Koryo

Hello! (:

The weather's been wonderful today because it's neither too hot nor rainy so it's perfect for outings! Jeffrey, Matty and I went to Jaan to celebrate my birthday just now and the three of us had a great time! (: Will blog about that after I get the photos from Jeffrey so I shall blog about Koryo, a Korean restaurant located at Fusionopolis, which I'm pretty sure my sister(s) will like reading about since they're pretty into Korean food these days!

I first heard about Koryo from a friend and her husband and how they came to know of that place is because her husband works at Fusionopolis. She told me to try the food here because it's affordable and good so one day, the three of us decided to head down to see if the food's really worth the trip!

The interior decor is clean and simple: the walls were decorated with repeated Korean words and they adopted a woody look for their table setting.

Complimentary appetizers (: They tasted average. Compared to the spread at Kim's Family Restaurant, these four dishes may appear pathetic but the quality's really not that bad!

Stew Beef with Steamed Rice ($9.50). The soup was surprisingly sweet and I liked the vermicilli/ glass noodle in it a lot! (: Matty said that the beef went well with the plain rice which came in the typical silver Korean 'bowl' with lid.

Seafood Spring Onion Pancake ($8). Possibly our favourite dish that day because it suited everyone's taste! The thing I liked most about Koryo's pancake is that it is less oily than other Korean pancakes that I've had! Thumbs up for this one!

Bibimbap ($11.50). I can't help but feel obliged to order the most iconic Korean dish (at least to me) whenever I visit any Korean restaurant. I absolutely adore the splash of colours that this dish provides! Its non-spiciness appealed to Jeffrey, who ended up eating most of this dish!

Korean Soup Noodles ($8). I ate most of this dish because I love noodles and because it was overcast that day, I craved for something warm and soupy and was glad that I found this dish! The soup is clear and light and there isn't anything to shout about for this dish but nevertheless, it's a comforting dish to have.

In all, I would recommend Koryo to anyone who likes cheap and good Korean food! (: It definitely lived up to my expectations and I think I'll be back again in the near future!

Have a great weekend everyone! (:

Loola's

Hello everyone! (:
It's a beautifully sunny Sunday but unfortunately I spent most of it catching up on sleep because I was zonked from my full day outing to town yesterday! It was as if it was Christmas all over again because town was packed with people! Thank to Jeffrey, I managed to get home without much of a hassle (thanks Yendy!).

Anyway, here's a happy post to celebrate this glorious weekend as well as to set us in the right mood for CNY eve and CNY itself! (:

Matty and I made a trip to Loola's not too long ago for a late lunch one Saturday afternoon not too long ago and we were completely floored by the food served there! We had expected the food to be just average but all our dishes surpassed our expectations so we were jolly diners that day! (: We chose to have a cup of cappuccino & macchiato ($5 each), which were warm and comforting. No prizes for guessing which of the two I had! =P Till today, I still feel slightly perplexed at how small a cup of macchiato is whenever it gets served to the table.. someone should start serving double/ triple macchiato!

We shared a cappellini & roe ($15) for our starter and we both agreed that this dish was done to perfection. You could taste every single component of the dish: from the hollandaise sauce to the olive oil to the slight truffle and not to mention the wonderfully explosive and slightly salty salmon roe! It was truly mouthwateringly good!

Matty decided to have the Karubi ($32) which looks like stewed beef with stew sauce/gravy and a lovely dish of wonderfully grilled vegetables! I loved the grilled vegetables! Matty said that the meat was extremely tender and well marinated. Glad that he liked it!

I chose to have mushrooms on toast ($16) and boy was I happy with my choice when my food arrived because there was just SO many big slices of juicy mushrooms on two pieces of bread with extremely crispy edges! This dish completely sated me! (:

For desserts, we shared a lemon meringue custard tart with vanilla bean icecream ($12) and I think this was probably the first lemon meringue tart which didn't have lemon in its base or at least I didn't taste it at all! The tart base seemed to be covered with a thin layer of hardened chocolate and the tart was then filled up with flowy sweet custard and right on top was the meringue layer. I guess Matty's tastebuds are slightly more sensitive than mine cos he said that he tasted lemon but I kept trying to detect it but failed! haha It doesn't really matter I guess - at least the dessert was nice. I would say that it's pretty sweet so if you can't take more-than-average sweetness, I wouldn't suggest that you order this. There're many other nice desserts that you can choose from so you won't be deprived of choices!

