Nasi Bryani @ TNPS

Chomp Venue:
Stall No. 7 (Malay Food)
Tampines North Primary School

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Mum bought this from her school canteen :). Having been colleagues for the past 10 years, she got it at a grossly discounted price. Heheh. This is super economical nasi bryani, meat/seafood at $0.50 each, rice and vegetables at $0.30 each. This costs only $2.10 (without discount), with mutton rendang pieces, chilli drumlet, sotong, achar (pickled vegetables), bryani rice, minced meat egg (it's actually from last night's dinner leftovers=p).

Primary school food is always so cheap huh? I used to get a plateful of chicken rice for $0.50, drinks for $0.30, tidbits from $0.10 - $1.00.

Yumms. Cheap and quality food. The kind malay aunty never compromises on the quality of food even though she doesn't make much profits.

Se Ra Bel - Korean Street Food

Chomp Venue:
Se Ra Bel
Bugis Junction Basement (beside Pink Yoghurt)

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Korean food! More and more korean street food stalls/ restaurants/ supermarts are opening here:). Thought the Dong Dae Mun (also here at the Bugis Junction basement) was rather disappointing with their non chewy, pale spicy rice cakes, dry and oily fries + sausage snack. So tried this out to compare.





Was too full to try rice cakes, so bought 2 sticks of skewered food at $1.20 each. Dak gochi aka chicken with special sauce (left) and vegetarian fried dumplings (right). They offered to heat up the dumplings but that kind move only succeeded in making the dumplings drip in a mixture of oil and chilli sauce=X. The dumplings were hard, probably cos it was left there for sometime after being deep fried. So heating up didn't help restore the crispiness. The skewered chicken was too cold and tasted abit like sweet and sour pork 咕嚕肉, and was a little tough=/. Won't be back in a hurry! Not even for the rice cakes.

Tom's Palette

Chomp Venue:
Tom's Palette
#01-25
100 Beach Road
Shaw Leisure Gallery

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I found out about this ice cream place while foodblog surfing, and after watching the repeat telecast of Makansutra introducing this place, I decided to zoom in on it whilst in Bugis:).



I saw longan red date there! But they had not updated the board which states the flavours of the day, and longan red date ice cream was sold out :(. There were pretty interesting flavours there like chocolate stout [choc + ABC stout. it was BITTER.] and salted caramel cheesecake. They had also tried flavours like curry (??), basil (!), lemon grass, camomile etc. The shopkeeper (I assumed he was the owner or probably one of the owners cos he was very friendly & attentive. Plus his photos were pasted in the shop) said they were currently trying out lavender flavour.



After tasting quite a number of flavours (the shopkeeper was so encouraging that I didn't feel that paiseh trying out flavours), decided on Granny's Favourite (coffee chocolate malt) and Pink Guava.



Small cup (with 2 mixed flavours) at $2.50. Granny's favourite was vv sweet but isn't that what desserts are about? :D. But the bits of cookie dough/malt were really a bit too sweet on the tooth. Pink guava was refreshing and fruity:).



Colourful post-its the patrons left behind, mostly positive accolades and suggestions for new flavours.

They have different flavours everyday and experiment new flavours each time, and if the new flavours receive good feedback they would be permanent monthly flavours. We ate it in the shop and the shopkeeper also gave us 2 glasses of water. Great service and exciting flavours. I'll be back! For the longan red date whee:). Plus it's also a nice quiet place, since Shaw Leisure Gallery is pretty ulu, to come by to enjoy some yummy ice cream treats.

Yella Fellas

Chomp Venue:
Yella Fellas
Bugis Junction Basement
(back to back with the Otah Inc. and beside the Taiwan Snacks 可口乐 stall)

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Back for more sinful yella fingers:). As we waited for our orders, a small group of people gathered around to stare at the attractive menu (which included fries + mussels, fries + crab, fries + homemade salsa sauce). There are two sizes, small (Little Fellas) and large (Yella Fellas), and around 11 sauces.


Yella Fellas topped with Wasabi Mayo (green) and Herb Mayo (first sauce comes free. $0.50 for extra sauce) at $3.90.

Wasabi mayo was hothothot. Thought the taste of mayo will overpower wasabi but it was a grave miscalculation. The wasabi left my nostrils burning. (And the very kind Yella Fellas crew member squeezed more wasabi mayo than herb mayo onto the fries.) The herb mayo was vv nice:). The sweetness helped to wash away some of the steaming wasabi. My numb tastebuds couldn't fathom which herb was used though.

I was kind of expecting the 2nd sauce to be put on a separate plastic saucer or what, but both sauces were just squeezed in two separate clumps (large servings though(: )on the fries. I prefer just having one sauce then, so that the sauce can be more evenly spread out among the fries.

The Manhattan Fish Market

Chomp Venue:
The Manhattan Fish Market
6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#02-79/90
The Central

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Having heard quite a number of recommendations from family and friends, me and my two piggies trotted off to Clarke Quay's Manhattan Fish Market for a fishy meal.



We heard that MFM is a better alternative to Fish & Co in terms of food quality and Clarke Quay's branch serves better food. After a few wrong turns we arrived at the Central's MFM. We got seated at comfortable sofa seats with red cushions.



Starter soup. Sauces (which looked vv miserable! but the waitress filled the mayo to the brim of the saucer when we asked for more:D ): chilli, mayonnaise, garlic sauce. Iced Tea (it looked XL beside the iced water!).


Fish and chips set lunch at $9.90++. Cream of mushroom soup + fish&chips + iced tea.




Grilled Gala Platter for 2 (Fish & Co's equivalent of Seafood Platter for 2) at $33.90++

At first glance, the platter looked a lot less appetizing when compared to the Fish & Co's version. Fish & Co's had 10 red prawns, 5 mussels, and a lot of grilled calamari winking at you when the platter is served. This only had 4 prawns, 4 mussels and some calamari squashed at one side. But to be fair, Manhattan's prawns and mussels were bigger and juicier, and the fish was thicker too. Manhattan's prawns were sweeter and fresher, and their mussels had more flavour. However, Manhattan's calamari were thinly sliced rings and the rice was too soft and sticky. If you skip breakfast and feel absolutely ravenous, go for Fish & Co's platter. If you had breakfast and wish to leave some space for desserts, Manhattan's platter is satisfying enough :).

TCC - The Coffee Connoisseur

Chomp Venue:
TCC
6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#02-84/85/86
The Central

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After a piggish lunch at MFM, we walked to Liang Court cos one of the pigs wanted to get some electrical appliances from Audio House, only to find it closed for the day! How coincidentally irritating. We went to Kino to dawdle time away and work out the lunch before walking back to the Central for coffee and cakes.



TCC always makes me feel like spending hours lounging on the wide, comfy, luxurious sofas. The outlet at the Central is a good choice if you just want to spend a lazy afternoon with your date, or friends, or with yourself and a book/laptop, cos it's pretty quiet here with little crowd flow.



Mint-Choc Frappe, on the left, at $7.50. The mint taste is slight and subtle. Rather refreshing. Rose Juliet, on the right, at $6.80. I never liked the taste of bandung and rose is rather similar to that=p. So... the taste was exotic.



My pick: Oreo Mocha Frappe, without whipped cream (in an attempt to be healthy=X) at $7.50. I love oreo cookies! Felt like ordering milk and dipping the cookie into it=p. I'm a coffee person but I'm also a heartland coffeeshop lover. I usually go for my Kopi-C at a particular Bedok Blk 216 coffeestall, but ever since the owner changed his brand of evaporated milk, I stopped drinking it. Anyway, this was extravagant yet well-spent coffee:).



Ti-rum-Misu at $.6.90. We all enjoyed it! Yummms. Could taste the mascarpone cheese and a slight rum taste (more than my homemade one heh), and it was smooth and yummmy. And it was very prettily decorated with dark chocolate, an inedible berry (is the orange berry edible?), and macademia biscuits.




Dark Devotion at $9.90. Molten chocolate cake topped with vanilla ice cream and a biscuit which tasted like sesame and honey. When we attacked it with our forks in 3 directions, the cake crumbled, but chocolate didn't exactly flow out! It was more of a fudgy-like interior. Warm cake and cold ice cream. Mmmmmm~ Kudos to the pretty layout although I wished chocolate sauce had flowed out instead.

Chwee Kueh

Chomp Venue:
Bedok Chwee Kueh
Blk 207 Upper Changi Road
#01-53

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To date, personally, Bedok's chwee kuehs remain unrivalled. The famous Tiong Bahru Market ones aren't as nice cos their kueh's texture is not as smooth, and the kuehs are too hard. These soft white kuehs from Bedok melts in your mouth, the irresistible dried shrimp belachan chilli paste (always request for more!), the perfect cai pu (cai por), the long queues... The cai pu improved! There's was once I stopped eating them cos the cai pu had a weird funny smell. But it's back in tiptop quality again. :D

道记

Chomp Venue:
道记
People's Park Hawker Centre

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Half a roast duck topped with peanuts at $16+. Mum da bao-ed this from chinatown after eyeing it for quite some time. The roasted ducks and roasted meats that hung from the stall always looked pretty mouth-watering(;.

This came with 3 types of sauces: black thick soy sauce, chilli sauce, and a dubious sour sauce. The chilli sauce was way way disappointing. It didn't taste half like how duck rice chilli sauce should be! The sour sauce was dubious in both looks and taste. Soy sauce was the saving grace. As for the duck, I liked the crisp roasted skin but the meat was a bit bland. The duck meat didn't have a nice herbs taste like they should. The ones at the Bedok Blk 207 duck rice stall are better. The good thing about this was that the duck meat was less oily, with less fats lurking about between the layer of skin and the meat itself.

Yella Fellas

Chomp Venue:
Yella Fellas
Bugis Junction Basement

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Heard about the yellow fries with a wide range of exciting sauces from a friend and decided to try it out with G&A (since we were Bugis anyway).





Yella Fella Fries topped with nacho cheese fries. ($3.40)
(they charge $0.50 for every extra sauce)

We opted for a safer looking sauce: Nacho cheese. We were given 2 forks and got turned down when we asked for a third one. Hmmm, probably answering to the go green call. The photo made the fries looked like one gooey mess, but they were quite good:). I prefer fatter fries and although the plumpness of these fluffy golden fries didn't match up with MOS's, the cheese made up for it. Nacho cheese is supposed to have a slight spicy taste since the cheese is supposed to be mixed with jalapeño peppers? Didn't taste much of the spiciness though. Nevertheless, compared to KFC's miserable thin and soft cheese fries, this is a much better alternative.

Taiwan Food Fair @ Bugis

Chomp Venue:
Bugis Junction
Level One (the open area with a lot of pushcarts)

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Went to check out the Taiwan food fair today with G and A (ahemm. I'm Y. lol) and tried 2 different stalls after traipsing along the stalls and admiring the food.





韭菜餅 which G and A got. The uncle was friendly and he probably thought we were tourists when he posed for us. HA. But there were actually quite a lot of people walking about with digital cams. Anyway, the process of frying 菜餅s looked pretty scary as they were swimming in oil that didn't looked particularly clean. But, it was tasty! Took 2 bites and it was crispy and not too oily.




I bought the 麻辣魚丸豆腐 ($2.50 per bowl, which consisted of 3 fishballs, about 3 slices of toufu, curry vegetables). What attracted me to it was the flaming red colour of the soup/gravy. The fishballs tasted pretty normal but I guess the star of the day was the soup/gravy/sauce. It was quite spicy although I would have liked it better it were spicy enough to numb my tastebuds=p. The yellow packet beside the food in the photo was a packet of tissue given by the considerate stall owners :).

There was also smelly tofu! To keep the smells away, its stall was in the open space with the fountain, not within the air-conditioned area. But the smells wafted in whenever the automatic glass doors opened=p. We wanted to try them but had no space left in our stomachs. We will be back. Heh.

Venezia

Chomp Venue:
Venezia
#01-60
Bugis Junction

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Smooth, chilly gelato ice cream after spicy taiwan snacks. Mmmms.



3 flavours at $5.40. Hazelnut, yoggi and dark chocolate. How can dark chocolate ever go wrong?:)). Dark choc + hazelnut made a good combination, tasted like high class Crumpy=p. Yoggi + hazelnut was terrible though, yoghurt and hazelnut don't go well at all=X. Dark choc + yoggi was alright though, cos the bitter taste of chocolate neutralised the sour yoghurt taste. Chocolate mint tasted average when we sampled it=/. Will go for the fruity flavours nice time round:).

Shokudo Japanese Food Bazaar

Chomp Venue:
Shokudo Japanese Food Bazaar
Raffles City Shopping Centre
#B1-44E

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This is my 2nd time here. Loved the omelette on my first trip, so decided to come back again just for the omelette (cos other food is pretty average) cos I had a sudden craving for some yummy tamago and wasn't feeling very hungry. Although I didn't have deep, long lasting impression of other food I'd tried previously, the smells from every stall reached my nostrils and went all the way down to my stomach and induced it to growl. Teppanyaki, yakitori, pasta, pizza, sashimi, sushi, ramen, dons, tempura, hot pots... ... Stall after stall of attractive looking food that emitted off fragrant smells.


Ham and cheese omelette at $5.80. This omelette rocks cos it's soft and savoury and sweeet. It's still my top pick:).


Rosti with sausage and egg. Tamago again! Rosti was tastier than I remembered~ But somehow the authentic Marche ones still remains unrivaled. Rosti is best ordered with a side like bacon/egg/sausage, cos it gets pretty dry and plain eating fried potato strips with sour cream.










Chicken katsu curry. My friend's dish. Tried abit of the gravy and chicken. I like my curries spicy and hot (and which make me sweat) so japanese curries are usually on the sweeter side. The curry gravy could have been thicker though. I could make this too, with those packets of Japanese curries sold in supermarkets. The chicken katsu was crispy but a little tough on the inside.



Waffles with rum & raisin ice cream. Verdict: disappointing. Waffles were soft and soggy, ice cream didn't have rum taste.


Zenzai with red bean paste (friend's dish). This is nothing compared to the zenzai dessert at MOF. The red beans formed a top pretentious layer with the ice at the bottom dominating a larger percentage of the bowl.


Blueberry cheesecake at $4.90. (friend's dish) I am not a fan of blueberries so I took only one or two bites. I would say it's a steep price for a small slice of cake (plus the cheese taste was vv light.)

I shared the omelette, waffles and rosti with another friend and we each paid about $15. I don't think I'll be back here in a hurry. As I ate on (or maybe after I finished the tamago), my initial positive vibes got rubbed off. Probably the next time I crave for THE tamago and I've got to keep in mind to just stop trying their desserts.

Yum Cha Restaurant

Chomp Venue:
Yum Cha
20 Trengganu Street
#02-01

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Upon arrival, once seated, there would be the usual small plates of peanuts and chilli in normal Chinese restaurants.











After ordering Chinese tea (which came promptly), we pondered over the choice of dim sum. There were steamed dim sum, porridges, fried dim sum and desserts.

First dim sum that came along was char siew puffs (芝麻叉燒酥). The crispy pastry was a plus point. Thought the char siew had a funny taste though.








One of my all-time favourites: Yam Puffs（蜂巢炸芋角） This was really good. Usually fried yam puffs are dripping in oil and your whole mouth swims in oil when you bite into it. But this one is different:). The yam was good too.





First spread of dimsum (anticlockwise from the bottom): Har gao 飲茶蝦餃皇, xiao long bao 魚翅小籠包, siew mai 魚子蒸燒賣, har gao (2nd one), steamed prawns wrapped in beancurd skin 頂汁鮮蝦卷, siew mai, guchai crystal bao 韭菜水晶包.

The names were quite fanciful:p. We were trying to look for "normal" xiao long baos/ siew mai without the alleged shark's fin and fish roe stated in the names. Personal favourite from this spread is har gao. But dim sum must be ate either steaming hot/warm. Especially xiao long baos. Ate a cold xiao long bao (we got too busy attacking other dim sums) and it was a far cry from the hot steaming one, whereby the hot piping soup will burst into your mouth when you bite into the soft skin of the xiao long bao.



Spread II. Additional dimsums are the char siew chee cheong fun 叉燒蒸腸粉 (in the middle), steamed carrot cake 瑤柱蒸蘿蔔糕 (far right), guo tie 韭菜煎鍋貼 (next to xiao long bao) and fried prawns wrapped in beancurd skin 鮮蝦付皮卷 (foreground), gluttinous rice stuffed with chicken + salted egg 荷葉糯米雞 (in the forgotten topmost corner beside the teapot).

The char siew in the chee cheong fun tasted better than the ones in the char siew puff. Guo ties were crispy and the meat was succulent and they always go well with vinegar + ginger. Siew mai was rather ordinary and some of them came in weird flattened cuboid shapes. But at least it wasn't oily with a lot of fatty meat.



Another personal favourite:). The skin was thin and chewy and there was a full prawn in it. Yummm.




The prices of dimsums ranged from $2.90-$4.90. I went with 3 other friends and we ordered a total of 15 dimsums and paid about $17 each so I thought the prices were affordable:).

There's also high tea dimsum buffet on weekdays from 3pm-6pm; Adult ($16.80) and Child ($12.80).

Will be back again for the delectable dimsum the next time:D. Though I would like to try Hong Xin Restaurant (54 Chin Swee Road) one day as well:).