My heart skipped a beat when i saw it from afar. Deep down, I thought “no way man!”, it couldn’t be. As i approached it nearer and nearer, the sight of the two pure white kitchenaid further excited me. And the name was just the perfect icing on the cake, The icing room! The pinkish-white colour domination which so reminded me of Twelve + one, with the adorable ornament, everything was perfect, until i spotted the name Breadtalk on one of the cake box.

Boy, the coup de grâce was performed when i then noticed the Chinese name, Dan gao si yu, which was so Breadtalk (mian bao wu yu), and a branch of Breadtalk and toastbox just beside it. Now don’t get me wrong, I have totally nothing against Breadtalk. It’s just that i wasn’t expecting Breadtalk to behind the icing room concept.

When i thought the stagnant Breadtalk is down and out, they managed to turn the table around and pulled a rabbit from the hat. Voila! You’ve to give credit to Mr. George Quek and his team for coming out with this, although the icing room has yet to prove itself, they managed to capture me on the first impression, and that’s all it mattered.

The idea which i always had in mind, a place to do-it-yourself cakes. This, is one very good idea. The crowd surrounding the store gave a very good indicator, for just $11.90, they provided you with a small cream cake, and you get the pleasure to decorate your very own cake on the spot. Its that simple, no need to buy ingredients, no need to get your hands dirty, and no need to wash up.

Like what the chef there mentioned, “It’s like fulfilling a child’s dream”. I’ll like to add something to that, i bet adults would also love to play with the cake, a very nice gift for your loved ones.

Now to put everything to test, i picked the Apricotte ($3.80). A layer of caramel on top, with apricot mousse in between  the cake. I couldn’t get the taste on my first try, so i took another bite. And this was followed by eating the different layers separately. Everything, just tasted so, ordinary! I must admit i’m fairly disappointed with the cake, not that i was expecting much though. And the berry was sour.

If you thought that everything was a surprise so far, wait until you see this. Lo & behold, Macarons! And this is Breadtalk which we are talking about. Bread alright, but macarons?

I couldn’t resist buying a few to try out, not when they are only $1.50 each. There’s five different flavours available, matcha, strawberry, chocolate, passion fruit, and yam. However, i wasn’t adventurous enough to try out the yam option. Play safe, think baby steps.

And when it was time to try them out, my first bite went to the strawberry macaron ($1.50). The opening nibble was still alright. But as time goes on as it surely will, the whole taste becomes overly sweet. Well I’m not exactly a macaron expert, the brittle shell wasn’t chewy enough, and the slightly sour strawberry fillings wasn’t to my liking.

Well if I’m not wrong, macaron does not involve the use of milk in the process. But for some strange reasons, there’s a strong milk taste which covered the matcha, or maybe it’s just my taste bud). Needless to say, the matcha flavour was weak, and this one was out as well. Their macarons are all small (not as tiny as Carousel though), and everything was just too sweet.

So when everything fails, you go to your comfort zone, the safe option yes? The chocolate macaron was what i’ve in mind just in case everything else don’t work out. And the results were played out in a totally unfashionable manner, somebody forgot to tell the jam within the macaron to follow the script. It gave a sour-sweet contrast with the chocolate macaron, but it wasn’t what i was looking for.

Now, the conclusion. Interesting concept, with a fascinating set-up, and i was surprised they didn’t incorporate a dine-in area, which would provide some competition in this Canele-dominated area. Well, Breadtalk clearly has the financial muscles to provide some fight, but first, they need to improve, make changes to their bakes. Otherwise, everything is just talk. And my dear, talk is cheap.

Oh yes, in my excitement, i forgot to mention the icing room is located at the new building of Jurong Point (JP2). Lots of new stores, plenty of boring old faces, but there are some concepts which caught my attention. So do check it out for yourself!

the icing room
1 Jurong west central 2
#B1-05 Jurong Point

313 Orchard Road
#B2-52 313 @ Somerset
Tel: +65 6884 8189

Compass Point #B1-13

Tampines 1 shopping mall
#B1-K1B

Another stall at Yuhua Village food centre which has a significant queue, Fei Fei Roasted & noodle. Now don’t confuse this stall with the famous Fei Fei wanton mee. You know there are some stalls which are opened for the whole day, and yet couldn’t finish selling the food. Just exactly how good are they? According to eyewitness, when they start operations everyday at around 7-8am, the queue never ceased until they are sold out by 12 noon.

I always have a thing for roasted duck, and I must say Fei Fei’s rendition ($15 half a duck) impressed me. The taste wasn’t very extreme, the duck wasn’t that big and meaty. But somehow they managed to get this right balance between the crispiness of the skin, and the bite of the duck. And the fatty meat underneath the skin added in the “oomph” factor as well. We should have tried their wanton mee as well, but we ordered quite a lot of other food already. And by the time we made up our mind to try their noodles, they were closed, at 12 noon sharp.

Fei Fei Roasted & Noodle
Yuhua village food centre
#01-26 Block 254
Jurong East Street 24

A typical food court or coffee shop will definitely have the few same thing, drinks stall, the roasted meat stall, western food, fishball noodles, mixed vegetables rice stall. So what happens when you got sick of eating fishball noodles or wanton mee? Why not try some hand made noodles, or more commonly known as, Ban Mian.

There’s three different kinds of hand made noodles, ban mian (similar to mee pok), you mian (the thinner version), and mee huan kuay (pieces of noodles). I’m not really a big fan of ban mian and mee huan kuay, so usually i’ll take the you mian.

While i can’t appreciate ban mian, but i can understand the effort put into making them. In Singapore, most egg noodles are factory machine-made, rarely can you see the fishball noodles and wanton mee stalls making their own noodles any more. Of course, there are still some stalls which insist on making their own noodles, which differentiate themselves from the others. For ban mian, the dough are rolled into noodles on the spot.

Ban mian ($2.50) are always served with the familiar fried ikan bilies (anchovies), mushrooms, an egg, and vegetables in either soup or dry version. The soup base wasn’t salty; this being an vital factor since the ikan bilies when soaked into the soup would enhance the flavour of the soup. With so many ingredients, i thought it’s worth the money and a healthier choice.

I preferred the dry hand made you mian ($2.50). The ingredients are the same, with the noodles being the only exception. It’s been a while since i last ate ban mian, and i actually felt it was better than the fishball you mian. The chilli and vinegar gave the noodles a stronger taste than the soup version.

Hand Made Noodle
Yuhua village food centre
#01-20 Block 254
Jurong East Street 24

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

Located within the Arena country club at Upper Jurong Road, opposite the Singapore Discovery Centre, Tung Lok Seafood is the mainstay of the Tung Lok group (TLG). This dinner took place actually very long ago, five months to be precise. I was hesitant in writing the post since the food was unremarkable, typical at best, and there were too many photos to handle.

We chose to have their dinner a la carte buffet priced at $33.80++ for adult. The buffet had a wide range of food like Japanese cuisines, cold cut appetizer, soup, seafood, meat, vegetables, rice & noodles selections, and desserts. With a total of 50 items to choose from, we managed to eat close to 30 variety.

I would say that most of the food was average, and we tried quite a lot of variety, so i won’t go into details for each and everyone of them. I’ll highlight the ones that stood out, and the rest are really up to your own judgement if you ever go to Tung Lok to try their dinner buffet.

The pictures were taken with my old canon ixus before i got my present DSLR, so do pardon the poor photos.

Poached prawns (limited to 100g per person)

The poached prawns were one of the few dishes that had limits, which meant that they were not available for re-ordering. Not that the poached prawns were that fantastic anyway.

California Maki

The California maki was actually the saving grace for the dinner. I wouldn’t say that the sushi was exceptionally fresh, but they were acceptable and we had two servings of them.

Barbeque roast meat platter

The barbeque roast meat platter was also one of the few that stood out. The char siew was not bad, but the roast chicken was better. We were in half-mind whether to have second servings but later decided not as we were too full.

Beijing roast duck (limited to two slice per person)

The Beijing roast duck was no doubt one of the more pricer dishes, hence the limitation of two slice per person. The waiteress brought the whole roast duck in front of our table to slice it on the spot and served with spring onion, cucumber and sweet sauce. One of the better dish, but pity the limitation of the serving.

Chili crab A La Tung Lok (limited to one per table)

Tung Lok’s renown for their Chili crab, they are after all a seafood restaurant. Without a doubt, the best dish among the 50 selections, the chili crab was spicy and there was a sweet hint in the thick and wonderful gravy. Served with man tou (soft white bun), i’ll say that their chili crab is on par with Jumbo, NoSignBoard and Mellben. But again, there’s the limit of one per table. Nevertheless, if you are ordering a la carte, this definitely is a must order dish.

Sichuan style dumpling with spicy sauce

Pan grilled miso marinated beef tenderloin

Old cantonese style sweet and sour pork

I’m a huge fan of sweet and sour pork, but Tung Lok’s rendition didn’t have the “wow” factor to entice me for second helpings.

Roast Spring chicken (half)

Another typical dish, nothing exceptional but still acceptable.

Deep fried “soon hock” fish

We were not a fan of rear fish like soon hock, so we were not really expecting much from this dish. And it turned out to be what we thought, the fish wasn’t fresh.

Deep fried fritters with salad sauce

Pork ribs with fruit sauce

Crisp fried baby squids

You would thought that seafood dishes were be better at Tung Lok, but the baby squids were over-fried, too charred and dried.

Vegetarian Spring rolls

Fried hor fun with sliced fish in egg gravy

I was undecided whether to order the hor fun and mee goreng, and the hor fun proved to be a disappoint choice.

Poached Chinese spinach with fresh bean stick and garlic

Deep fried prawn paste chicken

Ice cream puff

The ice cream puff was your normal ones found in the neighbourhood deli, but i was actually quite hooked with it. Well this actually show how desirable the other dishes were.

Glutinous rice balls with peanut crumbs

Chilled herbal jelly with honey

Chilled honeydew with sago cream

Chocolate ice cream

Dessert of the day

Total bill was $142.65 for 4 person dinner buffet. Although it came with a huge selections of 50 dishes, but most of them were mediocre and not worth trying. If you don’t really mind the quality of the food, the dinner buffet does makes a rather value option since you get to try so many dishes. But if you are the type who cares about the quality, I say skip the buffet and go for their a la carte menu instead.

Tung Lok Seafood
511 Upper Jurong Road
The Arena Country Club
Tel: 6262 6996

Secret Recipe’s cakes. I told you i will be back during my first visit didn’t i? Here i am, with *sp, and mr ang as my guest for this cake-tasting event. LOL. Actually its more of me forcing em’ to Secret Recipe to satisfy my cravings for cakes. Sinful, guilty as charged. If you cant beat them, you join them. Now now, who wants to join me on the next cake-tasting? Mayb go to Bakerzin, N.Y.D.C or somewhere else : )

Oreo Cheesecake ($4.90)

Frozen creamy cheese with loads of crushed oreo. A combination of oreo and cheese, is always a popular choice among cheesecake lovers. The Oreo cheesecake here certainly does not disappoints. Well, you can’t really compare it with the one i had on Sat @ Wild Rocket. That one goes for the overall packaging, playing food with creatively. But here we got a normal-looking cake, looking what a normal cheesecake is suppose to look like, but at half the price.

I know sometimes people dislike cheesecake because the cheese smell is too strong, and they get sick of it easily. but then after finishing the cheesecake, there are no such feelings really : )

Chocolate Indulgence ($4.90)

Creamy and rich Belgian couventure chocolate. Absolutly a luscious, luxurious, sinfully rich delight. We like this one. The Chocolate Indulgence is certainly worth its price with its size. The generous servings make some other restaurants cake pale in comparison. But then you say its not only the quantity, the quality is more important. Ahh, yes indeed, and i can assure the choc cake here do have enough quality. At $4.90 a slice, its really a steal!

Royal Chocolate Cake ($4.90)

A layer of chocolate chiffon, layered with chocolate, fresh cream, and chocolate cookies. Eh, if given a choice between Chocolate Indulgence and Royal Chocolate Cake, i say go for Choc Indulgence. Somehow the Choc Indulgence just tasted better, and a larger slice.

Three of us share three cakes, and we just managed to finished it. Not that the cakes aren’t nice, in fact they are nice, and Big! This tells you something about the serving of their cake huh? *wink*

Total Bill $16 inclusive of GST and service charge (total 17% of course). I have a new found mission. To taste all the cakes offered by Secret Recipe, eh, i think there’s a total of 20 to 30 of them? Well, i tried five already, so thats twenty or thirty more to go : )

2 Jurong East Street 21
#01-01 Imm Building

Tel: 6562 1811

” To savour all the cakes in the world “

Pan Grilled Catch of the day with Lobster sauce ($11.50)

Served with french fries, Pan Grilled Catch of the day is prepared with home-made lobster sauce. Frankly speaking, the main reason i choose this dish was because the lobster sauce entices me, and also partly because i want some fishy-stuff. But this dish really disappointed me, mayb it is not bad, but it didn’t really suit my taste. The lobster sauce was nothing special, the fish was not really good. It was kind of bland.

Grilled chicken with BBQ sauce ($10.90)

The grilled chicken set is served with herb rice and fresh garden salad. The chicken is actually like normal western cafe chicken chop, nothing special. For a hawker western food, it might be a tad too expensive, but for a cafe style dining, i thought the price was quite reasonable. So it’s just which way you see it, if you find it expensive, go to hawker centre please.

Choc Fudge ($4.90)

Now, this is where Secret Recipe shines. Desserts, in particular Cakes. The variety of cakes offer are just fantastic. From the must-have like Tiramisu, Black Forest, to their sinfully chocolate section consisting of Choc Chip walnut, Choc Banana, Moist Choc Cake, Choc Mud cake, Cocoa Mocha, Choc Fudge, Choc Indulgence. Scanning through the long list, each makes me unresistable, wanting to try everyone of them, and i think i will. Making several trips to Secret Recipe of course : )

Marble Cheese ($4.90)

And thats not it, they still have cheesecakes to show, there’s the classic cheese, espresso cheese, raspberry cheese, choc cheese, chilled blueberry cheese, chilled strawberry cheese, apple crumble cheese, lemon cheese, caramel cream cheese.

You know the best part of the story is not just their cakes are good, it is also the price is dirt-cheap. At $4.90 a big slice for their delighful cakes, i think its the best deal, and mayb the reason to repeatly go back to Secret Recipe. Nowadays many restaurants’ desserts cakes are no doubt very good, but usually they come in a small slice, and the price can easily double of this.

Shining Stars

Lets see, the positive aspect without a doubt will be their desserts section, with cakes being the king of the crown. Cheap, big slice, sinful-yet-wonderful cakes. What more do you want? N’uff said already, go get them!

Dark Clouds

The waitress told us that they do not serve ice-water. That, immediately took us at least 10 points off the marking list. You mean a cafe cannot offer its customer even tap-water? Scanning through the drinks menu, there is this one thing called “Distilled water”, whats more the water is packed by Secret Recipe. No doubt, this is the main reason why they do not provided ice water. One word of advice to ALL restaurants and cafes, if you want your diners to eat happily, please provide FREE ice-water. If your reason not to offer ice water is so that diners have to pay for the drinks, you are so wrong.

All in all, Secret Recipe is still a nice place to go for its cheap and nice cakes. If only for the cakes, i will make the trip everytime. Total bill is $36.55 for two person. I confirmed, guarantee plus chop will definitely go back to try out the other cakes, despite the problem about ice-water. Mayb next time i just go for their cake-set, or i bring along my water bottle.

2 Jurong East Street 21
#01-01 Imm Building

Tel: 6562 1811

” Cakes, how can i resist them? “

“ There is something peculiar about Ajisen Ramen and it’s all in the soup. Their Ramen’s Tonkotsu soup can help to prevent aging!

The Japanese Society of Nutrition & Food Science announced in a general meeting, “The intake of collagen contained in the bones and cartilage, etc prevents aging.” Collagen is a protein, mainly found in the skin, tendon, bone, cartilage and other connective tissues. This protein is the essence of life because it easily makes up one third of the 60 trillion body cells. And our Tonkotsu soup has lots of collagen!

What is health without taste? A feature of Kumamoto Ramen is Senmiyu; a rich brown sauce that accompanies the fair Tonkotsu soup. Our unique culinary methods ensure that all the flavors are sealed into the sauce. In fact, Ajisen guarantee that your taste-buds will be bowled over by their Tonkotsu/Senmiyu combination! “

Went to meet my mom for dinner at IMM after Arnold’s celebration, at first wanted to go Secret Recipe for dinner, cos i want to eat their desserts, but my mom wanted to eat ramen, to savour that time she went to Japan and had ramen. Although there was a few Japanese restaurants around, we settled on Ajisen since my mom wanted ramen. The restaurant was packed fully, but there was still space for two-seaters. We took a while to decide on the ramen, and made our orders, suprisingly the ramen came quite fast despite many patrons in the restaurant, mayb its very easy to cook ramen : )

Ramen cost 10 bucks each, but you have the raman set, which consist of a ramen, side dish, and a drink for $13.80. We chose the crayfish ramen (voted most popular), and the soft ribs ramen

Crayfish Ramen

The crayfish ramen was quite special, the crayfish came with a sweet-spicy sauce. Ramen had egg, crayfish of cos, and mushroom. The ramen soup was quite delicious, but i found it too salty, had to drink tons of water after finishing the ramen.

Soft ribs Ramen

Actually every ramen is the same except for the main ingredient that comes with it, for this one is soft pork ribs, the ribs was managed rather well-balance, very chewy. My mom commented that the ramen in Japan was nicer, the noodle was not so thick, much thinner there : ) 

Chicken cutlet that comes with the ramen set

The sauce for the chicken was nice, but the chicken was a tad too small, o well after all this is the compliment set.

Fried prawn which also come with the ramen set

Fried prawn in Japanese restaurants was always nice, no complains

Simple dinner at Ajisen total bill was $32.49, not very expensive i guess, for the set came with a ramen, side dish and drink. But the quality of the side dishes can be improve i guess, they are not really worth it for the extra $3.80? But then again $3.80 for a side dish and drink, you can’t really complain can you?

2 Jurong East Street 21
#01-113 Imm Building

Tel: 6564 5610

” Food is for our mind, health, and body “