Alright that's all for now (: Happy eve of CNY! Enjoy yourselves at your reunion dinners and eat loads! (:

Ding Tai Feng

Hello everyone,
the lunar new year is just around the corner and I thought it's fitting to do a post on some Chinese food which I recently had at Ding Tai Feng.

Jeffrey and I wanted to gather some clues for my brother's birthday game at MBS so we decided to have lunch there as well. Jo recommended Mozza but it was ridiculously packed so we trooped to level 1 to one of the biggest Ding Tai Feng outlets that we've been to so far for lunch.

We managed to get seated almost immediately thanks to the huge seating capacity!
Ravenous, we went ahead to order side dishes in hope that they will appear on our tables without much waiting time:

Their recommended (it's a 'star' item!) vegetarian vegetable starter ($3.80), which we both liked, me more so than him. Felt like we were eating vegetable noodles, which is perfectly fine with me (: Loved it!

This was a sweet dish though it doesn't look it - I think it's tofu skin cubes with honey and mushrooms ($4.80) if I'm not wrong. This dish gave a nice contrast to the previous starter and Jeffrey liked this quite a bit! Guess it's a dish worth trying (:

Stir-fried dou miao veggies ($12). Believe it or not, this dish was the most expensive dish we had that day! I thought vegetables were supposed to be cheap and affordable? But I won't complain because it was one of the freshest and tastiest plate of dou miao I've had! Love the crunchiness of the vegetables and the fact that it wasn't overly flavourful. I'd love to have this again any time!

Of course, no trip to Ding Tai Feng is complete without Xiao Long Baos ($7.30 for 6).

I know this may sound silly but I actually love plain noodes with whatever house sauce that they can concoct ($6.50). My only gripe is that the serving size is quite small so you will have to order other dishes to go along with your noodles if you want to be full after your meal!

Jeffrey decided to go for one of the most sought-after dishes in Taiwan - Beef noodles aka niu rou mian ($11.50). It looked scarily red and spicy (thanks to the layer of oil) but it actually was pretty okay. I drank a little of the soup but I didn't really like it so I don't think this bowl of noodles is for me.

We didn't have desserts at Ding Tai Feng because we didn't want to have Chinese-type desserts so we left after having our fill of yummy Chinese food. Ding Tai Feng doesn't serve the best Chinese food but you can be assured that their standards are not low and that you will at the very least be filled with warm, comforting food.

Alright that's all for now (: Happy Lunar New Year in advance! Have a great long weekend!

Selfish Gene Cafe

Hello everyone!

Matty and I went to Selfish Gene Cafe over the weekend to check out the new items on their menu! I think it was a good idea to go for a late lunch because the cafe wasn't jammed pack with people seeking brunch/ lunch and the cafe was filled with soft chatter and laughter from the two tables nearby.

Unlike our previous visit, we didn't order any coffee or tea this time but we did manage to try a brand new (well, at least to us) range of dishes! (:

For starters, we chose to share a bowl of pumpkin soup ($5.80), which turned out to be one of the creamiest bowl of pumpkin soup I've had in my life! (: What I loved most about it is that I could taste the distinct doses of olive oil and cream and the combination is just perfect! Would definitely love to have another bowl of pumpkin soup when I return again.

For my mains, I chose to have the vegetable bruschetta ($10.80), which essentially is a range of nicely grilled/ caramelised vegetables with feta cheese on crispy toast. The entire dish tasted very homemade and that's what I like about it.

Matty had the popular breakfast plate ($15.80), which filled him up rather nicely. I'm starting to wonder whether he and his friends cook scrambled eggs the same way because Matty made scrambled eggs for me once and it tasted like the one served at Selfish Gene's Cafe! The eggs, by the way, were very good!

Finally for dessert, we tried the croissant butter pudding ($6.80), which I guess is a variation of my favourite bread & butter pudding! It was surprisingly small in size but it didn't disappoint! Was thankful that we were quite full already so we weren't put off by the petite serving size.

Like before, I thoroughly enjoyed the food and company but I do need to caution hungry and/ or impatient people who may want to think twice about going to Selfish Gene Cafe: I think the kitchen crew is still pretty new so they may take a while to prepare and serve you your food so some patience is required! Matty and I had to wait 20minutes for our soup to arrive and another 10 minutes after for our mains to come so we pretty much devoured our food when it appeared on our table because we were famished! Other than that, I think this cafe's definitely worth a visit!

Alright that's all! Have a great week ahead! Goodnight! (:

Peperoni

Hello everyone!

