Soup Restaurant

Hello everyone! (:

I decided to do a quick entry on Soup Restaurant, which coincidentally is one of my favourite Chinese restaurants because it almost always never disappoints whenever I visit! (: Jeffrey and I didn't bring our camera today so I relied on my trusty Nokia HP to take the following photos.

I think one of the best moves we made today was to leave the house at 11ish instead of noon, which was part of the initial plan, because we managed to get a table just slightly past noon before the lunch crowd came! It was slightly frightening to see an influx of (hungry) people sourcing for lunch at the basement of Paragon shopping centre!

Interestingly, today was one of the rare days when the cashier cum credit card system at Soup Restaurant failed to work so only cash payment was accepted. This also means that they could not print receipts out and had to handwrite all receipts! For a moment I had a sense of Cambodian-dejavu because that's how the Cambodians do things (at least that's how they did it last year when we visited Cambodia). I didn't keep the receipt with me so I don't know how much each of the following dishes cost but you can take a look at the photos to decide if they tantalize you enough to want to give Soup Restaurant a try:

Big and soft baked peanuts which Jeffrey dislikes so I ended up eating most of them on my own! Think the hunger got to me so I was busy popping them into my mouth while he entertained me!

Hometown tofu - sufficient for two! This crispy on the outside and soft on the inside fried tofu is possibly one of the nicer tofu dishes that I've eaten. The accompanying garnishing and the light sauce which surrounds the tofu helped to make this dish a clear winner!

Samsui Ginger Chicken - another popular dish that many people ordered! I think it's definitely enough for 2-3 (or if you're small eaters, perhaps 4?) to share and I absolutely loved how fragrant the sauce in the middle taste! I didn't eat the chicken slices but I ate all the cucumbers that were drenched in the chicken sauce, yummy! (: Jeffrey LOVES this chicken so I think it's a must-order dish when you visit Soup Restaurant!

We also ordered one of their 'specials', which is spinach with three different types of egg soaked in broth. Frankly, I was keen on this dish because I wasnted to compare it to Crystal Jade's and I concluded that the broth at Crystal Jade tastes more herbal and Jeffrey said that the Crystal Jade's version has more eggs! I guess it really depends on what kind you prefer but both are fine with us, we just wanted to have some veggies!

Yang Zhou Fried Rice. This was the least appetizing dish because there wasn't much flavour or taste in the fried rice! I was thankful that we'd many other dishes with sauces/ broth to help give our fried rice some taste. If you ever order this dish, please don't have too high expectations; it does serve as a good alternative to white rice though!
In short, I was glad that we chose to go to Soup Restaurant today because I rarely eat Chinese food when I'm with Jeffrey (: The occassional visits to Chinese restaurants that serve yummy food makes me want to return from time to time.
Alright I hope that you've had a good Hari Raya break too! (: Take care and have a good week ahead!

Seb's Bistro (Rochester Park Cafe)

Hello everyone! (: 

Am feeling unusually drained today because I did NS yesterday for the first time in my life & now I can empathise (to a very small extent) the tedium of doing guard duty and/ or admin for the entire day! Nevertheless, it was an experience that I am glad I got to partake in and I certainly did learn some things from it (:

Today I shall blog about a lovely cafe that belongs to the restaurants that reside at the Rochester area - Seb's Bistro! (: It's a restaurant that serves French/ Western food and it adopts an open-dining concept, which means that it'll be extremely HOT during the day because there's ONLY alfresco dining! Be prepared to drink up and perspire if you ever decide to dine at Seb's during the day! That's exactly what Jeffrey and I did when we visited it on a weekend afternoon for lunch!

Upon arrival, we were served a bread basket with slices of multigrain bread (if I'm not wrong) and a full container of butter (see bottom left).  The bread wasn't warm but it was soft and fresh enough so we were satiated.

For starters, we decided to go for the confit calamari ($16), which superceded my expectations: not only was it a novel dish (I've never eaten this before!), the squid were fresh and the flavours were subtly blended such that it wasn't too heavy a dish! Loved it! (:

We couldn't help but order a side portion of fries ($6) that day because I had a fries-attack the day before and it wasn't fully resolved so we decided to make sure that I got my share of fries! Personally, I don't like fries that are too fat like the ones served here because there's too much potato in each fry and it is difficult for the salt on the surface to sufficiently flavour the entire fry! Moreover, ingesting fat fries means that I get full faster and can therefore eat fewer fries! haha Bottomline is that you can give these fries a miss if you aren't really into fries or if you think there's another worthier sidedish!

Carbonara ($18). Not the French-iest of dishes but I just felt like having some linguine that day so that's what we had. The texture of the linguine was just right but I felt that there was just way too much cream sauce so the 'gelat' feeling kicked in a tad too early. The trick to finishing this dish is to share this dish with someone else so that you'll not get too sick of its taste! Thankfully Jeffrey helped me finish the last bits of it so I didn't feel like I'm wasting food! (:

Somehow I'm under the impression that duck confit ($28) is THE French dish to order because this dish never fails to be at least satisfactory when we order it at the few French restaurants that we've dined at and true enough, Seb's rendition of the duck confit was no exception! Jeffrey commented that the meat was extremely tender and it slid right off the bone! It was also very well-marinated and the meat tasted divine! (: If you're at a loss as to what to order, please go along with this and you won't be (too) disappointed.

Alright that's all I've to share for today! (: The weather's been great so far and I hope that your Sunday is going well! (:

Will update this space again soon (: Have a great week ahead everyone!

Trattoria Capri

Hello everyone!

The weekend is finally here and I'd like to share about a new Italian restaurant - Capri - that has recently sprung up in my neighbourhood.

It's situated near Peperoni at Binjai and I would say that it's a good alternative to pop into if you can't get a table/ reservation at Peperoni because Capri serves pretty authentic Italian food at reasonable prices as well! (:

We first went to Capri a few weeks ago on the same day that my two Shinee-girlfan-siblings wanted to go to town to get their Shinee concert tickets! We figured that town would be crowded since it was a Friday night so we might as well try to get some grub someplace that's not so crowded before Shinee-ing and that's how we landed up at Capri!

The interior of the restaurant is pretty Italian, with brick walls and warm lighting. Though most of the tables were taken, the restaurant wasn't very noisy and we could carry out quite a good conversation without having to raise our voices or strain our ears. It's definitely a good place to go to for some good catching up!

Because it was our first time there, we decided to let our waitress introduce their daily specials as well as their chef's recommendations to see if any of the mentioned dishes tickled our fancy. In the end we decided to order the Tagliere ($36) for starters, which basically consisted of rocket leaves, parma ham, some sliced cherry tomatoes and mozzerarella cheese! (: I think this was the first time I've actually ordered this dish and I must say that the cheese went quite well with the vegetables and my dinner companions loved the combination of cheese with parma ham! This was definitely a winning dish! (:

We also chose to have the ham & mushroom pizza ($18), which was a safe and boring choice. The most interesting thing about the pizza is its base - it was slightly doughy and it was soft! I prefer my base/ crust to taste like this so this was well received by me (:

Perhaps the 'highlight' of the night was the Linguine Aragosta ($65), which is essentially linguine with lobster in tomato sauce. I was looking forward to eating this dish because I love lobsters and I thought that the combination would be great but unfortunately the sauce was a tad too thin for my liking. I felt that it could have been stronger, thicker and perhaps a little creamier? In any case, it didn't really bother us too much because we gobbled it all up due to sheer hunger! I would like to try their other pastas in future and I hope that they will be slightly more palateable than this one.
In short, I thought that our first visit to this Capri left a good impression and I would certainly love to visit it again in the near future to try other dishes! (: Alright that's all for now - have a great weekend everyone!

P.S. Thanks Matt for the photos (:

Olive Tree

Hello everyone! (:

The weekend is here again! (: I'll be pretty busy this weekend so I thought I'd post a short but photo-filled entry so as to keep this space alive.

