Nara Thai

Hello (:

A week ago we had lunch together at Nara Thai and it was a pleasant experience. Apart from having their mixed platter, chicken pad thai and mango salad, which are all featured above, we also had their green seafood curry, which was my favourite dish that day (:

One thing I like about Thai food is that the dishes are always packed with flavours - mostly sweet and spicy. And what I love most is that they always serve coconut juice, which is fast becoming my favourite thirst quencher and cooler when I want something that isn't fizzy.

All in all, we had a good time there together and I'm thankful that we can always count on each other to be around, whether for grub or for other things (:

Have a good weekend everyone!

Shangri-la (Bangkok) High Tea

Hello!


Here's a quick post to remind my dear friend who's flying off to Bangkok in a couple of days time to remind her to go to Shangri-la to have high tea! =) Unlike in Singapore where high tea buffets are quite common, it's surprisingly difficult to find restaurants/ hotels in Bangkok that serves (buffet) high tea! While we were there on our previous visit, we decided to go to Shangri-la to check out if their high tea is similar to ours.

We managed to try two types of tea and the one that I chose was really nice except that I can't remember what it's called at the moment! =S The tea selection in Bangkok is definitely much smaller than in Singapore so tea lovers may not think that it's worth having high tea in Shangri-la Bangkok! But even in Singapore, one can only opt to change their tea flavours twice so I don't think this is much of difference!




Our three-tiered non-refillable high tea food! (: It wasn't particularly good or bad, just average.

This plate of pad thai was THE BOMB. I highly recommend it! If you ever go to Shangri-la in Bangkok, you MUST try their pad thai as it's the best I've tasted thus far!


Alright I've other more pressing things to do now. Will update this space again this weekend if possible! =)

Cabbages & Condoms

Hello! (:


I learnt that one of my good friends (DODO!) will be going to Bangkok next weekend so I've decided to post some Bangkok-related food posts so that people who are travelling to Bangkok will have some ideas of where to dine at when they're there!


I've been going to Bangkok during December for the past two years and I have to admit that Thai food tastes much better there! I'm not too sure if it's because their ingredients are fresher, the way they prepare their dishes are slightly different or perhaps it's simply because having Thai food in Thailand makes the entire experience more authentic! Whatever it is, I think it's always a good idea to eat local food whenever one travels so as to get a taste of what the locals eat/ are famous for making!

We have been going back to Cabbages and Condoms for the past two years partly because it's located near the hotel that we stayed at and partly because the food and service there are good!

Upon entering their restaurant, you will be greeted with made-with-condoms-life-sized-statues like this Santa Claus! haha They're quite amusing to look at actually (:

Jeffrey chose to have a glass of Orange Juice whereas I opted for the Thai Iced-Milk Tea which is a much sweeter version of the milk tea that you can find in Singapore but I like it! =)

Complimentary basket of crackers - if you like them a lot, you can purchase packets of them!

This was one of the chef's special dishes - fried springroll with shrimp and banana! I know it sounds a little gross but it was surprisingly good! Loved how the sweet and savoury flavours just gelled together for this dish.

Thai fried olive rice with lots of other vegetables sitting along the perimeters of the plate.

Stir-fried morning glory aka 'kangkong'. This dish tasted very much like kangkong but I'm not quite sure if they're the same. It's a good veggie dish to have because the vegetables are very crunchy and fresh!

Hot plate pepper fish slices =)

For dessert, we ordered one of their traditional Thai desserts - mango with sticky rice - as well as

warm yam paste with ginko nuts to share. Needless to say, I finished most of the two desserts since I'm a dessert monster! They were both good so I guess it doesn't really matter which you choose, it all depends on your preference (:

Alright that's all for now! You may visit the Cabbages and Condoms website for more information if you're interested in going there to dine!

Happy weekend everyone! =)

A-Poh Kitchen

I first came to know of A-Poh Kitchen when Gumtoo mentioned that "there is a new Thai restaurant near our shop". Seeing how eager she was to give this "new Thai restaurant" a go, we agreed to accompany her to A-Poh Kitchen on one fine Saturday night for family dinner.

Though this restaurant just opened not too long ago, it seems to be doing well because the entire restaurant was packed when we arrived. Thankfully, Gumtoo had made a reservation so we managed to get seated quite quickly.

To our disappointment, A-Poh Kitchen is not a Thai restaurant; instead, it is something like a neighbourhood mixed tze-char eating place with aircon. We had wanted to eat "pad thai" but we were told that the Thai chef from Thailand hasn't arrived! =( Thankfully, they'd quite a wide range of local, Chinese and Thai dishes so we didn't have much problems choosing the rest of our not-so-Thai-ish our dishes.

