Hambaobao @ Beauty World Centre

The wife and I have been wanting to try HamBaoBao since it's in our neighbourhood. Everyday around evening, we would have to think what to have for dinner. Depending on baby's mood and the weather we plan where to go. Evenings are when I take over from the wife the 'duties' of taking care of baby. It's time when mummy eats a hearty meal so she is energized for the next day's routine.

The day was right, cool weather, this is going to be at a hawker centre on the 'rooftop' of Beauty World Centre where it's usually warm. So we hop on the bus and stop at the upcoming Beauty World MRT station stop.



The tables were mostly packed with everyone ordering from different stalls at this hawker centre. The 2 tables that were empty were right in front of the stall. Maybe it's our day to try it.

Looking at the menu and peeping at the orders that were going out, the wife knew she can wallop 2 of the burgers. The appetite of BF mums are enormous. They can eat and won't grow in size because of the calories burnt breastfeeding!

So the wife ordered and they asked if you wanted fairy fries, the wife said no, thinking it was just like other fries serves elsewhere. It was until we saw other people's orders of fairy fries that we decided we should try it as well, and she went to add one portion of fairy fries.


Crispy Pork Belly HBB ($4.50)

I had a smile on my face. My favourite meat with hoisin sauce, English mustard 'kiap' between a burger. Some meat with mustard over it, then topped with cucumber and the crispy bits!

The burger came together nicely. I love dipping my Crispy Pork in mustard to give it that bit of zing, the splash of English mustard they spread gave it the zing that I like. The cucumber also gave it a nice refreshing crunch and a little moisture as you bite into it. 



I thought it deserved another shot that here it is. I am becoming quite pro taking photos using the iPhone 6 without anyone noticing and I have a baby in kangaroo pouch position in front of me.

I also like the fact that it comes with a piece of paper so I can eat the burger holding the paper so that my hands are clean to take care of baby and nothing will drip on baby that's in front of me.


The Classic Beef HBB ($4.50)

The wife's first burger was the classic beef. Simple yet quite good. A beef patty, cheese, homemade tomato sauce, pickles and lettuce. If you like a simple burger and a meat eater, this is a good choice.  If you are a big eater, order 2, it can be small to some. The pricing allows you to order 2 without burning the pocket.

The wife always uses her hands eating her burgers. Since it's the husband's time to take care of baby, she can use her hands and get deliciously sticky hands. No fear, all well prepared mums have lots of wet wipes and tissues in the SG50 Skip Hop Diaper Bag! 




Oh yes, Fairy Fried are hand cut potato wedges. It's pretty addictive too.
No wonder everyone was ordering it.



Dat Dory Fish HBB ($5)

The wife loves fish burgers and this was her second burger. She said she'll gladly come to the fourth floor than to eat the fish burger on the first floor. (This only residents around this area will know what's on the first floor.)

A palm size piece of dory with tartar sauce, zucchini, red pepper and cheese. The wife likes it because of the grilled pepper and the tartar sauce. The fish has some char and was juicy, you can see it in the photo above. The overall bite into the burger is very balanced. She said this left a nice impression on her.

***

Fast forward 2 or 3 weeks later, we thought of the burgers again. Weather has been too warm and humid to bring the baby out, so I packed the burgers back.

Speaking from our experience, I would recommend that you eat there instead of packing it back and the Fairy Fries will become a little limp and also the burger buns have absorbed all the moisture from the burgers.



I misread wife's SMS and ordered a Dory plus extra beef patty in a burger. She wanted 2 individual burgers, but I ordered the 2 in 1. Well, now we know it can be done, fish and beef in a burger!

I am not a fan of Ayam Buah Keluak, but I ordered it because we have tried everything in the menu. The only thing we haven't tried. I should buy it for the Father-in-law who is Baba, he would appreciate the 'weird' taste of buah keluak.

Sis was also on our chat group and she said she want to try the burgers too even though she already had her dinner! She wanted the pulled pork burger.


Ayam Buah Keluak HBB ($5)

It tasted ok, I am not a fan of the taste of buah keluak, but I ate it, so I think probably Babas would love it. Knowing Babas and Nonyas, they are also a bunch of super picky people, so half of them will like it and half will say, my grandma's version is better. (I doubt their grandma will make a burger right? haha)

It's minced chicken with the rempah and buah keluak. It's a piece of dark patty. For the veggies, they use chap chye!

Buah Keluak fans, try and let me know if it's ok for you.


Dat Dory Fish HBB plus additional beef patty ($5 + $2.50)

The wife's fish and beef burger in 1. It does look good right?
I think next time I will have the Classic Beef + additional patty for myself.


Spiced Pull Pork HBB ($5)

It's pulled pork shoulder, cheese with homemade coleslaw. This is sis' order. I had a bite and it's not bad, but I prefer Crispy Pork Belly and the Classic Beef.

While waiting for my orders I read KF Seetoh's write up about them that was hung on the stall. This couple was previously studied food science diploma and nursing and decided to open up a hawker stall. Both of them are only in the 20s.


What would you recommend?
1.Crispy Pork Belly
2. Dat Dory Fish


Baby notes:
This place is a hawker centre, so it can be quite warm for babies on certain days. Find a table that's on the sides and it might be cooler. Baby was sleeping all the while in her BabyBjorn Carrier. It's a quick meal so you can bring baby back to the shopping mall to cool down a bit before going home.  Can't remember if there's a feeding or nappy change area as we did not need it.


Hambaobao
144 Upper Bukit Timah Road
Beauty World Centre
#04-49
Singapore 588177

Hours: 12 pm to 8 pm. Closed Mondays and alternate Tuesdays

DuluKala The Peranakan Home @ Beauty World Centre

Dulukala.... We have been eating here since the longest time. It was a pop and mom shop which was totally no frills and slow moving. We used to remember coming here with the elder couple doing everything. The aunty and uncle will take orders, then move to the kitchen to whip up your order. You can hear the clanging on their wok. The food was always good!

This recent visit here, it seems to have kept up with the times.  We think their kids or grandkids have taken over the operation. Oh why? You might ask. There is a new menu! A nice little book with peranakan motifs on it. Guess what is on the first page? They printed their Vision and Mission Statements! Someone taking over must have attended some business management course and spruce everything up!

We notice, their super old air-con has been replaced too! Look a new sign board too!

Oh, we spotted the elderly aunty on the night we ate here. Looks like she has surrendered her kitchen to the new kitchen hands.





This was the Assam Fish Head we had. (market prices, between $22 - $24)
If you like assam based sauces like our family does, you will like this dish. Pouring the assam sauce over your rice, it's utterly wicked! It has the right amount of sourness from the assam that really perks you up!





This was another of our favourite. If you don't eat ladies fingers because you hate the sliminess, then you should try their version here. No viscous liquid that oozes out of your veg! The ones here were "Wok Hei flavoured" too!





The Peranakan Meatball soup. The Bakwan Kepeting. $7. (Comes in a little claypot with 4 meatballs).
The meatball was good! Lots of ingredients have gone into making the balls! Whenever we have the soup here, the soup base reminds me of a particular brand of instant noodles! I want to find back that instant noodles that has this taste!




The Babi Pongteh. $6.50
If you are like my sister who has in recent months swore off fat meats, you will notice, they serve pieces of lean meat in their Babi Pongteh along with the triple layer fat version ;-)


My only complain is the portion is a bit small, and the version we had that night had a more porky smell. Other than that, we find it was lovely.





We are fans of chincalok and we love eggs. Here's the Omelette with Chincalok! $5




For desserts, we had the following to share amongst the 5 of us.

Two of them were free because we saw this huge banner outside that says free dessert with every $20 spent using DBS cards. We asked them how it works, and we were told you get a free dessert for every $20 spent. But we can only choose Bubur Chacha or Pulut Hitam from the menu as the free dessert. (why??)


The Pulut Hitam was quite nice. The warm mucilaginous texture with santan brings a smile to my sister's face.





I had to 'push' the ingredients a bit to the side to take a photo. The Bubur Chacha was nice and colourful! The yam, sweet potato etc was all soft and nice.
(But we think their supplier have been giving them discounts for sugar? hehe)





I realize something. We might find something really sweet (like the Bubur Chacha above). But something that is equally sweet, we find it enjoyable! OK, I admit I am bias to Gula Melaka!

I find the Chendol with lots of gula melaka acceptable! In fact, I love it!




Dulukala The Peranakan Home
144 Upper Bukit Timah Road
#04-04 Beauty World Centre
Singapore 588177

Tel: 6465 2036
Hours: 11.30am-3pm, 6-9pm

Joo Mak Korean Restaurant @ Beauty World Centre

Note (May 2012):
We recently bought Groupons and when you tell them you are using them, they display an attitude. Come on, we pre-paid the money to you!

Not sure if they have been overwhelmed by Groupon deals, but the food's not the same. We ordered a seafood pancake and there was no seafood in it. They later waived off the charges for that dish which they took away anyway, and we ate only a bit of it.

Also the day we went, they said they had no supply of chicken for the fried chicken. I wonder if it's only for that day. We were not very happy customers.
______________

Momo, sis and I were craving KFC, the Korean variety i.e., "Korean Fried Chicken".
So we decided we will go to our latest discovery of divine, mouth-watering Korean Fried Chicken.

When we got there, we realized the shop had a name change! It's now called Joo Mak Korean Restaurant. It was previously called Korean Restaurant Cliff if you look at this previous post.

We have no idea why they changed the name, but the folks managing the shop are still the same folks.





We had only fried chicken in our minds and not really interested in anything else.
But we know the chicken's going to take a very long time to be ready, so we ordered a soup and a bowl of rice to ease the hunger first.


Here's the banchan. (Korean side dishes).
In this restaurants, they use trolley to push out their food! They pushed out the trolley and unloaded these 11 small little side dishes on our table.

They were generally quite ok, except the kimchi served that night seemed a bit over fermented. Wonder if it's their specialty or  are we picky. ;-p





The soy bean soup that we had. It's like a spicy vegetarian soup.

There were like 4 or 5 kinds of root vegetables inside. It's also probably an acquired taste.
I thought it tasted a bit 'off' for my first mouth. As you drink the second mouth, it actually tasted rather nice and gets better.





After waiting for around 20 minutes, our chicken finally arrived!
We had the 'half-half mix' this time. The 'original recipe' and the 'spicy sauce' version.

The spicy version tasted very much of korean chilli powder mixed with some sweet chilli / tomato based kind of sauce.





When it's freshly fried and served, the original version tasted better.
We only managed to eat slightly more than half and packed the rest home.

Guess what? I stored them in a vacuum container (I have this set of container that you can a special tool to suck out all the air inside) and after 2 days, we heated the chicken and ate it for supper. The spicy chicken tasted so different! It was so so so delicious compared to the original version. The spicy sauce has totally been absorbed into the chicken!




We paid $40 for the above. Sorry I can't remember the breakdown.


I took their business card and realized they do delivery! But there was an asterisk beside the phone number that says, please order 2 hours before hand!!


Korean Restaurant Joo Mak
144 Upper Bukit Timah Road
#04-01 Beauty World Centre
Singapore 588177

Tel: 6466 7871 / 8229 4055
Hours: 11:30 AM - 3:00 PM / 5:00 PM - 2:00 AM

For delivery, remember to order 2 hours before. They deliver to West of Singapore. (Holland, Bukit Timah, Clementi, Dover, Choa Chu Kang, Jurong as printed on their card)
Delivery charge: Orders below $60, there's a $4 delivery charge. Above $60, free delivery.

Korean Restaurant Cliff @ Beauty World Centre

Yesterday's food diary entry was a high end Korean Restaurant. You get good service, nicely renovated restaurant, glossy menu and excellent food. The "Da Chang Jin" palatial  standard?

Today's entry is a cheaper, simple Korean Restaurant. It's like the small little Korean eateries you see in Korean dramas. But still you get nice decent food. This place I visited is located on the Food Court level, ie the Roof Top of Beauty World Centre. 

Sis and I have seen this place opened for some time. But we never thought of venturing in. So few nights ago, we decided to just walk in. (It was also because the Hawker Centre was just too warm to eat comfortably. hehe)




We were greeted by the Korean couple running this place. We guess it must be a husband and wife team. She asked if it's our first time here because we looked totally lost after 5 mins of staring at the menu. We did not know how or what to order.

She recommended a soup hot-pot dish saying "This one is nice. Can share. Popular" in halting Korean-glish. (Is there a Korean version of Singlish?) It did look good on the menu's photo, but we were not that hungry and we were thinking of snacking instead! We ordered 'snack food' in the end.

For drinks, we saw that their drinks fridge had interesting Korean can drinks. We picked two different drinks from the fridge. You should try the grape drink! The Koreans actually stuff real grapes into the drinks! Skinless green grapes! The Aloe Vera is not bad too. $2 per can. 




After waiting for a long time, our snack food finally was served! KFC! Korean Fried Chicken! We ordered the 4 pieces option. $10.80

While we were waiting for our food earlier, we saw the word "Chicken Up" all around the shop.  So I pulled out my phone and googled Chicken Up. The search results showed Julia's review on inSing.com. (Same name, but different location) But after reading what Julia wrote, we were looking forward to the chicken!

It did turn out quite nice! Sis who is now "Miss Calorie Counting" actually enjoyed eating the chicken! It was very hot! We could see the stream coming out of the fried chicken. They were huge too! It has super crispy skin. It had really moist meat, even for the breast meat. Very well marinated chicken!




The other snack was the Korean Pancake. Too floury for my liking. Remember I am not a flour person. Maybe we were more interested in the chicken that this. ;-)




To our surprise, even when we were just ordering snack kind of food, we were given side dishes! 10 of it as well! Some was nice, some so so lah. But still, there were a huge variety!




Looking at the next photo, you can tell this place is run by true blue Koreans. This was the order chit, which also doubled as the bill too after the meal. No service charge, no GST.

I took this photo at the counter with my camera phone. hehe... We got no receipt to remember the price.




A note though. It was a week night when we went. There were only 4 or 5 tables occupied. As it was a two person team (not sure if they have help on other days),  both of them disappeared to the kitchen to prepare food and no one was outside with the customers. It also took some time for our food to be served.

Not a bad place for fried chicken! Visit if you like Korean style fried chicken and fancy Korean can drinks!


Korean Restaurant CLIFF
Beauty World Centre
144 Upper Bukit Timah Road
#04-01 (Same level as hawker centre)
Singapore 588177 

Dulukala Peranakan Restaurant @ Beauty World Centre

Yesterday's dinner was Peranakan food with two other friends. One of them alighted from his 'transport service' at Rifle Range Road. The other friend has been obsessed with the recently ended drama, The Little Nyonya, so, we thought we shall try Dulukala at Beauty World.

It seems that after the drama, Peranakan restaurants all over has been quite popular. When we arrive the place was empty, but after a while, people started flowing in that those who came in a bit later had to be turned away because there's no tables left.

It has been a long long time since I came here.



Here's what we had:
The belachan chilli.



The ladies fingers fried with ikan bilis. $6.

When I cook this at home, it's always slimy, but the version here is not. (I wonder how they do it.) It is cooked with high heat, so there's this 'wok hei' taste and it smells and taste very good!



We wanted Itik Tim, but they came back to us saying they do not have it. (run out or not available? never mind..)
So we had the Bakwan Kepiting instead. $7



The Babi Ponteh $6.50. I like Babi Ponteh from anywhere. I think I like stuff that has 'tao chio'.



The Chinchalok Egg. $5. One of my favourites.
Chinchalok is made from Fermented Shrimp so it's an acquired taste. :-)




The portions are a bit small, so you got to order more dishes if you are a big eater. It's a very family business, so they take some time to prepare the dishes, so you got to be really patient.


Dulukala Peranakan Restaurant
144 Bukit Timah Road
#04-04 Beauty World Centre
Singapore 588177

Tel: 6465 2036

Dulukala - Peranakan Food @ Beauty World Centre

Yes, Veron's correct. It's Peranakan Food.
Dulukala is on the top floor of Beauty World Centre, and we occasionally go there.

Many people do not like Ladies Fingers (or known in some places as Okra) because it is slimy slimy. Well, if you eat this here, it is dry and not at all slimy.



This is Chincalok Egg. Not everyone's cup of tea, but for those who likes Chincalok, this is yummy!



This is how it looks inside, after putting a piece of it on my plate of white rice.



This is Beef Rendang. It's good. Just nice and tender, and I love it!



So busy eating the above, and forgot to take the soup! My bowl of soup had only the meatball left. So I took two pictures, you use your imagination to combine them up! haha..



Hmmm this soup, it reminds me of instant noodles chicken flavour soup though. hahaha... Koka brand ones!



Bon Appetit!