Some of you will already know that my past few visits to Olive Tree (at Intercontinental Hotel) left much to be desired but nevertheless, I decided to give them yet another try a couple of weekends ago and fortunately for me, their standards have improved and their weekend international high tea buffet ($38++/ pax) was pretty satisfying! (: I won't be mentioning every single dish that we'd because there are just too many, instead, I'll mention those that are worthy of being noted!

They'd a wide range of starters which included cold salads and other spicier options:

What we loved most about the buffet is their japanese sushi corner! Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to help yourselves to the sashimi; you can only have the entire sushi! I guess it's their way of controlling the amount of sashimi guests can eat? Oh well I do hope that they'll have a sashimi counter in the near future because it's quite silly to waste stomach space on japanese sushi rice!

The stirfry Chinese noodles was very bland and I didn't like it at all but the cod fish was good! (:

I think most people think that 'Laksa' is a uniquely Singaporean dish and hence this dish makes its appearance in most asian/ international buffets here in Singapore. This laksa is pretty good though I think it's not as nice as the one served at One-Ninety:

There was a fried food section which serves things like onion rings and roti prata:

More photos of food that we had that day:

Oh yes this deserves special mention: there is an Indian food section that serves a small but adequate range of curry and yellow rice! (:

Desserts galore:

Okay you may wish to skip the ice kachang because the syrup has absolutely NO taste! It serves to make the shaved ice look more colourful but honestly it failed to make any impact in terms of taste. Avoid at all cost unless you don't mind having unsweetened ice kachang!

Last but not least, this is probably the best drink that I've had in all the buffets that I've been to - thick and sweet teh tarik! (: Loved it so much that I would have drunk two cups if I weren't that full!

In all, I think dining at Olive Tree during the weekend is quite a relaxing experience because there aren't many customers and with the new range of dishes available, I think it's worth a visit! (:

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

Raku

Hello!

It's been a while since I've updated this space! Sorry for the lack of updates recently - been busy with school and meeting up with people this national day break! (: I am truly thankful for this break because I needed to catch up on sleep and much more.

Anyway, I noticed something quite interesting over the past few weekends: Singaporeans tend to eat out late even on Sunday nights. I was always under the impression that people generally don't eat out late on Sunday nights because people have to go to school and work the next day but apparently I'm wrong because Greenwood was teeming with life when I went for a late dinner at 8ish a few Sundays ago!

Jeffrey and I decided to dine at Raku because we both felt like eating Japanese food. I've had a meal at this outlet once as well as another at the Raku outlet at Holland Village and the food on both visits were okay. I wasn't expecting more than the usual average fair that night but I dare say that our most recent trip to Raku at Greenwood was slightly better than the previous two because we decided to order new dishes to try and they turned out well! (:  

Yasai Sticks ($6). These appeared promptly on our tabletop after we were seated and I thought that it was a complimentary dish but evidently I was wrong! Nevertheless, I didn't regret having this because it was a healthy start for our meal (: The vegetable sticks were crunchy and the dipping sauce was perfect!

Special Raku Sushi ($45). This sushi platter reminded me of the sushi dish that I'd on my last day in Tokyo! It's fantastic for people who love sashimi! I felt that the sashimi was very fresh and I loved how thick the slices were. Yum!

Garlic Fried Rice ($8). Extremely fragrant and moist fried rice that you would not regret ordering!

Unagi Kabayaki ($18). If you're a fan of unagi, you should order this alongside the garlic fried rice above because it's a winning combination! (: It beats all unagidons handsdown! I usually don't like to eat unagi but I just had to give this one a go because it looked so good - no regrets! (:

Complimentary dish of cut fruits per person.

A scoop of complimentary green tea icecream for each person too (:

If you're ever near Greenwood area and would like to have some decent Japanese food, do drop by Raku because they never fail to serve average or better-than-average fare (: Their lunch sets are pretty affordable so you may wish to check it out as well!

Alright that's all for now (: I hope all of you enjoyed your national day weekend! I am already looking forward to the next long break! Have a good rest of the week!

Matt the Skywalker.