I know it’s too early to ask, but what did you do for Christmas last year? I had an awesome impromptu party back in December with Monoxious, Dweam and Jayleif. When I say impromptu, I really mean impromptu since the whole party was planned in less than twenty-four hours.

It was a mad rush trying to find a nice restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner since most places were already packed. Rather than having traditional Christmas food like turkey, log-cake and ham, we decided to go for some exotic Vietnamese food instead.

Located at Orchard Central’s Sky Garden, NUOC is a relatively new Vietnamese restaurant in the Singapore food scene. It’s positioned as a semi-fine dining Vietnamese restaurant, and naturally prices are slightly steeper.

I always have problems when it comes to ordering. It was a hard decision trying to choose from the deep-fried and the Fresh Vietnamese Spring roll ($18 for 4 rolls), so we went for the easy way out and ordered both.

Fresh prawns, sliced pork, lettuce, Vietnamese herbs & vermicelli rolled with traditional Vietnamese rice paper. That’s what inside the spring roll. Or rather, that’s what the menu says. And there’s mint inside too. The mint was somewhat like the final touch to enhance the freshness of the rolls. Crisp, and sharp, every bite was delightful – unless you don’t like mint.

Which is better? The Fresh Spring roll or the Deep-fried Vietnamese Spring Roll ($12 for 8 pieces)? I’m a sucker for deep-fried food. As much as I know that deep-fried food is unhealthy, but it always makes the food taste so much better.

We also ordered the Egg plant ($12) and Stir-fried lemon grass and ginger chicken ($16). The former was mashy, and it kinds of resembled fish rather than egg plant, while the latter was mediocre.

When it comes to soup, I only like hot soup. Somehow I never like cold soup, I mean, soup should always be hot, otherwise it’s not soup right? At least, that’s my definition of soup. Even when it’s hot soup, I only like home-cooked Chinese soup. Which is why, you seldom see me ordering soup in restaurants. I’m not against soup, but I’d rather spend the money having another appetizer, or even better – an extra dessert. The intriguing name of Fresh Prawn in young coconut ($20 for 6 pieces) caught our attention, and the soup base was probably prepared for hours; it was rich, and intense and sweet.

* * *

NUOC is a very new restaurant, and they are still sorting out all the teething problems. When we went in December, the signature Vietnamese Pho (I remembered it as fur) was not even offered on the menu, I mean how can a Vietnamese restaurant not serve Pho right? Hopefully they should be serving Pho by now. Anyway, the view is gorgeous, if you want Vietnamese food in a nice ambience and do not mind paying more, NUOC might just be the place.

Now tell me, how did you celebrate Christmas last year?

Restaurant Review
NUOC Vietnamese Restaurant
181 Orchard Road
#12-01 Orchard Central
Tel: +65 6884 6808

I love a good restaurant. But if there’s one thing I like even more, it’s having good company for dinner together. Dining in a fine-dining restaurant is very nice, but it really depends on the people around you to make it even better. Sometimes we get lucky, it’s an extra bonus when we are dining with nice people, and it happens to be a very romantic restaurant.

Many people always ask me to recommend a romantic restaurant in Singapore, I’d like to tell them: so long you are with your other half, everywhere is romantic. But I can’t possibly do that can I? You want to know a romantic place for your first date, a romantic restaurant for birthday parties, a romantic restaurant for that special occasion, and like today, a romantic restaurant for Valentine’s day; it’s all about the ambiance.

I’m very pleased to ‘stumble upon’ Boathouse, a newly opened Modern European restaurant at Fullerton Water Boat House. Chic decorations that exudes a laid-back and homely feel, gorgeous view that overlooks the Marina Bay area, elegant and simple furniture, oh I love this place.

Fish Chowder Sea Bass Carpaccio ($15)

I had Wagyu beef on a couple of occasions before, but this was the first time that I actually had a Wagyu Beef Ribs. The first bite? It tasted just like pork ribs. The second bite? It’s definitely a lot better than the normal pork ribs. It’s a superior version, no it’s  wrong to even compared it with pork ribs. My dear, you are looking at the Wagyu Beef Ribs with Aged Red Wine Jus ($33).

The meat was so tender that it falls off the bone and melts in your mouth splendidly. Placed together in a plate, the wagyu beef ribs absorbed the aged red wine jus, and in turn the latter captured the essence from the long braising process. How good was it? Catherine wiped the plate clean with bread.

Ju had the Atlantic Pink Snapper ($25) instead of the Wagyu beef ribs. She mentioned that the fish was fabulously fresh, firm, sweet, and didn’t want to share it with us. An excuse to return? I’d think so!

I seems to be having a lot of pasta recently. Boy I’m glad all of them were good quality ones, and the Tagliatelle Wild Mushroom in Truffle Sauce (S$19) was no exception. Every slurp of the tagliatelle was intense, and so flavorful. Some might find it to be too salty and overpowering, but I thought that it was pretty well done.

The Caramel Apple tartlets ($15) were small. Fine, they were tiny. Initially the restaurant told us it was tasting portions, but after confirmation from a few friends who went there for dinner, they were still serve the mini apple tartlets for the full price.

Fifteen bucks for three mini tartlets and ice cream? I wouldn’t pay for this, and neither should you. Please do not order the apple tartlets until the restaurant made changes to it.

The mind is a funny thing. It always play tricks on you, and subconsciously conjured images of things that you wouldn’t want other people to see. Halfway through the meal, my mind decided to play a game with me. Like as though there was a remote control, it pressed the ‘play’ button, and memories of a very good semifreddo that I’ve before started to flash.

Reason #1 why the pastry chef here does not have a sweet tooth.

With the sourish fruit compote to compliment the White Chocolate Semifreddo ($15), it gave the impression of an anti-sweet establishment. Desserts, are after all, meant to be sweet. I tried the semifreddo on it’s own, and it was so good. In order to see the reasoning behind the inclusion of the fruit compote, I reluctantly had a taste of the semifreddo with the tart berries – well it wasn’t so bad, but I’d obviously prefer dessert to be sweet.

In my opinion, a good Panna cotta must have a firm yet wobbly-like texture. This one here was fairly competent, but under the limelight of the excellent semifreddo and creme brulee, the Panna Cotta did not make a statement.

Reason #2 why the pastry chef here does not have a sweet tooth.

The presence of the licorice reduction, with the Creme Brulee. I was told that the evil licorice was planning on taking over the dessert world, in a test-tube-like container.  Okay I exaggerated. You know, the guys (& some girls) who raise their eyebrow at the slightest mention of desserts? The licorice reduction would be perfect for them since it literally reduced the sweetness level, making me wondered why anyone would do that.

Oh well, that aside, I enjoyed the creme brulee very much.

Torched to a magnificent golden-brown, the underlying custard was naturally sweet. The contrasting layer of the cranky caramelized sugar with the beautiful custard: I’m in love with the creme brulee.

My middle name is dessert: apple tart with ice cream, creme brulee, panna cotta, and white chocolate semifreddo.

* * *

This is the second part of a series that I’m doing on the waterfront restaurants in One Fullerton. I’ll like to thank Fullerton Heritage, Sophia and Kannan of Boathouse for arranging and hosting this dinner.

BoatHouse is definitely one of my favorite restaurant now, and I will not be surprised if they are one of the best new restaurants in 2010. There’s a separate rooftop bar on the third floor called Prelude. Stunning, stunning place with an awesome view of the Esplanade and Marina Bay.

Prices range from $20s for pasta to $30s for a main course. For the superb location and wonderful ambiance, Boathouse is offering a very value set lunch; the 2 course set lunch is $22++, while I’d go for their 3 course set lunch at $29++. Most of the items on their set lunches are from the main ala carte menu which make it extremely tempting.

See you at the Boathouse Fullerton.

Restaurant Review
BoatHouse
#03-01 The Fullerton Waterboat House
3 Fullerton Road
Singapore 029415
Tel: +65 6538 9038

Boathouse is listed as one of ladyironchef’s favorite restaurants in Singapore.

In life we have dreams; they are our goals to work towards to, one step by one step, and approached it. I’ve always wanted to visit Spain; the country, with its rich culture and vibrant cities appeal to me, and of course, Spanish food.

I simply love the idea of Tapas; the option of having more variety of food in smaller bite sizes, seduces me. Why have two dishes when we can have four? And so our Spanish adventure started with the Plamuk tod ($12), tempura style calamari rings. Limon did a thinner version using less batter which allowed the taste of the squid. But the amazing thing was the strawberry yoghurt dip which came along with the calamari!

Tartar sauce? That’s so last season. Mayonnaise? That’s so passe. Try strawberry yoghurt dip!

Tapas has many similarities with our Chinese Dim sum; it’s the communal way of sharing food. Both encouraged people to try out more varieties, and at the same time shared the food with others. The Patatas bravas ($10) was essentially Spanish fried potatoes.

A little bit of this, plus a little bit of that

No I’m not talking about our saliva! We get to share food and try a bit of everything without getting full, isn’t that a brillient idea? There’s no beef in the Moo curry ($12), instead there was pork & potato cubes pan-fried, with the red curry sauce being a tad strong.

How come the sausage tasted like brinjar?

It was hilarious when we mistook the eggplant for sausages at first bite, I’m never a fan of the purple plant. The fusion aspect was on display by preparing the Spanish Bibao (sausages) with Thai green curry sauce. Chorizo con curry verde ($14)

Honey, they shrunk the prawns!

I was sceptical when the “king prawns” that they’d mentioned was so tiny, but for what was lacking in size, the prawns more than made up in taste. The “tiny” creature was so prawny and crunchy! With ingredients like olive oil, lemongrass, black pepper, garlic, nameko mushroom; it was a mixture of flavours.

The Gazpacho con vino blanco ($12) was a traditional Spanish cold soup, with the novelty level upped by serving it in a baby coconut husk. The white wine flavour was subtle, but the experience of drinking soup was redefined into drinking coconut!

Tom-kha Guy ($10)

Besides the “coconut soup”, Limon has a few other soup available for selection, and you know I never like such soups, so use your own imagination how it would taste like.

Pumpkin fusion soup with strips of Serrano ham ($13)

Tomato, Orange and lemon soup ($10)

Paella. This was THE dish besides churros that I was looking forward to. And I had problem pronouncing it the whole night, so I came up with a simple way of remembering it, paella (my own pronunciation: Pie-ya). It was done with a Thai twist; incorporating tom-yum with the Spanish paella, there was plentiful of mixed seafood. It was delicious, every grain of rice tasted so good. Since I did not have paella before, there was no way I could make comparison, but it was good enough for me. And the tom-yum flavour wasn’t even strong (at least to me). Paella de tom yum ($20 for main size)

You like fish?

You will definitely love the Bacalao ($36)! The blue cod fillet was so fresh that it seemed alive on my plate, but I would prefer it to be slightly more pan-fried on the surface. Every piece of flesh was so delicate when our utensils touch it, oh baby, I’m gonna eat you up!

The lomo de cordero ($35) was a perfect sight to behold. There’s something about the Rack of lamb, which always make it so sexy! But somehow the ingredients like rosemary, oregano, mint, white wine, lemongrass sauce did not manage to cover the gamey taste.

Lobster, I love lobster! And I’m not going to share with you. No, get your hands off, it’s mine, it’s all mine! I was freaking excited when the Live lobster krapow ($38) arrived on our table. Every bite of the oven-baked lobster was so good, but there wasn’t enough meat for me! Taking a fork, I tilted the lobster head upside down, and dug at the shell beneath it, and yes, there was more lobster meat there!

On first look, I thought it was panna cotta, the Italian dessert. But it wasn’t. The dessert in picture was a Lemon caramel egg custard flan ($10). The texture was very similar to panna cotta, but I couldn’t quite figure out what was the difference.

And yes, I know chocolate cake has nothing to do with Spanish or Thai, but apparently the pastry chef at Limon does such a good chocolate cake that they decided to put it in the menu. And boy, it was true. The Homemade Chocolate cake ($9) paired with vanilla ice cream was a delight! If you could look at the plain chocolate cake up there, there’s the lava-flowing chocolate on top of the moist chocolate cake. Even though it was a pity there wasn’t any vanilla bean ice cream, but a scoop of cold icy one was enough to bring out the best of the chocolate cake.

I love to share food. But somehow the evil twin in me took over when we had the Crema Catalana con frescas ($10). There are times where you eat something that was so good, yet you couldn’t tell what it was, so you just ate, and ate, and ate. This was what I did, I took a spoonful of the egg based cream, put it in my mouth, and I couldn’t taste what it was. And the second bite became even better. So I simply took up the whole glass, dug, and dug further into, until the whole dessert was finished.

* * *

It was a medley of flavours when the Spaniards and the Thais come and play together. This was my first time trying Paella, and I’m glad I tried it! My appreciation to Towie, the owner of Limon, and Nicole for hosting us for the food tasting session.

And now for the good/great/terrific/fantastic news, I’ll be doing a food outing event (yes finally), at Limon on the 10th August for dinner. It would be a public holiday so I hope to see all of you there. The details of the outing will be in my next post.

Limon restaurant
7 Purvis street #01-01
Tel: 6333 9004

My love affair with XLB starts way back; I fall in love with her at first sight, every petite piece so delicate and exquisite, she, who has the ability to make my heart skip a beat when I place her on my lips, she, who makes me go crazy and think of her everytime.

The two different XLB was made by two different pairs of hands; the one on the left was by me (note: the uneven folds) and the one on the right was by the master of course.

At Din Tai Fung’s media preview of their new mini steamed pork dumpling (xiao long tang bao), we were given a hands-on experience on making XLB. And that’s why I like dim sum so much; it’s easy to pop a piece inside our mouth, but to make each piece so delectable there’s much hard work and effort involved.

The requirement for a standard XLB is 18 folds, and it’s definitely not easy to do it, especially so when we only had half-an-hour of lesson beforehand, where the chefs actually train for a year to achieve the result. It’s only when you experience how difficult it is, to make a XLB before you actually appreciate the hard work put in by the good people slogging it out in the hot kitchen everyday.

The new mini steamed pork dumpling (XLB), or xiao long tang bao, whatever you call it, is 50% smaller than the regular XLB. Just imagine doing 18 folds on a normal size XLB, and now you do it on half the size of XLB; the xiao long tang baos are notoriously difficult to make!

I love to eat eggs; scrambled, poached, fried, sunny side up, steamed, over-easy, salted egg, quail egg, but with just the exception to century eggs. There’s no reason, but the black glossy appearance never appealed to me. Century eggs with fermented soya ($3.50)

As to the origin of drunken chicken, I do not know the story of it, but I do know that the Original Shanghainese drunken chicken ($6.80) had a strong alcohol taste infused in the smooth chicken meat.

Taking up a piece of the mini cucumber, crunch crunch; the inherited sweetness of the green plate had an addition spicy twist to it. Crunchy Mini Cucumber in Spicy Sauce ($3.80). Just for bites.

Much as I love my veggies, I was never a fan of vegetables in dim sum; somehow the steamed vegetables inside dumplings didn’t work for me. Neither did the Steamed vegetable & pork dumpling here.

This was a make-over of our regular siewmai, done the XLB-style. It was quintessentially an open-faced XLB with a shrimp sitting pretty on top. Shrimp & pork shao mai ($13.50 for 10)

I love to drink soup that is thick and tangy in flavour, with lots of ingredients that bear a close reminiscence to Shark’s fin soup. The Hot & sour soup ($6.80) was not bad, but the excessive pepper overwhelmed my taste buds.

Springy noodles that bounced off your tongue, that might sounds exaggerating, but I like my noodles done that way. The Noodle with minced pork in bean sauce ($7) was delightful with the generous toppings of bean sauce; it was a simple bowl of noodles, but I like it!

The Crispy golden prawn pancakes ($8.50) were nice as appetisers too, fried till golden brown, the crispy pancakes crusts were addictive to bite on.

I wasn’t too impressed with the Stir-fried nai bai with garlic. I’m not sure whether the chilli was supposed to be there as a decoration, or was it to enhanced the taste, but personally I felt that nai bai and chilli didn’t work. Plus the garlic wasn’t fried enough to infused the vegetables with the fragrance.

And now the star that we’ve been waiting for. Introducing, the Mini steamed pork dumpling with superior chicken broth ($10.80 for 10 pieces). As you all know, XLB itself has lots of soup stocks within the skin, but we were given a bowl of chicken broth to go along with the Mini Xiao Long Tang Baos (XLTB) this time round.

Filling the spoon with the chicken broth, we placed a piece of the mini XLB into it, add some ginger and vinegar and put everything into our mouth; the chicken broth was subtle, bordering on bland, and it was the stock within the XLB that gushed out that stole the show. Taste-wise there wasn’t much to differentiate the XLB and the XLTB , but it was a novelty and certainly less-filling to eat the mini.