Orientation and the madness of week 1 is over! (: I'm really thankful that life will resume its normalcy for a while till the SH Orientation comes along. Currently, I'm feeling a little under the weather due to lack of rest so I will try to get well by tomorrow and things should be fine and dandy again.

I know this is kinda late to post about our annual Limmy's NYE 'party' but I'll do it anyway because it's worth a post! My siblings and I tend to have cookouts on National Day, Christmas Day and NYE and that's when head chef, Nette, will cook for all of us! We'll help her out by buying groceries and ingredients that she needs or volunteering to be her kitchen help! I love these cookouts because that's when the 5 of us will plonk ourselves in front of the tv in the living room to watch films or tv series! We've been on a Running Man high the past 1.5 years or so! It's very addictive because it's hilarious! Everyone should check it out (:

For NYE this year, our head chef Nette wasn't free to cook for us so Jeffrey and I decided to drop by the nearby Peperoni at Binjai to order food for our NYE dinner!

One thing I love about Peperoni is that it serves a wide range of dishes and they allow us to pre-order for takeaway!

Our family sized pizza, which was just enough for all of us! We ordered half-haiwaiian and half mushroom and ham because I think these are the two flavours that are popular/ fine with everyone. The crust is thin and the flavours aren't particularly strong so it should be pretty palateable to most. The pizza wasn't fantastic in my opinion but it was sufficient for a meal over Running Man!

We also ordered carbonara to share. I think the linguine tends to clump when you takeaway so it's best to consume it as soon as possible so you don't get clumpy pasta!

Chicken salad. You must toss the chicken slices, vegetables and seasoning well to get a nice serving of tasty salad. However, if you prefer your salad to be bland and natural, skip the sauce (:

Garlic bread - I thought the serving size was pathetic! =( If I had known that one serving of garlic bread was this small, I would have ordered two! Again, I thought that this was only average, nothing to shout about.

Chicken wings. I think this dish was pretty well-received because it cleared pretty quickly! So we will order this again in future if we eat at/ order from Peperoni.

In short, I think Peperoni is definitely a fine alternative to Pizza Hut, which we usually order our pizzas from. I know that there are other pizza places near our place like Domino's as well as Picotin but I guess Peperoni's the most convenient for us to pick up our orders since it's the nearest to our place.

Alright time for bed! Hope that everyone's having a restful weekend! (: Will update this space again soon!

Halia

Hello!

The past 2 weeks have been pure madness due to planning for Orientation which will take place next week! Hopefully the kids will enjoy themselves and that they'll start the school year on a high and positive note (:

The weather's been fabulous the past week (well we were having dry runs so I was glad that there were no showers and/ or thunderstorms!) and it's perfect to be out and about exploring restaurants that are situated in non-sheltered areas such as the Botanic Gardens!

 Jeffrey and I went to Halia not too long ago for lunch and we were quite impressed with the quiet and tranquil yet undisturbing ambience. We chose to sit indoors to hide from the heat and were lucky enough to get to sit right next to the glass window where we could look out at the people walking about! Definitely felt like we were in a fishbowl of sorts but we liked the experience.

Since I am a sucker for 'signature dishes and drinks', I couldn't help but order the Chilled Halia Infusion ($10), which was a kind of ginger tea mixed with other things which I don't remember. The ginger taste wasn't very strong but it was detectable and the drink on the whole was pretty welcoming.

When I'm lucky, Jeffrey will agree to order my favourite drink in the world - sprite ($6) - to share. This is always good because I've a back-up drink if the experimental drink that I order turns out to be bad!

On the day we visited Halia, their brunch special was fish & chips ($36), which we felt was slightly disappointing because the fish wasn't very juicy or tender. Also, the portion of the fish fillets were pretty small but I guess the fries sort of made up for the fish. I don't think the price of the dish reflects the quality of the food but it's okay.

I chose the Scrambled Eggs Set ($20) and the kind waitress allowed me to swap a sausage for portobello mushrooms! Felt that mine was definitely nicer than Jeffrey's and I happily ate my fill! Love having breakfast dishes!

Finally, we ended off our garden meal with Sticky Chocolate dessert ($12), which was a slice of dense brownie with a scoop of vanilla icecream - yumyum!

On the whole, though we liked the dining experience at Halia, I don't think it is a place which we're likely to revisit soon or often because we feel that it's too pricey! Well at least we tried something new & different at my favourite place in Singapore (:

Alright will try to get as much rest as possible before madness begins next week! (: Happy weekend!