La Braceria

Hello everyone! (:

It's finally Friday and it looks like it's going to rain again! I'd a great time at Goodman Arts Centre watching the Lit kids perform their self-produced puppet shows - they did such a wonderful job (: What a nice way to start the weekend!

Anyway, since I've a bit of time on my hands now before I head out to meet a few kids, I thought I'd do a post on La Braceria, which is a very homely Italian restaurant near my place! We actually went there for a family dinner to celebrate my birthday at the end of last month so you can imagine how backdated this post is! Anyhow, La Braceria serves pretty decent food at reasonable prices so if you would like some 'homemade' Italian food, do pop by this restaurant and you will probably get your craving fulfilled.

We started off the evening by sharing two starters. This is called Antipasto Braceria ($42), which consists of grilled vegetables,  artichoke, grilled mushrooms, rocket leaves, ham and a huge chunk of cheese (sorry I forgot which type of cheese this was!). This hearty spread whetted many of our appetites so we were more than eager for our mains to come!

We also ordered a plate of calamari ($24) because we were afraid that the antipasto wouldn't sit well with everyone. I felt that the calamari were only average and that they were severely overpriced!

One of my sisters ordered ravioli ($18), which was the cheapest dish of all our main courses and rightly so because the portions were pathetic! Please don't ever expect to get full on ravioli because the 5 pieces of 'pasta dumplings' won't satiate your hungry tummy! I would think that this would be better as a snack or something you would order if you weren't feeling hungry at all.

Since I've never had my teeth stained black with any kind of squidink pasta before, I thought this was a great opportunity to try since I was out with family and family wouldn't judge even if my entire mouth was stained black! haha So I went ahead to order the Fettuccine Black Ink Sauce with Seafood ($22), which was surprisingly tasty! On hindsight, I think it had a cheesy taste and perhaps that's what made me feel quite full quite quickly.

Linguine Crab ($22) was also very well done! I liked that it wasn't overly cheesy or creamy so you won't get gelat finishing the entire plate! Would certainly order this again the next time I visit!

Another sister ordered the Seafood Spaghetti ($24) which came in parchment paper. I realised that spaghetti/ pasta that comes in parchment paper tend to not have very strong flavours probably due to the more soupy nature of the dish. I generally prefer my food to be more flavourful so I wouldn't order this dish if I had a choice.

Gumtoo had the pasta of the day which was king prawn pasta ($24). The prawn was so huge that it almost looked like a lobster! Gumtoo enjoyed her dish quite a bit so I was thankful that we decided to get the last pasta of the day!

Since my brother only eats meat and cheese, we got him the Rucola and Parham Pizza ($24), which he truly enjoyed. For once it was large enough for him not to order a second main!

The other pizza we ordered was the Prosciutto e Funghi ($18), which was ham and mushroom pizza that tasted pretty average or slightly above average.

A cup of hot chocolate to warm us up ($5.50) or if you prefer, you can order soft drinks like coke and sprite for ($4.50 a cup)

In all, we enjoyed our dinner and I think our empty plates and full bellies are testament to the above average food served at La Braceria! Definitely a place that we could afford to revisit again in future.

Alright that's all for now! (: Have a great weekend everyone!

Jaan

Hello everyone! (:

I'm finally going to blog about my first trip to Jaan! Three of us went to Jaan for my birthday lunch last month and we really loved the food and experience! (: Each of us ordered a 3course lunch set ($52++) and we tried very hard to not repeat dishes for each course so that we can see the range of dishes offered at Jaan. Initially I was afraid that the restaurant would give me the overly pretentious and atas vibe but am thankful that it turned out otherwise. The atmosphere was relaxed and the ambience was that of tranquility so lunch turned out to be an enjoyable affair! Here are some photos we took that day:

 Menu

Lovely flower sitting at our table

Complementary starters:

Honestly I can't remember the exact components of each dish but they are balls of potato, some smoked fish with some jelly on top and hummus with crackers (yum!).

Then the most interesting of dishes came before us:

 Mushroom tea! (: (: (: It tasted really smooth and all three of us liked it a lot!

One of the nice things about Jaan is that there is free flow bread and butter throughout the entire meal! There are four types of bread to choose from but we only photographed one: 

Appetisers:

Jerusalem Artichoke Veloute: Smoked organic egg, chauterelles, iberico de bellota & porcini crumbs.