* * *

It was indeed fun to have hands-on experience on making XLB, my appreciation to Clement & Andrew from ICON for the food tasting invitation, miss Patsy from Breadtalk, and the chefs who taught and made our XLB. The Xiao Long Tang Baos are available exclusively at Din Tai Fung Paragon from 1 June 2009, 3-5pm for weekdays, and 10am-12 noon for weekends.

Din Tai Fung
290 Orchard road
#B1-03 Paragon
Tel: 6836 8336

The beautiful, each piece: Oh-so-dainty, Oh-so-refine. Almost like art, delicately crafted.

O’ my dear, I love you so. Never in my heart, I stopped thinking of you. Miss sushi, and Miss tapas: both seemed to  be more popular than you, but I will always put you in the first place.

It was big, no, huge! This was, one of the many, different renditions of har gau we would see today. Essentially a har gau without the skin; the crab meat dumpling. It was prawny, with a nice bite – but crabby (no pun intended) it was not, well who cares?

Rather than an-overly-thick-skin, give me a dumpling without skin.

The well-admired Steamed Prawn Dumplings had an injection of carrot purée which only served to beautify the appearance of the har gau skin.

“We protested! We protested!”

The purist camp did a demonstration on the streets, crying for the restoration of the conventional har gau which they were so used to. But for the ladies; the boost in vitamin A. What was missing however, was the carrot taste.

The novelty. The inclusion of preserved vegetables was a brilliant stroke of art; the saltiness enhanced the flavour of the pork, which brought us to the question: why didn’t anybody thought of this before? Steamed pork dumpling with preserved vegetables, siew mai.

Now this was a not-so-simple bun that was bound to turn heads. Served piping hot, the bun seemed quite insignificant until you took a bite at it. Immediately, you would realize that you just had something very special. The bun itself was soft, fluffy and light as a feather while the fillings were so, so sweet and juicy. The Steamed kurobuta char siew pork fluffy bao, was the winner for the day.

The humble har gau did an open-faced sandwich; with shark’s fin on top. Luxury, it was, wealth, it symbolized, and prestige, it presented. Sorry sharky! Steamed shark’s fin dumplings with dried scallops and shrimp.

The tinge of pink, at the top of the tri-top; pretty and so pretty. Another piece of art we seen, at the gallery of Cherry Garden. However, the Scallop and spinach crystal dumpling did came across as slightly dry.

Truffled Essence Crystal Dumplings stuffed with Assorted Fresh Mushrooms. This, was a beauty; the translucent skin, the jelly texture, the array of mushrooms, almost perfect – but it was too large!

Prawn was the main lead, and mango was the second lead. There was the accompany of the green, hot wasabi! Netted rice crispy turnover. I held you, in my arms, into the late wee wee hour: without the wasabi! My dear, the netted rice crispy turnover.

And there was the famous XLB. The voluptuous folds, the goodness of the soup stock, everything, gushing out.

Like a peacock spreading his feathers, the netted rice crispy did a peacock effect: it caught everybody’s attention. Oh my, so beautiful, was this meant to be eaten?

And oh wait, there’s something hiding below the feathers; the netted rice crispy I meant. Ah, that’s the pan-fried chives and chicken dumplings!

Unfortunately, I was not a big fan of chives – I would leave the taste of the dumpling to your own imagination. This was, a piece of art! Why don’t we turn it upside down?

This was the umpteenth time we had a make-over of the har gau, they called it, Steamed Chinese spinach dumplings. The spinach, provided the lovely lines, just like how a painting adorned the wall. The egg yolk, provided the oomph, so, so good.

This, was a poisonous pear, for snow white. The wicked witch threw in some pumpkin, a pinch of jicama, stirred stirred, mixed mixed, and finally, some vegetarian ham.

Poof! With a wave of her wand, the deep-fried potato “pear” appeared. Crispy texture checked, mesmerizing appearance checked, vegetarian (snow white is on a diet) checked. Sticky innards (to stick the mouth together) checked. Everything was present, and OH, where’s the poison?

And we took a plunge, into the deep, deep blue sea. From the land to the sea, the Symphony of live pacific grouper prepared in three different ways. The first: we have a soup, grouper fish broth with ginger, onion and Silken tofu.

Steamed grouper crystal fish dumpling.  Was this a dim sum, or was this a fish? It was both, with a twist. Brilliant it was, bravo we shouted. Grouper fish meat inside a dumpling of the fish skin. It was beautiful, too beautiful to eat.

It was not all smooth-sailing, nothing was. As much as I loved the creativity, there was a snag. The use of fish skin, for the translucent was great for the eyes, but not for the mouth. It was chewy, and slightly fishy: non fish lovers, would say, no no!

Prawn and pork, were absent. I give you fish, fish for dim sum. The very first, I believed. Let there be more, say fish siew mai? This, surely, would be a great day for all the fish lovers.

One price, one fish, for the value of three. Worthy, indeed. Sautéed grouper fillet with asparagus, no parts of the fish were wasted, from the meat, to the skin.

I have always wanted to go to Cherry Garden. And I’m glad I finally did. It was a feast, for the visual senses. The dim sum, so delicately craft piece by piece, was an art, for all to enjoyed. Creativity was certainly in the air, the adventurous use of different ingredients, the details to attention for the tiniest things, the emphasize of making it look as good as it tasted. I’m sold. Praises, have to be reserved for the savvy and charismatic executive Chinese chef, Mr Hiew Gun Khong.

Cherry Garden has the weekend dim sum ala carte buffet at $45++ per head, which has a selections of 20 over dim sum, and other Chinese food as well. My appreciation to Kelly, the PR relations manager for hosting us, and Cuisine & Wine Asia for the invitation.

Read my fellow food blogger review:
Catherine @ Camemberu here
Leslie @ ieatishootipost here
Julia @ Aromacookery here
Leroy @ Hungrycow here

Cherry Garden
5 Raffles Avenue
5F Mandarian Oriental
Tel: 6885 3538

Cherry Garden is listed as one of ladyironchef’s favorite restaurants in Singapore

I am never a good cook, I can fry eggs, I can handle some simple home-cook dishes; that’s about it. And I’m always hungry, always. And the folks at Les Amis has come up with a solution – Lazy Gourmet.

Lazy Gourmet is created by the chefs from the Les Amis group of restaurant. Delicious, fuss-free range of frozen gourmet dishes. It was really a no-brainer and easy job to prepare a simple dinner using the Lazy Gourmet products.

There are three options to heat up the food, one by direct heating; defrost the pack first and pour the content into a pan. Stir frequently at low to medium heat. Two by microwaving; defrost first and empty contents into a microwaveable dish with a fitted cover. Microwave at medium heat for five minutes. And three by boiling (which I did for mine), place frozen or defrosted bag into boiling water and heat for 10-15 minutes.

Beef Bourguignon comes with tomatoes and smoky bacon. I had it with white rice; big, big bowl of rice. And I eat, and eat. The rice was gone – and so was the beef brisket.

Now I’m not the biggest fan of meatballs, but my brother is. So he dutifully finished up everything for me. The Home-made meatball in cream sauce was supposed to be served with pastas, but since we did not have any at home, we ate the meatballs, on its own. The cream sauce was good, but I found it a tad too oily.

From the photo of the box, I wasn’t expecting the pork medallions to be so huge! With the lovely potatoes, one on my left, and one on my right. There was a subtle sweetness in the cream sauce, which was extracted from the prunes.

In French they call it Pot au feu, the Vietnamese has their own rendition in the form of Pho. And so does the Germans, Eintopf, although I have neither try or hear of it before. But I do know our very own Chinese hot pot. There was beef, and there was chicken; it tasted more like roasted pork to me. Although there’s the broth of vegetables like cabbage, fennel, leek and carrot, it will be great if there are more vegetables!

This is no Campbell soup. This is country-style mushroom soup! Unlike the fanciful name, the soup was in fact very down-to-earth, nothing pretentious. There were hints of butter and onions with each mouthful of soup.

***

I will like to thank Jasmine from Lazy Gourmet for sending me the sample products, and my apologies for delaying the post because i tried one pack at one time. From what I understand, Lazy Gourmet is currently available only on their website, and selected supermarkets at Meidi-ya and Isetan Shaw & Scotts.

For more information please visit Lazy Gourmet website here.

Television often play an important part in our life, and definitely have great influence on many people. But the debates on whether it is a good thing or not continues to rage on. Many certainly thinks that Television’s one of the greatest inventions, while some in the other camp believe that it is a bad influence on children, especially so when they get addicted to watching TV programmes. Did you ever hear a parent telling her kid to watch more TV shows?

Recently, we have a television show on Channel 8, “Buffet Buffet” which has garnered much interest among the young and the old. And its hard not to see why, food-related programmes have always been a hit with the audience, not to mention this one introduce all kinds of buffets in Singapore. I saw Penang place restaurant on one of the episodes, and since the price is reasonably cheap and near to my place, why not?

If you just watch the crowd in the place without knowing where is it, you’ll never guess its located within the International Business park (IBP) at Jurong. Perhaps that’s exactly the reason why the owner set up shop there, since there’s so many hungry white collar workers in all the offices around. The atrium building is just beside Creative, so its pretty easy to find, and there’s shutter bus from Jurong East mrt station.

Penang place oozes a sense of tranquil with its simple furnitures, and the water settings just beside the restaurant. It was fully packed when we visited on a weekday lunch, Singaporeans do love their buffets!

The selections actually is pretty decent given its reasonable pricing of $19.80++ for weekday buffet lunch.

Well, the intention was to make it an ice kachang, but we somehow added toppings which we like, so it didn’t look exactly the bit like ice kachang.

The Penang laksa actually comes in the form of Assam laksa, sour and spicy in taste, which differed greatly from our local version. The katong-laksa purist might not take quite well to this, which is more like a mix between tom-yam soup and laksa, with the sourish taste dominating the taste bud. But that’s the authetic Penang laksa for you.

I was rather impressed with the seafood soup, well for one it tasted like shark fin soup (even though there’s no shark fin of course), and secondly, i felt that it was similar to my mom’s home-made soup, and that’s a compliment!

What do you think of when I mentioned Penang? The name synonymous with the city is definitely Char Koay Teow. And if you didn’t notice, even the spelling differs slightly from ours. Well, there’s also Assam laksa, wonton mee and hokkien mee too, but Char Koay Teow certainly is the one which leave most people with memorable memories of Penang. Their rendition comes slightly spicy, not too oily and with a generous serving of ingredients. And the best part? Penang Place actually replenished their char koay teow in small portions very often, since it’s like the most popular dish there. While Char koay teow has a reputation for being unhealthy, and even though i had eaten it twice that week, i couldn’t help myself to second helpings. My sinful food.

The Nasi Lemak is served simple and nice with the fragnant rice, crunchy ikan billies, crispy peanut with cooling cucumbers. There are some other common dishes like curry chicken, fried food, but one dish which i found it good was the Batu Uban Ayam Panggang, which was seasoned grilled chicken with peanut sauce. A pity it was gone when i wanted to take a shot of it.

Glutinous rice is often use in the Asian context, and its no surprise to see the Kueh Salat here. Basically steamed glutinous rice topped with a layer of pandan flavoured custard. Well, i didn’t know if it’s just me or what, but i didn’t really enjoy glutinous rice done this way. The taste was rather weird for my liking, and i guessed i still prefer the Chinese dim sum glutinous rice in lotus leaf.

One of my personal favourites, the Kueh Dardan was actually pandan flavoured pancakes filled with sweetened coconut shavings. The pancakes were very soft and nice, with the coconut shavings coming not too heavy. Easily finished a few of them even thought we were full from the buffet.

Another glutinous rice, the Pulut tatai, steamed glutinous rice eaten with kaya.

Kueh Kosei, palm sugar roll with coconut shravings.

Another dessert, or rather kueh that i enjoyed was the Kueh Talam. Essentially a pandan flavoured cake topped with a savoury coconut milk layer, the pandan cake was very fragnant indeed.

Total bill was $69.90 for 3 person at their weekday lunch buffet. I must say, for $23 per head after taxes and service charges, its rather reasonable for the amount of food served. Note, i didn’t say its excellent, but for the price, its rather acceptable since i find it hard to name another place serving buffet in the 20 dollar range which is good. I guess the money will be worth it if you eat more of their Char Koay teow which will cost $8.90 if you order a plate a la carte.

The location might be a tad difficult, since its within the International Business Park, people wouldn’t travel all the way there just for their buffet, but i did. Well for the rest of you lucky souls who are working in the area, i’ll say this is one place to check out for lunch when you are in the mood for a longer lunch.

