Nasi Padang River Valley @ Zion Road

Wow, how fast time passes! We had this meal with our friend, Momo's childhood friend Julia before she delivered her baby and now the baby's over 1 month old! We know she likes to eat (like us) and when the baby comes out, she will not be able eat it for some time!

We picked her up and off we went to Zion Road. It has been some time since we came here, we did come a few times, but I did not bother to take photos because it seems that we always order the same old food! Anyway, this will be like an update.




4 of us ate 6 dishes. A bit of a glutton? Probably not, since the portions are not that big.




The Ayam Gulai. The non spicy version of curry. The sauce is every so tempting and you can 'sapu'/ wallop up a whole plate of rice with the sauce.

I have had Ayam Gulai since young, but I just realised that Wikipedia says this dish originated from Padang! 





The Beef Rendang. Another dish that has very tempting sauce to go with the rice. Not every piece of the beef was tender this time. The tender ones were pleasant to eat!




We ordered a Begedil for each person. Always reminding me of having croquette.
Momo who is more of a Japanese food lover says she prefer the Japanese version. haha.




The sambal sotong. Nice! Very nice, not rubbery, but tender.
The sauce has lots of onions which I love!




The Ayam Goreng. Just thought of having some fried chicken, so we ordered it.
This one we had was crispy on the outside and still not that dry inside.




The sweetish ala Thai chili sauce that goes with the chicken.
(I mixed my piece of chicken with all the different sauces!)




A bowl of Sayur Lodeh. Our only vegetable dish!
Not very special, but it's quite OK.




The makcik seems to know even before we asked.
The spicy, super spicy sambal belachan!




Also a bowl of curry sauce to pour over our rice.
A very satisfying lunch!

We were sitting beside a Malay family. As we were taking photos, they were smiling, probably thinking we must be tourists. How could we not talk to them? They looked so friendly people and spoke in halting Malay saying we are not tourists and about other stuff.

We asked them about food after all the funny chatter we had. We asked where else in Singapore can we taste similar food and where is their favourite. The couple with their little girl told us this shop's food is more Indonesian Padang style. If we want to try more Singapore Malay food, try Hj Maimunah, their other favourite.

It's amazing even if were speaking in halting Malay (and half of us did not understand it), when people talk about food, you can feel the deliciousness of what they are talking by looking at the way the face expression and smile!



Nasi Padang River Valley
55 Zion Road
Singapore 247780

Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square: Garuda Padang Cuisine

This post is part of the Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square organised by Omy.Sg that quite a few bloggers and I indulged in a food marathon on 9 July 2011.

You can read more about Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square at http://blog.omy.sg/let-the-feast-begin  Visit the site too if you want to win youself a $50 voucher.

Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square Stop 3: 
Garuda Padang Cuisine




I have never stepped into Garuda Padang Cuisine!

I usually go to the Padang Cuisine that I am more familiar with. I might be back soon! Just because I want to try out all their deliciously looking dishes here!



The array of dishes on the bain-marie counter. I want to try them all! I noticed all their items were priced accordingly, so you know exactly how much you will pay for your meal!




For the stop here at Garuda, we were to try their "Ayam Goreng Garuda" (Fried Chicken with Blue Ginger Floss).

The above shows a double portion. You can get them as set meals at $7 with sayur lodeh, a side dish and rice or roti prata. Check out the offers at their restaurant.



We were quite thankful we only had tasting portions. We need to pace ourselves as we have many places to visit!



The piece of Ayam Goreng Garuda I had. It has a turmeric and galangal (blue ginger) base. We asked how long is the marination, and we were told at least 5 hours. It takes around 15 minutes to fry it, but if you are there during lunch or dinner peak hour, don't worry. They know when the crowds come.

I like the blue ginger floss, as we did not have it with rice that day, it was a tad salty. The chicken was nice too. It's hard to resist a piece of nicely fried, golden brown chicken!

Nasi Padang is the cuisine of the Minangkabau ethnic group. I remember studying in school long ago that the Minangkabau people are a matrilineal society. That means the land and houses are inherited through the female lineage.

Here's a trivia for you.
Did you know that the first President of Singapore Yusof Bin Ishak and also the composer of the Singapore National Anthem, Majulah Singapura were both of Minangkabau descent?


Garuda Padang Cuisine
7-8 Amoy Street
#01-01 Far East Square
Singapore 049949

Tel: 6536 4111
Web: www.garudapadang.com


Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square: Stop 1, Stop 2, Stop 3, Stop 4, Stop 5, Stop 6, Stop 7, Stop 8

M. Hasan Railway Station Canteen @ KTM Tanjong Pagar Railway Station

If you are on the Singapore MRT, you will always hear, "Your attention please, eating and drinking are not allowed in the stations and trains".

But on the Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB)'s Singapore (Tanjong Pagar / Keppel Road) Station of the Railway network, you can eat on the station! More precisely, you can eat on the train platform itself!



This was taken about 1 week ago. Momo and I brought our parents to have a last visit and last meal at the railway station before the place closes down on 30 June 2011.

Wondering what to eat here?
Here's what we had.  We had 3 different kinds of 'goreng' (fried in Malay) food.

Kuey Teow Goreng

Our first goreng dish: Kuey Teow Goreng.

Malay style fried kuey teow. It was a tad oily, but it sure was delicious.
I like how they always have a splat of tomato sauce and a slice of cucumber over it.

Tauhu Goreng

The second goreng dish: Tauhu Goreng. (Fried Tofu).

This is the more Malay style, where pieces of tofu is deep fried and topped with scalded bean sprouts and julienne cucumber.  It's topped with a generous amount of peanuty sauce. The sauce here is not bad. Not the best around, but it's good.




The third goreng dish: Pisang Goreng (Banana fritters)

The pisang goreng here is very popular! Every now and then, a tray of freshly fried pisang will be brought out and you can see, people grabbing some onto their plates in the most polite way.

You know what I mean right - the meaning of polite? Smiling at each other, even without speaking, using hand signals conveying the message, 'you go first', the next person reciprocate by another, 'no lah, you go first'. Until someone finally relents and starts to grab some. You then see the person stacking like 15 pieces of pisang and you in your heart screaming, leave some for me!



The pisang pieces were huge! It's looked like pieces of fried chicken right?
Perfectly riped pisang deep fried and the outer layer of batter that stays crispy and crunchy. I tell you, you got to try this!

Only 60 cents per piece and it's huge.

Halal Yong Tau Foo

If you think all the 'goreng' stuff's too unhealthy, then go for the healthier, soupy stuff.
Momo got us some yong tau foo. She said it's not too bad.

Chapati

Another very popular stall is the Chapati Stall.
These two ladies or 'kakak' (elder sister) / 'makcik' (auntie), depending on how old you are, address them correctly and they will serve you with a huge smile.

They were making the chapati non stop, every piece was hand rolled and pressed on the heated pan to cook. Hard work! Certainly not the thawed frozen crap that you get in some food court.

I called them 'kakak' (to score some brownie points first) and asked if I could take a photo of them in Malay. She said sure, but wait, Kakak said she needed to adjust her apron and tudong first, then went to to flip the chapati. I wanted to laugh, but kept quiet.

In my not so good Malay, I asked where will they move after June 30? They said, they are taking a rest, they will go back to Kelantan to visit family and then decide later.




The usual order that most people ask for. Either 2, 3 or 4 pieces of chapati and the bowl of standard 'dip'.




I ordered 4 pieces of it, (each piece is 60 cents) because we ordered so many other things to eat.
These chapatis were really nice especially when it's hot right off the pan!

Something so simple made from wheatflour, water, salt and oil can taste so good!
I think I like it because there's no yeast in it!



The usual or default 'dip' / 'gravy' / 'sauce' that comes with it. It's made from minced meat with chunks of potato and curry powder. It's very tasty and I think they go very well with rice too!




I saw some sotong and ordered it as well. The father in law seemed to like this a lot.
He was especially delighted with the sotong roe that's stuffed inside the sotong. Something similar or familiar to his peranakan food.

Air Bandung

After the 'goreng goreng' food, the rest settled with hot 'teh' (tea) or 'kopi' (coffee) to help purge out the oil in the system, but I opted for the cool way. I had the air bandung. OK, it's way too sweet for my liking, but the colour's nice for photography?


Hurry down to the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station if you want to try out the food there.
The station will be handed back to Singapore from the Malaysian authorities. The last train in and out of Singapore will be on 30 June.


M Hasan Railway Station Canteen
KTMB Tanjong Pagar Railway Station
30 Keppel Road
Singapore 089059

West Co'z Cafe @ West Coast Plaza

We heard that there is a very popular halal 'zhi char' at West Coast Plaza. My colleagues wanted to try it out, so the 6 of us went there a few weeks ago.

When we got there, true to the hearsay, the place was really packed! You might need to wait a while for seats. We just happened to be there at the right time, because a big group left and the 6 of us took over the table. (allocated by the service staff)



We did not know what was the 'must have' here. We flipped through the menu and finally decided on the set menu for 4-6 person that cost $68.80. It seemed like a good choice. It allowed us to choose a dish from 5 different categories and drinks were included.

* Claypot Golden Chicken *

From the meat category, we picked the Claypot Golden Chicken. It is a bit like 'san bei chicken'. Anything that has a crispy outer skin with slightly sweetish and salty sauce taste good.

* Curry Fish Head *

From the fish category, we picked the Curry Fish Head. We picked this because we noticed almost every table ordered it!

The fish was very very spicy! The sauce is nice, spicy and makes you sniff when you eat it. It also had the ability to made a few of us crave it that we nearly soaked up every drop of curry!

There is something different or lacking about it. It's not that was not nice, it was quite good. We concluded that we are bias because we are more more used to the Indian Fish Head curry.

* Sambal Kangkong *

From the vegetable category, we picked the sambal kangkong, which was excellent. A tad salty like most Malay dishes. We wished the portion is bigger though.

* Oats Sotong *

For the seafood category, we picked the Oats Sotong. The reason we picked sotong over prawns was probably everyone was lazy to peel prawns!

It was quite fragrant and spicy. You can see bits of the fiery cili padi in it. Few colleagues were seen nibbling the fried oats until it was almost empty!

* Oyster Omelette *

There was a 'main category' in the menu which had 'Hotplate Beancurd', Salad You Tiao, Mango Salad and 'Oyster Omelette'. We wondered why it was called main.

We picked the oyster omelette which was something totally different from what we expected. We thought it will be something like the Chinese style oyster omellete. But it was totally different. It is more like scrambled eggs with oyster with lots of chilli!

You might just grow to like this!

* Rice oh rice *

The rice was pretty decent rice too. You might need more of it if you intend to pour the curry from the fish head over it.

The drinks that most of us had was lime juice.

One of the places that you can go with your Muslim colleagues.


West Co'z Cafe
154 West Coast Road
#02-23 West Coast Plaza
Singapore 127371

Tel: 67791303

Nasi Padang River Valley @ Zion Road

In about 2 week's time, our youngest brother will be leaving Singapore and going back to work in UK. Suddenly we all feel so sad. Our home will have one less person. It will definitely be quieter. (not that he's very noisy. lol)

Anyway, we are bringing him around to eat the local stuff before he goes back. So we start with Nasi Padang.



We had 6 of us. The following dishes fed us till we want no more. So stuffed with food!

The Sayur Lodeh.



The Sambal Goreng. Some people call it Tempeh Goreng.



The Kari Ayam.



The Sotong Sambal.



The Spicy Terung (Brinjal)



The Beef Rendang.



Begedil



The sambal belacan for that kick.



And they always provide some sauce for your rice. This is the Asam Pedas sauce.



The food's generally quite nice. But we thought it tasted better the last time. We wonder if it's only our taste buds or maybe it was our perception. We set our expectations a bit too high. LOL..

Today's beef is not as tender, maybe it's the cut that we got. We had 5 pieces, only two pieces were soft and tender, the rest was tough. We were all quite satisfied with the vegetable dishes. Well, our brother enjoyed it. He finished every single drop of the difference sauces!!

Around $50 for the above, with 6 plates of rice. We added 3 extra plates of rice later. :-)


Nasi Padang River Valley
55 Zion Road
Singapore 247780

Javanese Malay Food @ Clementi West St 2

A colleague said let's go to Clementi to eat some Malay Food yesterday. We were wondering where he would drive us. Oh... it was to Clementi West St 2.

He said the Javanese Malay stall that we used to go to (at Blk 727, same block as the 7-Eleven), he knows where it has moved to, after a long search.

It's now at Blk 722. They did not move too far away.



Our 'driver' drove us here so that he could eat his mee rebus. It does look very good. Thick gravy, portion's good too. Hmm.. next time I shall try it.



For me, I had the soto bee hoon. Compared to the soto I had (posted few days ago), the soup was better at the 'other' stall, but this one had quite a lot of ayam hiris (chicken stripes) and more bee hoon too. I was glad that they had quite a bit of bean sprouts too.

The spicy paste (the dark stuff in the middle) when you mix it into the soup, the whole soup changes. It gets really really spicy and the salt in it just brings out the flavour of the soup. I liked it.



Oh, this stall also has the lontong goreng. It's like chinese 'chai tow kueh'. Instead of carrot cake, it's ketupat for this dish. It's like mee goreng with mee, but ketupat pieces.

It's not too bad. But personally, I prefer my garlic infused black chai tow kueh. It has more uumpph. Maybe if they added lots of garlic to it... Hmmmm. LOL...



Previously (like 1 year ago or so) we used to eat their mix rice. The rice's good. But today was not a rice day for us. Next time.... ;-)


Stall 2, Okaki Coffee Shop
722 Clementi West Street 2
#01-150
Singapore 120722

Mee Soto & Mee Rebus @ Adam Road Food Centre

This stall was recommended by one colleague. It's at Adam Road Food Centre and heard that it's popular.



This was the Mee Rebus that I tried a few days ago.
To me it's so so only. Another colleagues said Mee Rebus should be eaten at Ayer Rajah Market. Was told in the morning, it's the pak cik that sells it. His portion is larger and he gives extra stuff.

In the afternoon, it's the makcik, and this was what I get. ;-p
I had to eat something else after.



This is their Mee Soto. (I had Bee Hoon, so it should be Bee Hoon Soto) This photo is one month old though. I think their soto's better. The begedil is quite yummy.

If you visit their stall, you can see a huge pot of gravy for the soto. (It's really huge pot that you gotta see it. haha)



Amirah & Nur Aniqah Mee Soto & Mee Rebus
Stall No. 9
Adam Road Food Centre
2 Adam Road
Singapore 289876