wine pairing with the food were done courtesy of Beringer.



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, July 23, 2010

Yan Palace Restaurant @ Hong Lim Complex, Chinatown

Momo and I met AromaCookery and her husband for lunch a few days ago. 

Momo and AromaCookery had wanted to try Yan Palace Restaurant's dim sum. This place has been around for the longest time. How long has it been around? I have no idea! But it's really old school. When you are inside, you might think you are in the era of "SBC". Not even "TCS"! LOL

This place is packed! The queue waiting to be seated is snaking behind these doors. We even witness a customer who demanded a seat straight away. She shouted: "I called to book a table, where is my table? Why are you giving that table to these people queuing here? Shouldn't you give it to me instead?"

Sorry lah obasan. "Reservation here tak pakai" lah. You need to queue up like everyone else. Everyone else here probably called earlier than you. Shoosh and don't disturb the rest of us. The restaurant is already noisy enough with all the non stop chatter of the diners.

Yan Palace Restaurant


***

The food here, so so lah.

If you are used to the Dim Sums standards of the high class Royal China, Yan Ting, Wan Hao and the likes, have a mind set change when you come here. Minus 20 years perhaps. ;-)

The Siew Mai.

Dimsum


***

The Phoenix Claws.
Better than some food court version, so there's still hope. LOL


Dimsum


***

We have been spoiled by the likes of Crystal Jade that gives you Carrot Cakes filled with ingredients. This is the old style Carrot Cake of yesteryears.


Dimsum


***

The Steamed Pork Ribs. Plain and simple.

Dimsum


***

Now, if you are here, try their pastries.
I think they are better than things that comes in their bamboo steamers. ;-)

The Char Siu Pastry was rather nice.

Dimsum


***

This was rather unique. Open mouthed fried balls that is a little sticky inside and coated with some sugar.

Dimsum


***

The deep fried prawn dumpling was I guess ok. The chee cheong fun that you see in the background. They were realy old school. They had fairly thick skin. So depends if you like thick or thin steamed flour skin, you might or might not enjoy it.

Dimsum


***

These were the pastry with lai chee and salted egg yolk inside. Worth a try!


Dimsum


***

These were the fried mango strips.

Dimsum


We had a few other things too. There are already too many photos posted today. ;-P

Some observations:
- the main attraction of this place might be the price. We ordered a fair bit and it was only around $50.
- the crowd were mostly old folks.
- the younger people around were probably filial children and grandchildren who accompany ah gong and ah ma to have the food they way they like it.
- they might be doing something right, but we are not sure what. They managed to survive so long and attract crowds yet so many fine-dining places can barely survive.

Maybe we should walk around and peep at what others are ordering before placing our orders. Were we ordering the wrong food here? LOL



Yan Palace Restaurant
Hong Lim Complex

Blk 531 Upper Cross Street
#01-49
Singapore 050531

Tel: 6222 2516



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Lijiang Restaurant @ Temasek Club

This was dinner with Momo's parents. We went to Lijiang Restaurant at Temasek Club for dinner for a birthday celebration.

If you drive and want to get away from the crowds on weekends in Singapore, you can seek refuge at this secluded and peaceful place. The restaurant is open to public.

Lijiang we found out is the sister branch of the Yunnan restaurants that is popular with the NTU / Jurong folks. They have branches at One-North and Fairway Club. Some of you might remember they had a branch at IMM too previously. Their food's decent and pricing fair too.


***

The Yee Fu Noodles that we had. It was pretty good. I think Yee Fu noodles always taste good doesn't it?

Yee Fu Noodles


***

For our daily green intake, we decided to have the greens and the soup together. This was the 3 eggs with vegetable dish. Probably comfort food for many.

Triple Eggs with Vegetables Soup


***

For the meat, we had a whole Peking Duck. The Peking Duck here is not bad.
We enjoyed this dish. Don't you think eating Peking Duck always makes you happy?
I think it's because it is sinful. Duck Skin and Thin Egg Rolls Skins.

Peking Duck


For the duck meat, we had it made into a duck stir fry with mushrooms etc.
Served on lettuce leaves, it was delicious!

Minced Duck on Lettuce

***

We also had a steamed fish. Don't you love a steaming hot fresh fish?


Steamed Fish


Happy Birthday (Captain!) Uncle!





Lijiang Restaurant @ Temasek Club
1 Portsdown Road
Temasek Club
Singapore 139295

Tel: 6777 1989 (ext 898)
Hours: 11.30 AM - 2.30 PM (Lunch), 6.00 PM - 10.00 PM (Dinner)



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Nando's Singapore @ Bugis Junction

This meal was eaten in May! Momo and I met with two other friends for dinner. We shall call them "CanDo" and "LittleYellowCar" here.

I can't remember now the details, but somehow we ended at Nando's. I guess we all wanted to try it out. You would need patience if you wanna try the food during dinner hours. The wait was very long the night we were there. It took us about nearly an hour of queuing before we got our seats. We joked that if we went to Johor Bahru branches, we could get to eat quicker!

***

What did we eat? Since there was the 4 of us, we had the Peri-fect Platter. $43.60
It is a full chicken with 4 large sidelines. For the chicken, we had Mild.

(We figure that the hotter sauces are on the tables, so if we want more fiery chicken we could add in the hotter sauces)


The chicken was really well marinated and we all enjoyed the flame-grilled chicken. The sauce and the chicken were quite addictive!


Peri-fect Platter - Mild Peri Peri Chicken


***

For the sidelines, we chose the Cous Cous Salad. I think Cous Cous is an acquired taste. Not everyone appreciated it.

Peri-fect Platter - Cous Cous Salad


***

The grilled vegetables were a hit though. It was so colourful!
It was soft enough but not mushy.

Peri-fect Platter - Grilled Vegetables


***

The 3rd sides we had was the Old Style Chips. We loved the chips and wallop it all in no time!

Peri-fect Platter - Old Style Chips


***

This was the Peri Potato Salad. I love the taste of the potato salad!
I know it's full of sauces but that's also a reason why it's delightful to my tastebuds!

Peri-fect Platter -  Peri Potato Salad


***

LittleYellowCar said she wanted to try other stuff as well. So we ordered this.
It came served in the most interesting serving vessel. It was covered so you got to open it.

Cataplana

Inside, it looks fabulous doesn't it?
This was the Cataplana. $18.

It had spiced rice below it. On the top, ther was the chicken thigh grilled with Peri Peri sauce, tomatoes, eggplant, onions and peppers.

Verdict, it was nice!

Cataplana

If you have visited them recently, is the queue still so long?

I just have to mention this, though I might sound a bit petty:
They do not serve 'tap' water. You need to purchase bottled water, even if you purchased other drinks.
What we noticed is that the menu states they serve 600ml bottled water ($2.50!), but when it's served to you, they give you the 500ml bottled water instead. (If you are wondering what water, it's the usually 'on sale' 40 cents bottled of Ice Mountain you get in the supermarket) Nope, we did not bother to argue with them for 100ml difference. Don't want to ruin a good meal with that. ;-)



Nando's
200 Victoria Street
Bugis Junction #01-85/87
Singapore 188021

Hours: 10 am - 10 pm
Tel: 6338 6555



Stumble Upon Toolbar
Blog Widget by LinkWithin