Penang place restaurant
6 International Business Park
#01-05 Atrium
Tel: 6899 9446
Lunch: 1130-2pm

Another store which stood out at Lau Pa Sat for its unique name, was Souper! Like the name implied, the food couldn’t be far off from soup, and it did slightly remind me of our Chinese steamed soup with rice. Well except for Souper they had baguette instead of rice to go along with the soup.

There’s four choices, the mushroom, clam chowder, garden salad, and maryland crab soup, which all came in two sizes, the 12oz, and 15oz.

Souper! Value Meal ($6.50)

There’s a souper value meal which consisted of a choice soup, baguette, meatballs and bashed potatoes. It’s more worthwhile to get this rather than just the soup and baguette alone. The meatballs were not too bad, and they strike a cord with Ikea’s Swedish meatballs, which also had strawberry jams to accompany the meatballs.

My friend tried the maryland crab soup for the value meal. But somehow we didn’t particularly enjoy the soup, like i always mentioned, i’m not a soup person (other than my mom’s soup of course).

Total cost was $6.50 for the Souper! value meal, which i felt was quite worth the money since there’s a soup, baguette, meatballs, and also bashed potatoes. Nothing fantastic, but it’ll do for a simple lunch. Even though i don’t really like the soup that we had, Souper! does deserved a praise for being the outstanding one in the midst of the many stalls in Lau Pa Sat, for coming out with something different from the norm.

* * * Now Closed * * *

Having visited Absolute Haven before, I shall skip the niceties and move on to the food. Do look at my review during my previous visit to find out more about Absolute Haven (AH). I decided on AH for lunch on that particular day since my cousins have budget concerns, and i happened to remember about AH weekly set lunch promotion. A nice fit.

The previous time i had dinner, but being on the mailing list of AH, they sent me regular updates on their current promotions, and now they are having their weekly lunch promotion, $9.90++ for a 3 course meal, available Tuesday to Sunday.

Soup of the day

The soup of the day was grilled vegetables soup, there were green and red pepper, carrot, potato and some other vegetables. Slightly spicy and sour, the grilled-taste was evident in the soup. I ain’t a big fan of soup, o well.

Oatmeal Crusted chicken breast

There’s two main course available for selection from their set lunch menu, and one of which was the Oatmeal crusted chicken breast with miso braised rooted vegetables and pically sauce.

Thinking back now, i didn’t recall tasting any miso flavour in the root vegetables, and just what exactly was pically sauce, i never found out. I reckon it’s the slightly sweet and sourish red sauce which gave the chicken breast an additional zing.

The chicken breast strike out as dry and hard. But never judge a book by it’s cover, or rather in this case, never judge a chicken by it’s look. We were proven wrong by the first taste of the breast meat. Despite the dry look, the inner portion of the meat retained the soft and moist texture. I always dislike eating chicken breast because i found them to be too hard and dry, but this one’s the complete opposite.

Seafood ragout angel hair pasta

The other main course, was the seafood ragout angel hair pasta with tom yam pesto sauce. I was curious about the angel hair, having saw it but never try it before. Like the name implied, angel hair is a very thin variety of Italian pasta, which beared a resemblance to the Chinese rice vermicelli.

The tom yam pesto sauce did gave the pasta a different twist in flavour. It was spicy, sourish all together as one. I didn’t really fancy tom yam flavour, but if you are a tom yam fan then this should do the trick for you.

Dessert of the day

We rounded off our 3 course lunch with a simple triple chocolate ice cream.

Total bill for 4 set lunch was $46.3 which worked out to be $11.50 per person. I was initially skeptical about AH set lunch because at $9.90 per person it’s totally in a different league with its a la carte pricing. How good can a 3 course meal at $9.90 be, when a normal main course for dinner at AH cost around $20.

But like what i found out, there isn’t anything intriguing about the food at AH set lunch, but it does provides value given you can have a soup, a decent main course and a simple dessert all for $11 per person. With western food at some food courts costing around $6-8 bucks, i say this is really a good option for lunch if you want somewhere with a good ambience, but at the same time not hurting your pocket. And one of their main course option changes every other week. So there’s always variation for you.

Absolute Haven
70 Prinsep Street
Tel: 6333 4358