After looking at the menu, we decided to take the easy way out that night by choosing one of their few recommended sets. We chose set B, which cost $68.80 and was just enough for the 5 of us who were there that night. These are the following dishes that were included in set B:

Curry fish head - it wasn't too spicy. There was a generous amount of fish so there's enough to go around, especially if not everyone at the table likes curry fish head.

Sambal Kangkong. This was well-received! Unfortunately it was the first dish that was served so it became cold very quickly.

Claypot chicken - this was extremely well done! The chicken pieces were extremely flavourful and it went very well with white rice.

Hotplate tofu - this wasn't too good because the sauce wasn't thick enough (you can tell from the photo that the sauce was slightly too watery). Also, they added cabbage-like vegetables to this dish which kind of ruined the taste of the dish. I'd rather stick to the usual maize and cauliflower.

Fried baby squid - this was pretty alright (: Nothing too spectacular but at least it was better than the hotplate tofu.

Cereal prawn - I LOVE the 'cereal'! Can't stop eating it! The prawns used for this dish was slightly different: instead of the normal de-shelled prawns, they prawns here were coated with batter and deep fried, thus making it taste better!

Because we weren't sure whether the dishes in Set B were sufficient, we decided to place a side order of Pandan Leaf Chicken ($8), which turned out to be pretty decent.

Pandan Leaf Chicken - the unwrapping of the chicken pieces was surprisingly easy! These chicken pieces were snapped up quickly!

We didn't have dessert here because at this restaurant because they ran out of dessert! I guess they weren't expecting business to be so good at the start! Guess we'll have to go back again if we want to try their desserts in future.

On the whole, the meal at A-Poh Kitchen was reasonably pleasing (: For those living in the west (or Clementi in particular), you may wish to pop by A-Poh Kitchen for some cheap and good tzechar food! Hopefully the Thai chef would have arrived by the time you visit so that you can get a taste of more authentic Thai food! (:

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

Sweet Salty Spicy

Hello! (:

It's the weekend once again! How's everyone doing? I can't believe the first week of December flew by so quickly =( Sometimes I wish time would slow down when we're having fun! Apart from watching (and finishing) Boys Over Flowers, Jeffrey and I spent some time meeting up with good friends at Sweet Salty Spicy during one of the weekdays!

Sweet Salty Spicy: Food Market & Thai Canteen is located at Rail Mall and it isn't very crowded during lunch time on weekdays so it's quite a good place to chill and catch up with friends.

The interior decor is simple and classy, which befits the restaurant's modern Thai concept.

One reason why I prefer dining out during lunch instead of dinner is because there usually are set lunches/ lunch menus which offer quality food at more affordable prices. Although the a la carte dishes at Sweet Salty aren't too pricey, we still opted for their set lunches because we felt that they were more worth it. You can choose to have either a two course (~$14) or three course (~$18) meal.

Since two of our dining companions came late, we didn't manage to capture photographs of their dishes but I'll just put up whatever that Jeffrey managed to take (: We chose to try different dishes so that we could taste a variety of their dishes.

We had a generous serving of crispy squid and green mango salad for one of our appetizer dishes. I thought that this dish was very well done because it was sour and spicy enough and it met my expectation of what Thai mango salads should taste like.

Another starter was fried chicken wrapped in leaves. The chicken has a "nice Thai flavour" but it wasn't spicy at all so people who can't really take spicy food should order this dish =)

Perhaps the most disappointing starter was the Tom Yam Soup. Not only was it bland, it only had mushrooms and tomato chunks for condiments =( I wouldn't recommend ordering this.

Green curry with jasmine rice. The green curry wasn't spicy but it had a very thick texture. I would have preferred it if it wasn't so thick but I guess that's their style of cooking. Their jasmine rice tasted like normal white rice so there wasn't anything special about it as well.

Traditional Thai fried rice with chicken. Jeffrey thoroughly enjoyed this dish so I guess it wasn't too bad.

Pad Thai. My "default" Thai dish because I always order this whenever I don't know what else to order. It must have been pretty tasty because our friend finished all of it! (:

Sweet Salty Spicy's cupcakes are pretty good and there are quite a few flavours to choose from! A perfect light after-meal dessert (:

Jeffrey & I had a HUGE slice of chocolate cake EACH because it came with our sets. The chocolate sponge cake was pretty hard and the fudge tasted more like chocolate cream instead of chocolate fudge so on the whole, it was decent but not fantastic.

Sweet Salty Spicy is definitely an attractive place to go to because of its relaxing ambience and affordable lunch sets but the quality of food served lacked the wow-factor. In fact, I think you'll get a wider range of Thai food if you were to dine at Thai Express. Nevertheless, it was great being able to have a relatively good meal with friends without having to jostle with the lunch time crowd for seats or to speak loudly in order to be heard (: