Cafe Vic @Carlton

Hello! Today's been a long but fulfilling day =) Really need to thank the good friends I've in school who keep me sane!

Anyway, I'd like to share some photos that Jeffrey and I took during our buffet lunch session a couple of weeks ago before I head to bed! We went to Cafe Vic for a dessert buffet last year and it was pretty good so we decided to try out their weekend lunch buffet.

Cafe Vic is currently undergoing renovations so we were warned that it may get a little noisy after the official lunch period (12-2pm). True enough, the drilling started almost immediately after 2pm but thankfully we'd our fill by then so we called for the bill and left before our eardrums could get hurt.

Cafe Vic has a relatively wide array of 'starters' dishes, which in my opinion were pretty good (:

Clockwise from green vegetable leaves at '12 o'clock': Coleslaw, Potato salad (yum!), fruit salad (made up of mango, apple and strawberry bits.. YUM!) and Jellyfish.

Left to right: Green leaves, sushi and ham sandwich

Vegetable sandwich and egg croissant

Coleslaw, Potao salad and 2 kinds of sushi (P.S. They do not refill their sushis very often so there was a shortage of sushis at one point in time!)

Cold Soba. (It wasn't nice so please don't take it!)

Salmon sashimi and california maki! (I LOVE salmon sashimi with thick wasibi mixture! Gosh. And I was quite upset that there was only ONE california maki left when I went to the sushi area! Boo.)

Dragon Ball aka Fried Prawn Ball with more salmon sashimi!

Fried fish fingers, Potato Salad, Coleslaw, Jellyfish, Fruit Salad. (Jeffrey and I were amused that they served fried fish fingers as one of their dishes.. we could have cooked that at home! But they tasted nice so it's alright.)

Pork ribs(?), Chicken, Dragon ball and Siew Mai.

Fried Potato Wedges, Roasted Duck, Roasted Beef with Sauce. (The fried potato wedges were cold but somehow I finished them anyway.. Must have been really greedy!)

Fried Fish Fingers, Fried Carrot Cake, Stirfry Green Vegetables and Fish! (We got SO excited when we saw fried carrot cake because we NEVER had them at a buffet before! The carrot cake tasted average but it was much better than expected! The vegetables were pretty well-cooked because they were still pretty crunchy when eaten.)

A 'Fried' Platter: Fried Fish Fingers, Fried Rice, Fried Carrot Cake, Fried Dumplings. The fried rice was surprisingly tasty despite looking very bland and ordinary (:

An assortment of cakes: cheesecake, chocolate cake, mango cake and avocado cake. Apart from the avocado cake, the rest were fantastic, especially the chocolate cake.

Black Sesame Paste. (It tasted really terrible. It wasn't blended properly, it had a bland taste and the consistency was just plain wrong.)

Little platelets of goodness: Mango mousse, some kind of creamy thing with raspberry perched at the top, custard with blueberry. Everything was wonderfully delicious!

Jeffrey's version of ice kachang, which consists of nothing but ice and syrup! =)

Honeydew Sago. (Evidently, there were other fruits in it as well such as mango and strawberry bits! This was surprisingly refreshing!)

A scoop of chocolate icecream. (This is possibly the worst scoop of chocolate icecream that we've tasted in any of our buffets. Enough said.)

A glorious piece of chocolate cake. (To make up for the less-than-desirable chocolate icecream, I told Jeffrey to have a nice slice of chocolate cake before we left the restaurant and I'm thankful that we did! It's always nice to end our meals on a pleasant note (: )

This buffet only costs us $32/pax after discount and both of us felt that the price paid was pretty reasonably but we would have preferred a wider variety/ better quality of food/ a combination of both. Having said that, it was nice to have a slow, relaxing Sunday lunch at the relatively empty Cafe Vic restaurant (: If you plan to go there any time soon, please try to go during the 12-2pm window period so that you can avoid the drilling and what not.

Will update again soon! (: TGIF!

Melt @Marina Oriental

Hello! (: The weekend is finally almost here and I can't be more thankful for that. I'm looking forward to the Dec holidays though I haven't made any plans yet.. I guess it's just good to take a breather from school.

Anyway, Jeffrey and I went to Melt a couple of weeks ago for a Sunday brunch/ lunch buffet. We've read many good reviews about this place so we decided to give it a shot! It is located at Marina Oriental Hotel, which was very crowded on the day we went to Melt because there were FOUR wedding receptions being held concurrently! Gosh. We weaved our way through the crowds of people as quickly as we could so that we could stuff ourselves at Melt!
Initially, we thought that there were very few patrons at Melt because it looked pretty empty from outside. Little did we know that Melt has a HUGE seating capacity and it was relatively packed inside! We took delight in being members of a large and relatively boisterous Sunday lunch/ brunch crowd.
We had the pleasure of sitting right opposite the desserts area, which explains why I could take this shot. Actually, the desserts area is a squarish place with three sides filled with food so what you're seeing is only ONE side of the square! Yes that's how much desserts they have! I felt like I was in desserts-heaven! =)
Nice table setting. Amazing how a single flower can make the entire table setting look more presentable.
Glass of water on table mat with our cutlery. They provided a small white plate for us to rest our used utensils so I'm pretty pleased about it (:

Other empty tables. I love the "homey" feel of this restaurant.

A small dish of water for us to wash our hands after eating seafood! Neither Jeffrey nor I got our hands dirty so we didn't use it at all.

Orange juice. One 'special' thing about Melt's buffet is that you can choose to have the free-flow soft drinks and fruit juices buffet or the free-flow champagne buffet. Since Jeffrey and I don't drink alcohol, we chose the former.
Guava juice. (There were many other kinds of juices and you can even ask the lady at the counter to make mixed-fruit juices for you! Splendid!)

Here are some photos of the food that we ate that day. There was really TOO much food to try and I think we only managed to try half of the dishes served that day!

Sushi, lettuce, prawn crackers.

Smoked salmon, papaya salad, fruit salad, lettuce with salad sauce.

Cheese Fondue! This was time we tried cheese fondue and it's quite nice! =)

Seafood in cream sauce, panfried fish and shepherd's pie.

Duck, pork, some kinda pita and nasi briyani (there were just too many kinds of meat to remember)
Fish chunk, fried potato ball, curry vegetable, curry potato, basmati and two types of indian sauces. (I loved the indian food section, everything there was FANTASTIC!)

More fish chunks and basmati. I couldn't get enough of indian food so I went for numerous rounds!

Meat feast! With nasi briyani and crackers.

Long beans, baked beans, seafood in cream sauce, panfried fish, potato gratin. The Western food section was also very lovely. It was a pity we didn't get to try their made-on-the-spot-burger set cos we were simply too full. It looked good though!

More briyani rice, crackers, mashed potato and prawn.

The BEST on-the-spot cream-based pasta we've ever tasted. The cream was thick and tasty, unlike other cook-on-the-spot pastas. We LOVED it!

I finally couldn't resist my temptation to get a cup of sprite though I've had many glasses of fruit juices already.

Like I mentioned, their dessert section is astoundingly huge and there's such a wide range of desserts that for once, I couldn't finish trying most of whatever I wanted to try! I can't remember what desserts I ate so I'll just post some photos and let them do the talking:

An assortment of cakes (there were many more varieties!)

Warm chocolate cake in a cup. This tasted EXTREMELY sinful but it made me feel SO good eating it!

Their famous waffle with icecream. They also had crepes but we didn't have enough space for that =(

A plateful of dessert-'shooters'. You simply can't get enough of them!

Although we only managed to try about half (or less) of the dishes, we were completely stuffed after our meal! We decided to call for the bill and when it came, I got a shock because our buffet cost $88/person AFTER discount! Oh my goodness. We've never spent so much on a meal before! Thankfully, both of us felt that it was worth our money because the quantity and quality of food were excellent (: Honestly speaking, I was pretty thankful that Jeffrey and I decided to have half a lobster each during the course of our meal because it helped to justify the hefty lunch bill to some extent.

What one of our lobsters looked like, with some salmon sashimi for company.

Lesson learnt: check buffet price before deciding to go for it! (: Alrighty, that's all for now, will update again soon!

Have a pleasant weekend everyone! (:

I Miss Monster Mash

On some days, I really feel like sinking my teeth into a fat and ultra-filling burger and when this happens, the image of Monster Mash's Veggie Burger immediately flashes into my mind. Unfortunately, Monster Mash has closed down quite a long while ago, hence I can probably never have their super-duper yummy and extremely tummy-filling burgers anymore =(

Monster Mash used to be at Holland Village but it has since closed down. Thankfully, I managed to dine there a few times before it closed down. It was run by English people if I'm not wrong and they were nice and friendly to all their customers!

That's my veggie burger with coleslaw and thick fries at the side! As you can see, the veggie patty was literally overflowing from in between the two pieces of bread buns! The veggie patty is still THE best that I've tasted so far.. but I hope to find some place which sells kick-ass veggie burger soon.

Jeffrey usually orders their sausage on homemade mashed potato. The little white jug at the right hand side of this photo actually contains one of their specially made sauces which you can pour over your sausage and/ or mashed potato. The mashed potato was heavenly and I miss it very much too.

The last thing that I miss about this place is their homemade apple crumble. There were chunks of apple slices in their apple crumble! Vanilla sauce (in a separate little white jug) accompanies this plate of warm and aromatic apple crumble and boy do they go well together!

So instead of having a huge veggie burger to chomp on for lunch today, Jeffrey and I went to our favourite fastfood outlet - Mos Burger - to try their rice burgers for the very first time in our lives (yes I know we're a bit slow but at least we managed to try something new today!). He's the unagi rice burger set while I'd the seafood rice burger set and both were pretty good. I still maintain my opinion that Mos Burger's corn soup is one of the yummiest soups around! I must have it every time I visit Mos Burger! (:

Alright that's all for now. Will do another blog entry really soon about our foodscapade last weekend! Have a great weekend!

Cafe Iguana

Hello! (:

I'm supposed to be doing work now but I'm suffering from an immense bout of inertia so I've decided to blog about our visit to Cafe Iguana last weekend. Because it was already quite late, I suggested going to Cafe Iguana at Greenwood because it is relatively near our place and that means we don't have to spend too much time travelling to get to our food!

Eager to fill our tummies, we quickly scanned the menu and decided to go for two three-course set lunches! While waiting for our food to arrive, I did the usual snapping of photos of the interior decoration.

A huge green iguana on the wall! It's bigger than the skinny manager.

I felt that the colours in the restaurant were wonderfully mismatched.

In general, the interior decoration of the restaurant created a very Mexican-y feel. They even played songs like La Bamba to immerse set us in the right mood for some good Mexican food!

Tee-shirts (for sale?). The white shirt says "You can't beat a Iguanarita".

Utensils wrapped with thick, red napkins.

A row of chilli/ salsa sauces. We didn't use any of them.

Nacho chips and salsa sauce. I liked the chips because they were crispy and non-oily. The salsa sauce was pretty average in my opinion.

Chicken soup. Since neither of us felt like having the salad, we had a bowl of clear chicken soup with shredded chicken pieces each. I liked the diced vegetable pieces in the soup (:

Jeffrey had the chicken tapas for his main, which he felt was pretty alright. I was quite thankful that he found the food okay because I tend to get a bit worried about him not liking certain 'new' food.

I opted for the grilled vegetables with rice and cheese wrap! It had a fancier name which I can't recall but it doesn't matter. This is my second time eating this dish and I absolutely LOVE it! :) It has such a wholesome and richtaste that you can't help but feel immensely satisfied!

We'd a cup of complimentary tea/ coffee each. I discovered that Jeffrey and I have different preferences for sugar sachets!

Jeffrey's vanilla icecream, which was very milky and yummy.

My avocado icecream, which was creamy and smooth. Cafe Iguana's the only place I know so far that serves avocado icecream and I definitely will go back there just for the avocado icecream because I love avocado!

Okay, guess what's the best part of this meal?

It's completely FREE! (: (: (:

Their electronic ordering system was down during the time we were there hence our orders were not relayed to the kitchen. This resulted in a 35-45 minute waiting time! Somehow, the staff didn't notice this till a substantial period of time has passed. As compensation, the manager decided to waive the ENTIRE bill for all affected customers! =) I was overjoyed! Unorthodox but nevertheless great customer service! (: