The White Rabbit

It's FINALLY Friday! =) I welcome the weekend with open arms, especially so today because the past week has just been crazily busy. Had quite a challenging time trying to get used to my new environment and learning about the place, the people and how things work.. but I'm sure things will be more settled as time passes.

Since I'm in such a great mood (despite feeling slightly tired because I haven't been getitng enough rest), I shall blog about my trip to The White Rabbit at Dempsey last weekend! =) I've heard of this place many times and I've read a fair bit of good reviews of this place but I've always been hesitant about visiting The White Rabbit because I feel that their dishes are pretty pricey. However, we decided to splurge a little and have an extravagant meal since we were 'celebrating' my last weekend of freedom (for a long while).

The White Rabbit is actually a restaurant in an old church! It looks like this from the carpark area.
Nature's sheltered walkway. I like how the thin bamboo branches are bent and tied together at the top to create this dome-like cover. It felt very Japanese-zen-ish walking through the sheltered walkway.
The interior of The White Rabbit. I like the lamps that hang from the ceiling! They give off a very post-modern feel.

Seating area in the restaurant. This side was empty because they packed most of their diners (including us) on the other side of the restaurant.

Their kitchen. The waitresses collect the cooked food from the counter and serve them to us.

Two cold slabs of butter for our complimentary bread rolls.

I went to the washroom while the bread-basket-waitress went around giving out bread buns so i didn't get to choose mine. I think Jeffrey just picked the safest looking (and most boring) bread bun for each of us. The bread bun was pretty alright.

I've a huge soft spot for brunch dishes so I couldn't resist ordering eggs benedict ($23)! (: I don't usually like to eat flowy egg yolk because I think it tastes weird but I don't mind the flowy egg yolk from Eggs Benedict! I chose to have smoked salmon as my 'filling' and it complemented the eggs and muffin superbly! I enjoyed this dish so much that I wished there were a trio of muffin thingys instead of two.

Jeffrey tried their famous mac & cheese ($28) and it didn't disappoint one bit! This mac and cheese is vastly different from any other that I've tasted before. I suspect it's because The White Rabbit uses a different kind of cheese to make this dish. In addition, there was quite a generous portion of vegetables and it added flavour to the dish because I tend to get bored of eating pure mac & cheese after a while.

For dessert, we shared the Baked Alaska ($16), which is essentially icecream served with a layer of cream and fruits at the side. To be frank, I'd rather not have the cream because I think it kind of spoils the taste of the vanilla and strawberry icecream inside. I guess people who like fresh cream will love this dish! Apart from the cream, the rest of this dish was great! It was a pleasure to end our meal with this dish.

On the whole, The White Rabbit is the place to go if you want to be impressed by normal food that's done in a slightly different way. The (relatively small) portions do not really justify the prices but I guess we're paying for the subtle difference between normal food and those that are served at The White Rabbit. The ambience is perfect for having a slow and relaxing meal and to catch up with friends =) Do make a reservation before heading down as the restaurant tends to get quite busy, especially during dinner time.

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

Oriole Cafe & Bar

On the second day of CNY, Jieqi, Jeffrey and I made our way down to Oriole Cafe & Bar at Pan Pacific Suites for lunch. We've heard rave reviews of this place so our expectations were high! I was pretty surprised that they were opened on the second day of CNY and that the restaurant was pretty packed.Interestingly, Oriole and Bedrock have animals on their signboards. Not too sure what they symbolise but they make their signboards look nice anyway (:

I love the lights that dangle from the ceiling! Makes the place look spacey =)

Wooden tables & chairs. We managed to get a u-shaped table at the far end of the restaurant that has soft cushiony seats. That set up made it easier for the three of us to converse while eating. We really liked the privacy that we had.

Fish & chips ($15). One of our friends recommended Oriole's fish & chips so we ordered it to try. Unfortunately, Jeffrey found it 'okay' and pretty average. I'm puzzled as to why they would want to stack all their fish & chips into a tiny little basket! It made slicing the fish pretty difficult! Perhaps they would like to invest in larger baskets or just use plates?

Quesadillas ($14). Jieqi decided to try their chicken quesadillas, which is something like pizza-shaped chicken wrap. I think she liked her dish because she managed to finish most of it! =) Glad she finally tried quesadillas after hearing about its existence.

Salmon pasta ($19). Unlike most salmon pastas that serve bits of salmon mixed in with pasta, Oriole serves a slab of well-seasoned, panfried salmon with cream based pasta. I loved how the entire dish was bursting with flavour! (:

The wonderful thing about dining with Jieqi is that she's a dessert lover like me! =) We were so eager to try their desserts that we placed orders for them even before our entire meal had begun. Both of us were elated when we finally ate their desserts because they were fantastic! (: The long wait to dine at Oriole didn't disappoint!

Sticky pudding ($9). The pudding wasn't too dense and it was warm and moist. I love its texture and I think the vanilla icecream complemented it very well.

Chocolate fudge cake with ice cream ($9). This dessert is potent! Definitely NOT for those who dislike chocolate or cannot take the impact of rich and sinful chocolate! The chocolate fudge cake blew our minds away because the chocolate was simply SO good! It helped that the cake was slightly warm because I've come to realise that I love warm chocolate cake with icecream. It's a guranteed happyfying combination for me as long as the cake and icecream aren't too bad!

Oriole Cafe & Bar is a great place for friends to catch up and enjoy good food at the same time. The staff are generally friendly and un-intrusive so you will most likely be able relax and enjoy your meal. However, please try to order your food fast because they tend to get a bit anxious with regard to taking orders. I'll definitely make a trip back to Oriole in the near future to sample more dishes.

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

Domino's Pizza

On the first day of CNY, Nette, Andrew, Jeffrey & I had to settle our own dinner because LPP (i.e. lim pa pa) had his own agenda. It was already 7ish when we had a short discussion on what to have for dinner so we decided to have pizza. Both Domino's Pizza and Pizza Hut were having CNY promotions but we opted for the former in the end because we've never tried it!

If you know Nette, you'll know that she's an extremely thrifty and calculating person so instead of calling Domino's to order our pizza, she and Andrew actually went to the outlet itself to check whether there're takeaway offers! Geez. I would NEVER do that! Anyway, it's good that they went because they found out that there was a half-price offer for all pizzas and they decided to get that! (:

Apart from the extra large pizza, we also ordered three sides and they came in interesting & cute containers such as the one showcased above (:

Chicken wings/ drumlets! There were six of them actually so three has been eaten. Jeffrey says that they were pretty oily but I guess that's normal for chicken wings/ drumlets right?

Twisty bread! I actually like it because it tastes a teensybit like garlic bread yet it has no garlic smell? Perhaps it's just the butter/ margarine. I love the rough texture of the bread sticks. Yums.
Our extra large hawaiian paradise pizza! It's the biggest pizza I've seen to date! Each slice of this XL-pizza is probably 1.25-1.5 times larger than the usual 'large' slice pizza. While the toppings may not be heavenly, the pizza bread was surprisingly delicious! (: It was thin yet doughy and I absolutely loved it! =)

For dessert, we'd a cinnamon bread sticks. These were the last three sticks and they were consumed immediately after I took this photo. I'm very happy that Domino's has sweet stuff on their menu because I need dessert to make my meal complete!

I think Domino's Pizza is definitely worth a try, especially if you want to have something different from the usual takeaway pizzas. Apparently, they'll take no more than 30minutes to deliver your order so you won't be kept hungry for too long! (: Shall do the 30minutes trial test one day! Alright that's all for now (:

Lenas

Last weekend, Jeffrey and I headed over to Lenas at Bugis because we heard that they serve affordable and good food (:

Lenas is located just next to Sketches, which is another great Italian restaurant that my family likes quite a bit.

Lenas was surprisingly quiet on that Saturday afternoon, probably because many Singaporeans took advantage of the long weekend to go on a holiday, or perhaps they were in a chingchong Chinese New Year mood and they preferred having Chinese food that day. Whatever the reason, we were quite thankful that we didn't have to queue for a table or wait too long for our food to be served.

The interior of Lenas is very woody. I don't recall being in any restaurant that has as many slanted wooden planks placed all over the restaurant as Lenas. The seemingly disorganised placement of wooden planks gave the restaurant a rather 'in progress' kind of vibe which I thought was pretty interesting.

I didn't know that Lenas was related to MOF till I saw this coaster. I actually like MOF quite a bit so I knew that the food that I got at Lenas wouldn't be terrible (:

We wanted to order their chef's recommendation for starters but alas it wasn't meant to be because the dish was unavailable. Undaunted, Jeffrey and I chose to have calamari fritto ($7), which proved to be an excellent choice because the bitesize pieces of squid were mouth-watering-ly delicious (:

Their ham & mushroom pizza ($14), in Jeffrey's opinion, was "similar to or may be even better than Modestos". I guess he really likes the thin but un-biscuit-y crust and the not-too-sour tomato sauce.

Initially, I wanted to order a pasta or pizza dish but when I saw that Lenas serves 'sweet pizza's, I immediately decided to forgo my original choices so that I could eat a sweet pizza. I chose their chef's recommendation sweet pizza called Wonderous Winona ($12), which is essentially nutella spread & slices of banana on a thin and biscuity pizza base. I would have preferred it if the base was slightly more doughy/ less hard but it's still a relatively good alternative dish to have if you're in the mood for sweet stuff.

And because I've an extremely sweet tooth and an insatiable appetite when it comes to sweet stuff, I ordered a brownie bettina ($13), which is brownie on hot plate with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It looked somewhat like Swensens' apple/ banana crumble and I was excited to have my first bite (: Sadly, I thought this dish was only average because the brownie wasn't as dense as it could have been and the quality of the vanilla icecream wasn't top notch either. Having said that, I'd still consider this a relatively decent dessert though.

One little gripe that I've with Lenas is that they do not serve free icewater! =( Each glass of water costs 50cents. On hindsight, I should have ordered my favourite drink instead of having water but I guess water's the cheapest beverage on their drinks list.

Alright that's all for now (: Hope that everyone will have a great week ahead! (:

Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner @Sunset Way

I know I'm a little late but HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR everyone! (: (: (: I love festive seasons like CNY and Christmas because of the light & joyous celebratory mood and the copious amount of FOOD! (:

This year, my CNY feasting began last Friday at Sunset Way's Food Park. My parents wanted us to have a meal together before half my family departs for Vietnam for holiday so we ended up at Sunset Way for our annual reunion dinner.

One of the CNY dishes that I absolutely adore is yusheng! (: I've surveyed quite a few of my friends and they told me that the only thing they like about yusheng is the crackers =S I actually like everything about the dish and I look forward to eating it every CNY! (: So far, I've only lo-hei-ed once and I'm looking forward to more! Alright, enough rambling. I shall review the nine-course set CNY set meal that we had that night now!

First up, yu sheng! (: I'm not being biased when I say that sunset way sells one of the best yushengs! My family goes to sunset way every year to buy their packed yushengs home because it's just so good! The ingredients are very fresh and the plum sauce isn't cloyingly sweet. It's really value for money and I highly recommend it! =)

Scallop shark's fin soup. Yeah I know that we should try not to order shark's fin soup because we shouldn't condone animal cruelty but this was one of the rare times that we indulged in this dish. We usually don't order this because it's too expensive and we feel a bit bad for the sharks so I guess it's alright to have this once in a very blue moon.

Braised pork shoulder. The meat was surprisingly soft because it literally slid off the bone when we used the large metal spatula to slice the meat off.

Honey baked prawn. This tasted more like cereal prawns to me but it was good nevertheless. I've a soft spot for cereal-y stuff so anything that has cereal tends to be acceptable to me. The prawns were huge and juicy so prawn lovers should love this.

Steamed fish. The five limmies (my four siblings and myself) dislike eating things with bones so this dish posed a bit of trouble to us. We're lazy eaters who prefer de-boned slices of fish meat but since we'd no choice, we had to exercise caution while eating parts of this fish for fear of ingesting a bone. On the whole, this dish was pretty decent because the fish was fresh.

Abalone seafood. I'm pretty sure my sister, Jade, LOVES this dish because it has slices of abalone. She's a trueblue abalone lover! There's actually an abalone story (which everyone but Jade remembers) to back my claim but it's a tad too long to elaborate here so I shall skip it. Anyhow, this dish was something like mixed seafood stew, which was pretty okay.

Mushroom xiao bai cai. This was probably the only vegetable dish that night and it was merely average.

Braised noodle. I adored this dish because the noodles tasted like wantan mee! I like the springyness of good wantan mee! (: Unfortunately, this dish came a tad too late and everyone was feeling very full so it was mostly untouched. Being the glutton that I am, I ate two full plates because I couldn't resist the nice noodles. Yikes.

Dessert: logan with ice. A simple 'childhood' dish to end the meal.

We were extremely full and bloated at the end of our 2hour long dinner. The entire meal costs $288, which to me is an extremely reasonable price given the amount of food that was served. We liked the food but we wished that there was more wind that night because we felt extremely hot. Other than that, the meal was great! (: More yushengs please!

Funan Wen

Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of ipoh horfun but I don't exactly dislike it either. To me, it's just another one of the many noodle-ish options that we have here in foodie Singapore. The last time I ate ipoh horfun was in my secondary school days and I ate that only because my friends told me that the ipoh horfun at Scotts foodcourt was fantastic. I remember feeling extremely neutral about my friends' highly recommended ipoh horfun because really, it didn't taste that great. Since then, I don't think I've ever tasted ipoh hofun again, not because it left a bad impression but because I've never gone out of my way to order what to me was a perfectly ordinary dish.

Last week, Jieqi brought me to Funan Wen, a Chinese restaurant that supposedly serves wonderful ipoh horfun (: Funan Wen is a stone's throw away from Once Upon A Milkshake, so you can visit both places (like we did) when you're in that area.

Their huge menu is plastered on the wall for people, probably for the regular lunch crowd who doesn't need to scan through the entire menu since they already know what they want to eat.

Regular lunch crowd. Thankfully, we managed to secure a seat despite the restaurant being very crowded! I think its convenient location, low prices and high quality food are the three important factors that draw the lunch crowd in.

Jieqi ordered the prawn with chicken ipoh horfun ($5.80). The dumplings were much larger than expected and more importantly, they taste good! I think this was just enough to suppress Jieqi's hunger pangs and to satisfy her craving for ipoh horfun (:

I chose to have mushroom & vegetable ipoh horfun ($5.20), which was what I had at Scotts foodcourt many many years ago. For the amount I paid, I didn't expect to see such a huge plate of food! I'm extremely pleased with the large servings of horfun, juicy succulent mushrooms and fresh green vegetables. In my opinion, there are two things that make this ipoh horfun an A dish: the horfun itself, which has a light springiness, and the horfun sauce, which had perfect consistency and taste. I thoroughly liked this simple yet satisfying meal.

Thanks Jieqi for introducing Funan Wen to me! (: It's real gem for ipoh horfun lovers.

Once Upon A Milkshake

Whenever I think of milkshakes, a particular scene from Pulp Fiction always comes into mind. It's the scene when Mia (played by Uma Thurman) orders a five-dollar milkshake at a restaurant when she was dining with Vincent (John Travolta).

The dialogue goes something like this:

MIA: I'll have the Durwood Kirby burger, bloody... and a five-dollar shake.

BUDDY (waiter): How d'ya want that shake, Martin and Lewis, or Amos and Andy?

MIA: Martin and Lewis.

VINCENT: Did you just order a five-dollar shake?

MIA: Sure did.

VINCENT: A shake? Milk and ice cream?

MIA: Uh-huh.

VINCENT: It costs five dollars?

BUDDY (waiter): Yep.

VINCENT: You don't put bourbon in it or anything?

BUDDY: Nope.

VINCENT: Just checking.

[A while later]

Buddy comes back with the drinks. Mia wraps her lips around the straw of her shake.

MIA: Yummy!

VINCENT: Can I have a sip of that? I'd like to know what a five-dollar shake tastes like.

MIA: Be my guest. [She slides the shake over to him.] You can use my straw, I don't have kooties.

[Vincent smiles.]

VINCENT: Yeah, but maybe I do.

MIA: Kooties I can handle.

[He takes a sip.]

VINCENT: Goddamn! That's a pretty fuckin' good milk shake.

MIA: Told ya.

VINCENT: I don't know if it's worth five dollars, but it's pretty fuckin'good.

(Source: http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/pulp.shtml)

Since then, I sometimes make the conscious effort to check out the prices of milkshakes when I see them around and I will chuckle to myself if I see a milkshake that costs $5 or more.

Last week, Jieqi, Albert and I decided to traipse down to Once Upon A Milkshake for some milkshake-loving (:

I'm not too sure of its exact location as I merely followed Jieqi as she led us there. I know that it's near Tanjong Pagar MRT station though! (:

Once Upon A Milkshake only serves icecream milkshake, icecream and little snacks (brownie and chocolate chip cookies). You can refer to the photo for prices.

I was ecstatic when I saw how afforadable their milkshakes were! (: Jieqi and I decided to get a large cup of milkshake each because we felt that the small one may not be sufficient to make us sugarhappy (:

The two predominant colours of this milkshake place are white and purple. I suspect their immersing in such a purple environment somehow influenced them to want to dress in purple on a particular day last week.

This little wooden block didn't really serve its full purpose because all the patrons knew which tables were free/ taken.

I ordered their vanilla milkshake (left), which was very thick and very creamy, and Jieqi ordered strawberry milkshake (right), which I felt was slightly more enjoyable because of the fruity touch.

Albert decided to go for two scoops of icecream: strawberry and vanilla. He commented that the vanilla icecream was very good!

Because of that, Jieqi and I ordered two scoops of icecream to share: peanut butter (left) and lychee (right). Their peanut butter is really a must-try because it tastes very authentic. Prior to this, I've only tried peanut butter icecream at Swensens and I must say that Once Upon A Milkshake's peanut butter icecream trumps Swensens' anytime!

We left milkshake haven feeling extremely full and contented! I thoroughly enjoyed indulging in my $5.50 milkshake and icecream scoops with my two purple-loving good friends (: Hoping to return to this place in the near future!