Hand-dried Scallop & Avocado "Millefeuile": Light crustacean jelly citrus, ikura & bronze fennel (*additional $15)

 Organic Beetroot Composition: Burrata, olives, almonds & basil


Mains:

Iberian Black Pork: Confit belly, braised cheek, grilled rib, trotter 'caillette', wild chantenay, carrot, pickled grey shallots & roasted chestnuts

Slow Steamed Atlantic Cod: Cauliflower cous cous, shellfish, sea grapes & watercress jus

Juniper Roasted Venison Loin: Pear, celeriac, sauce 'grand veneur' & black truffle


Desserts:

Choconuts 2012: Tanariva mousse, peanuts & macadamia nuts icecream. (The orange dish was given to cleanse our palattes - very refreshing!)

Brie de Meaux Truffe:  Herve Mons selected brie de meaux, perigord truffle and hazelnut (additional $25)

 Complementary coffee (I chose to have a cup of cappuccino!)

Complementary petit fours:

I would love to go back to Jaan again some day in the near future! (: The fact that we had a great aerial view from the restaurant made it better! (: Thank you for the birthday treat! (:

Carrot Cake Hunting

Carrot Cake from Marmalade Pantry

So far I've tried Marmalade Pantry's, Cedele's (which I like), Brewerkz's, P.S. Cafe's, Cafe Beviamo's (which I also like, though I prefer their Hummingbird Cake), Delicious, Coffee Bean and a few other places which I can't quite recall at this present moment. I like having nice slice of carrot cake (:

*

Just decided to post an entry because I forsee myself being very busy over the next few days so I'll only put up the Jaan post this weekend! (: Have a good week ahead!

Poem for the Week

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow--
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shrudder comes o'er me--
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee so well--
Long, long I shall rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?--
With silence and tears.

~Lord Byron

Seah Street Deli

Hello! (:

This weekend seems to be zooming by way too quickly for my liking! Had a great Saturday which I wish didn't have to end =( Withdrawal symptoms from a day of fun are starting to set in so I shall blog about food in an attempt to cheer myself up a little (:

A few weeks ago, Jeffrey, Matty, Jade, Justina and I went to Seah Street Deli for a late lunch. I recommended that place because of their to-die-for milkshake which I had the first time I went there. Unfortunately, the milkshakes we had that day were a HUGE disappointment! =( They weren't as thick as the one that I had during my first visit and what's worse was that they tasted no where near an average milkshake.. gah, so much for my strong recommendation! Maybe it was just a bad milkshake day. I'll try to go back again in future to see if I can get a chance to taste the goodness that blew me away the first time!

Vanilla milkshake ($10.50).

Chocolate milkshake ($10.50)

Oreo milkshake ($10.50).

Thankfully, our mains were much better! (: I think Seah Street Deli's really the place to go if you want some quality western grub! Here are photos of what we had that day:

Montecristo ($31.50) - essentially it's ham and cheese sandwich with a huge serving of wonderfully made mashed potato.

Brooklyn ($29.50) - smoked salmon with bagel and cream cheese, with a huge serving of coleslaw.

Rockefeller Reuben ($31.50) - corned beef sandwich with coleslaw.

Fish & chips ($33.50) - arguably one of the most expensive fish & chips we've had but worth every cent! (:

BLT ($26.50) - bacon sandwich with uber nice fries!


The servings are frankly ginormous so expect to leave with very full bellies! We didn't have enough space for desserts once again but we will eventually return to try them! (:

Alright I hope your weekend's going great! (: Am going off to rest now! See you! (:

Delicious

Hello! (:

It's a chilly night and all I want to do right now is to hop into bed and sleep the night away but this entry has been on the back of my mind for a while now because the cakes and desserts from Delicious are just too darn good not to rave about so here goes.

Last weekend, I received an unexpectedly pleasant surprise when Mrs Tan came over to pass my family 8 different types of desserts as well as a bunch of lilies (which are my favourite flowers btw!) for my birthday! The five of us, Jeffrey and Matty shared the cakes and tarts and all of us were sold! I didn't manage to taste some of them but I do trust my family's verdict! Here are some photos of the cakes that will most probably make you salivate:

I thought that the coconut cake was exceptionally well done! (: If you can't spot the coconut cake, it's the one with a twin sitting together in the blue box! The cake was light, soft and the coconut strips tasted very fresh, as if they were just stripped off a young baby coconut! The cream was also very light and non-gelat. I loved the coconut cake the most but the rest were also spectacular! I will probably check out Delicious at Scotts Square soon to see the array of sweet things on display (:

Partly because I'm not a huge flowers person and also because I think that buying flowers is a waste of money, I've never really received flowers, much less bouquets of flowers so you could imagine how surprised I was when I received a bouquet of my favourite flowers! (: Had to specially get a 'vase' to place them in but the effort was worth it because the room smelt nice for the days that followed (:

Thank you Mrs Tan for the presents! (: Much loved and appreciated! (: