This is my first visit to Crystal Jade.

Okay please stop staring at me as though I’m a weirdo. When I mentioned on twitter that I have not been to Crystal Jade before, everyone gave me the ‘what-is-wrong-with-you’ reply.

I can understand the reactions, since there are so many different Crystal Jade restaurants in Singapore. From the fine dining Crystal Jade Palace restaurant, to the family-oriented Crystal Jade restaurant, Crystal Jade Korean Ginseng Chicken & BBQ or the causal dining options like Crystal Jade Kitchen and Crystal Jade La Mien Xiao Long Bao – there are options for everyone.

So when I finally stepped into Crystal Jade La Mien Xiao Long Bao at Ngee Ann City, there was a slight tingling sensation in my stomach. ‘Hello Crystal Jade, I’m finally here!’

There were so many items to choose from the Crystal Jade’s menu, and it took us a while before we decided on the Xiaolongbao, Zha Jiang Mian, and the famous Fried rice.

I have heard a lot about Crystal Jade’s Steamed Soupy Pork Dumpling ($5 for a basket of five). Apparently you can have unlimited servings of xiaolongbao if you go for the Crystal Jade Steamboat Buffet at Holland Village. But no thank you, I really don’t fancy having twenty baskets of xiaolongbao at one go.

We shared the five dumplings between the two of us, and they were gone in an instant. I was greedy and impatient, so I dipped it with the light soy sauce and ginger and placed the whole dumpling into my mouth — that was a huge mistake. The stock gushed through and burnt my tongue when I took a bite, but it felt so good.

We were stunned by the portion of the Noodle with Minced Meat & Mushroom in spicy sauce ($7.50) when it arrived on the table. I liked how the spicy-sweet sauce entangled itself with the la mien.

I’m not sure if my memory is playing a trick on me, but I actually prefer Din Tai Fung’s fried rice. While the portion of Crystal Jade’s Fried rice with prawn, chicken & ham in Shanghai style ($10.80) was impressive, it lacked a certain wok-hei flavor. In short, not the best fried rice that I had before.

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It’s actually not difficult to understand why Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao is doing well. The food is decent, and they are reasonably priced. It is probably around $10-ish per head to have a proper dinner here. You know what? I’m going to try out the Crystal Jade Palace restaurant for dim sum next.

Which Crystal Jade restaurants have you been to, and between Imperial Treasure or Crystal Jade, which one do you prefer?

Restaurant Review
Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao
391 Orchard Road #04-27
Ngee Ann City Singapore
Tel: +65 6238 1661

After sharing a nutella tart at Everything with fries, we continued our rendezvous at The Garden Slug, and having desserts at The Cheesecake Cafe in the middle of the night never tasted so good. Slurping down KOI Bubble Tea, checking out a new yogurt place and wandering around Parkway Parade for a Sushi high tea; all seems part and parcel of the perfect Saturday. We took everything With a Pinch of Salt and now I’m left wondering: what’s next?

I know honey, lets have Thai food tonight! Mmmm, but, but I am craving for a burger too! Two Fat Men is a no-frills cafe/bar located at East Coast road which serves Thai street food and Western Bar food.

Actually, I’m quite hesitant to describe them as a cafe since it isn’t one technically. Lets try again: Two Fat Men is somewhat like a watering hole set in a kopitiam setting, and interestingly, their menu has both Thai and Western influence.

The Grilled Pork Neck with tamarind spicy sauce ($8.90) was divine. Seriously, that’s all you need to know. No matter how much I raved about it, no amount of words would do justice to the beautiful and rosy pork neck, with a railway track of proportional fats running along the side of the meat. It was fatty, yet not cloying, luscious and so, so tender!

The shot of the Basil Chicken Fried Rice ($6.50) was less than flattering and all of us were obviously visual creatures when it arrived on the table.

“Eh, why did we order the fried rice?”

It was wrong for us to judge the fried rice by the plain appearance. I’m quite critical when it comes to fried rice, it’s either good or bad, no in between. But Two Fat Men’s Basil chicken fried rice totally won me over. Every Grain of rice seemed to capture the essence of the wok-hei. Honestly, I had no idea how to describe the fried rice – this was simplicity at its best. I’d definitely recommend you to try the fried rice and the grilled pork neck at Two Fat Men.

Like what I’ve mentioned in my previous post, size does matters when it comes to burger.

In this aspect, Two Fat Men didn’t really meet the requirement. The burger patty was substantial but not filling. My dining companion had the Cajun Chicken Burger ($6.90) which I felt was better than the Two Fat Men’s Beef Burger ($7.90).

After having a ‘main course’ each, there were still room in the stomach and we decided to order the Brats with fries ($6.90). It was an unfortunate closure for the dinner at Two Fat Men as the sausages and fries were run-of-the-mill.

Two Fat Men is somewhat like the Smok’Inn Frogz Kitchen of the East. Both Aston Specialties and Everything with fries are kind of over-hyped popular now, if you are looking for cheap and affordable food in the East of Singapore – I’d definitely recommend With a Pinch of Salt Cafe, and Two Fat Men. I’m so coming back again to try the other Thai food!

Restaurant Review
Two Fat Men
376 East Coast Road Singapore
Tel: +65 6346 0046
Open Daily 5pm – 3am

// Read my list of Thai Restaurants in Singapore.

I said this before – I have a simple tastebud, but nobody believe me, you know, because I am me. People expect to hear that I go to posh, expensive restaurants, attending cool, funky events, But I love my char kuay teow, hokkien mee, roast duck, and chicken rice! All I want is just a simple dinner with you, somewhere, just the two of us.

I love to look at you, taking a bite of the hot spicy stingray, and watched how it makes your lovely cheeks blushed rosy pink. And we grabbed your favourite avocado juice and slurped down everything to extinguish the fire.

I had fond memories of their fried rice from my previous visit. Unfortunately, I forgot that rice was the equivalent of carbohydrate, and you don’t eat so much rice. So a huge portion of the five-dollars-fried-rice went to waste.

And we called in the fire brigade again.

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Memories, are the stuff that life is make of. Thank you

Rong Guang BBQ seafood
Blk 120 Bukit Merah lane 1
#01-07 Alexandra Village
Tel: 9278 7579
Closed on Tue

It’s dim sum time again! This time we are heading to Zhou’s Kitchen, a mid-tier casual Chinese restaurant under Tung Lok group (TLG). Judging by its menu and interior, it is clear that Zhou’s Kitchen caters to the palates and pockets of diners from all walks of life. For its Anchorpoint branch, Zhou’s Kitchen is uniquely housed in a separate double-storey building known as the ‘Copperdome’, just outside the sub-urban shopping mall. There’s also two other outlets at Square 2 and Far east square.

Zhou’s Kitchen caught my attention mainly because of their high tea buffet which is at $16.80++ per head. Initially when they just launched this buffet, it was only on weekends, but they had since included in weekdays as well.

The interior was simple and decorated according to their theme of orange and green. There’s a total of 34 items to choose from the menu, which included some appetisers, soup, dim sum, rice & noodles, and desserts.

Prawn Crackers ($3 for 3 pax)

Zhou’s Kitchen provided prawn crackers for us to munch while waiting for the dim sum to be served. And just in case you’re thinking, they were not free. They charged us $3 for them since we had 3 person, so i guess its by head count.

Wonton

We was expecting wonton but it came in the form of the fried wonton skin instead. Fillings were minimum, but the sweet tangy sauce that accompanied the fried crispy skin was not too bad to start your meal.

Beef slices

I didn’t know what to make of this, i felt that the beef slices was average, the taste was forgettable, but then again, my friends thought it was not bad.

Salad prawn with mixed fruits

I’m a sucker for salad, so anything with salad wouldn’t taste that bad to me. The salad prawns were crunchy, a refreshing appetiser. But no doubt too much of good things could turn out to be bad too, as the salad dressings would be quite heavy.

Drunken chicken

This was easily the most unmemorable dish out of all the ones we had. Drunken chicken? Like what my friend said, it tasted more like “pig tails” to us (not that we had eaten pig tails before).

Pan fried chive dumplings with chicken

I ain’t a fan of chives, so anything from me about chives dumplings would surely be negative. You need to try this for yourself to find out.

Mini Egg tarts

Now, this is the real deal. By far one of the better dim sum i’ve for this meal, the mini egg tarts beared a reminiscent to the ones i had at Wah Lok, smooth and eggy fillings. And like before, mini egg tarts only posed the problem of being too small. But hey, we’re having dim sum buffet, this was all-you-can-eat, so no issue there. I lost count of the egg tarts i eaten that day.

Steamed pork and shrimp dumplings

As always, there’s pork, shrimp, fish roe in the Siew Mai. But Zhou’s rendition had a twist by adding in mushrooms as well. Although the taste of mushroom within siew mai didn’t really enhanced the flavour, but you got to give it to them for doing something different from the norm.

Steamed BBQ pork bun

Any char siew buns which had three parts would do for me. The one here was not bad, and although its very filling eating buns, i couldn’t help myself to two of them.

Steamed shrimp dumplings

The shrimp was good, crunchy and fresh. However, the skin was too thick and sticked to the teeth after eating it. But if you just wanted to make the most for your money, just order and eat as much as you can. Otherwise, i wouldn’t eat too much of it as the overly thick skin made me feel sick of dim sum.

Steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce

I always didn’t fancy ordering steam pork ribs, since there’s always hardly any meat on this type of steamed ribs, and unlike those “pork ribs king” which are popular in Zi-char stores, there’s nothing for you to chew on the bones here.

Fried rice with chicken and salted fish

The fried rice was surprisingly quite good, the wok flavour was evident with every grain of rice, and the clever use of salted fish did enhanced the taste of the fried rice. I’ll have ordered second servings if not for the fact that rices were very filling.

Deep fried prawn paste chicken

Their deep fried chicken marinated with prawn paste sauce, or Har Cheong Kai, was a laughing joke. The chicken was skinny, bare to the bones, the prawn paste was weak. I could hardly finish one chicken wing. Period.

Baked flaky BBQ pork pastry

The bbq pork pastry, or char siew sou, fared better than the rest. Although not excellent, but it’s still worth having second helpings if you are a fan of char siew sou like me.

Steamed custard bun

Their steamed custard buns brought back bad memories like the ones i had at Victor’s, the custard wasn’t cold, but they were very hard, unlike those good ones which had warm custard fillings oozing out with the lightest break of the bun.

Total bill was $66.30 for 3 person, which worked out to be around $22 per person. TLG is well-known in the local culinary scenes with their chains of restaurants, thus i was thinking Zhou’s kitchen couldn’t be that bad. But having been there, ate that, i would say their dim sum wasn’t worth the effort.

No doubt it’s cheap for all-you-can-eat buffets, you can gorge yourself silly, but i’ll rather eat less in quantity, and more in quality. I won’t bother going back again for their dim sum buffet, for a short while, i even felt sick of dim sum after eating so much that day, that’s why i disliked buffets, especially so if the food ain’t good. And by the way, there were 34 items, we tried quite many of them, but i didn’t show all the pictures out since the rest was either not worth mentioning, or we didn’t try them.

Zhou’s Kitchen
368 Alexander road
The Copperdom
Anchorpoint
Tel: 6473 1123

Rong Guang BBQ seafood has two outlets where you can enjoy your fix on barbecue seafood, one at Ulu Pandan road near Sunset way, and the other at Alexandre Village. Dinner was at the latter, and they are the only stall selling barbecue seafood in the whole food centre.

Alexandre Village like most food centres are divided into three parts, the right, centre and the left. When you got almost all the tables on one side of the food centre eating from a particular stall, you need not guess the popularity of it. BBQ seafood in hawker centres are always a common sight, especially in well-known ones like Chomp chomp, and Newton market, they always draw in the crowd, we just love our sambal chili don’t we!

BBQ stingray ($8)

The obvious choice when ordering BBQ seafood, people just love their BBQ stingray, it almost seems like when you mentioned BBQ seafood, stingray will immediately spring to your mind. The sambal chili packs a whole punch, plus the accompanying sauce which is sourish, goes every well together with the hot spicy chili.

We regretted ordering the small portion at $8, with the medium and big is $10 and $13 respectively. My brother finish the stingray in double-quick time and i only managed to get two bites. And i craved for BBQ stingray now.

Sambal potato leaves ($6)

I know people usually order sambal kangkong which is an extremly popular dish, and so do we. But this time we decided to have a change and ordered sambal potato leaves instead. I’m not exactly sure about the name of the vegetable, but potato leaves is the direct translation from Chinese.

The belachan, strong fried prawn sauce is hot and spicy, i’m not really a chili person, but i can’t help eating more of it while sweating profusely at the same time.

Fried rice ($3)

Surprisingly, the fried rice was actually quite good. I wasn’t expecting much and just thought that its normal fried rice when i happened to see another table ordering it, so i thought we would have fried rice instead of plain rice. The fried rice was very fragrant, i felt that it wasn’t the ingredients that made it good, but more of the skill in cooking the fried rice in the wok.

Total bill is $18.19 for 2 person, the pricing is similar to most zi-char stalls, and is definitely good for your pocket. The BBQ seafood is excellent even though i only try one of them, but i guess most of them are the same since the sambal chili is the key, and the rest will only depends on the freshness of the seafood.

I’ll certainly go back to Rong Guang again for my BBQ seafood cravings, and the one at Ulu Pandan is so near to my place. Look out for the next post on it!

Rong Guang BBQ seafood
Blk 120 Bukit Merah lane 1
#01-07 Alexandra Village
Tel: 9278 7579
Closed on Tue

Seafood Station, okay lets go straight to the point, the food is rather good but i wont go back again. Why? Poor service, price rather expensive relative to its small servings. But the main reason is the poor service which makes me think twice about going back. Anyway, when we reach the place at 730pm, the inside was full so we had to make do with the outer area. I did make a reservation prior going, but it was for 3 person, aunty geraldine family join us last min. The outside area had a lot insects flying around, so we was saying even if the insect drop into our food we also won’t know. O well, we saw a lot celebrity photos with the boss, so we thought the place must be quite good, but the dinner end up in a way we did not expect. Clearly fame does not shows anything.

Pepper crab was suppose to be Seafood Station Signature dish, but to our disappointment, the crab here was totally in a different league as compared to NoSignBoard or Jumbo, nowhere the standards to the other two. The meat was not firm, when we complain to the manager, he did show his goodwill by compensating us with abalone (the relative cousin not the real one) Any guesses how much this crab cost? A whooping $98! They claimed the crab was 2.8kg, but seriously there are only two crab, and we felt then that the crab was quite small and here they are telling us the crab was big? Come on man. For anyone who will like to try the true-blue singapore pepper crab, just go to NoSignBoard or Jumbo.

Deep Fried Baby Sotong ($8), although tried this dish a few times at different place, but can’t really tell the difference, all taste about the same

Golden Vegetables ($10)

Golden Crab Meat Fried Rice ($15 for Medium) This fried rice is good, i would say it is one of the better fried rice that i have tasted so far, but at $15 for the small servings i would think twice about ordering it again. It is just normal fried rice with a few slices of crab meal and voila a premium price is charged.

Fried Seafood Mee Swa ($12 pictures removed*) this one is also quite good, but you-know-what? Due to the poor service which the manager cited as mix-up in the kitchen, we waited one hour plus for this dish to appear. By the time the Mee Swa came, we were already full with anger. Need i say more?

Craypot Crab Bee Hoon ($31.50) We ordered this as a last add-on, so it came rather late also, i think compared to the pepper crab, the price for this crab is reasonable. The soup for the Bee Hoon was not too bad. But we were too piss off to really enjoy this dish.

All in all, i confirm guarantee plus chop that i will not be going back for Seafood, if someone wants to treat me there i will have to consider. The food can be not too bad, but with the service that i got, i wont consider going back. When we ask the manager why our food hasn’t arrive, he took the bill and ask us which one hasn’t arrive. I mean as a manager shouldn’t you all know which dishes have arrive and which have not? This is a serious sign of poor service. Although one of the manager tried to show his goodwill by giving us the fake abalone, the other manager was nonchalant about us, when we asked about the long delay in food served, he just went to check without really giving us a proper explanation. Come on, being a restaurant, the least you can do is to make sure the dishes arrive promptly, saturday for restaurants are considered peak periods, can’t they handle their peak period properly? Total damage was $ 220.10 for 6 person, 10% goes to service charge when they did not provide us with any service. Heed my advice, avoid this place, steer clear of it!

887 East Coast Road 459090

Tel: 6447 8885

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