BOTEJYU Okonomiyaki

Botejyu is a new Japanese restaurant at a Japanese Mall called Liang Court in Singapore. I was encouraged by my friend Pampadam Pam to go have a try because its something she had in Osaka and I forgot her birthday and I should buy her lunch.

I ordered fried squid legs ( I love me some squid legs! ),Japanese Fried noodles with pork which tasted like any other fried noodles at any other Japanese restaurant and Pam ordered their speciality which name I cannot remember, I can't even pronounce the name of the restaurant.

Verdict from Pampadam Pam, which we more often or not concur about food, was that it was average. But its still worth a try. Think of it like home made hashbrowns with some vegetables and onions fried in it, topped with bonito shavings, an egg and a side of terriyaki sauce. Sounds weird, but apparently when done right, its heaven.

Can't pronounce the name. But definitely worth a try - something different from the typical Japanese fare in other restaurants.

Beautiful Food!

Barossa situated at the Esplanade might scream out to many of my readers as "TOURIST TRAP!" Or "Isn't Barossa in Australia?" And "Eeek!" (Include your own fake noises.)

It is my duty in my job to look busy, so often what I do is go for "meetings," and talk about work and I like to do that over a meal because I want to be critiqued on my non verbal communication during meeting skills. So my critic decided to go to the Esplanade, much to my chagrin and regret, I gave in.

I am sorry readers. I caved. I was astounded by the lunch menu because only a set lunch was available, and the other dishes sounded suspiciously bad. I wanted a theme for the meal and I decided on fish.(This reminds me of the time that I had a soup theme during a dinner with the wife and all I ordered was the soup of the day and the bouillabaisse, but that's another review all together!) I ordered a smoke salmon salad with rocket leaves and grapefruit, fish and chips and a surprise dessert.

The food took a long time to come out and my coke was beginning to taste extremely flat and Pepsi like. I gobbled up the salad (before I remembered I had to take a picture), and when the fish and chips finally swam to my table. I was aghast. Such beauty! On my favorite platter! A wooden plank. So rustic! So, how you say, western?!?

Flat. Fish and Chips were flat.

And my surprise dessert? A freaking huge baked Alaska. Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't know you could see Australia from Alaska but somebody was playing a joke on me. There were 2 of us and only 1 dessert came. What if I didn't really like the person I was having lunch with? Would I really want to share a dessert together with that person? Thank goodness, the Baked Alaska had too much whipped cream for my liking and the ice cream could not be found. I dug furiously but only found a bridge to nowhere.

The food was beautiful. Pity the taste.

A Week Of Retractions

In the spirit of Christmas, I have decided to come up with the most forgiving and gracious reviews for the year.

I have in recent times opined about the wonder that is Canele, and how consistent their food has been and Sing Hai chicken rice that has always been a comfort for me. I always try to go to the restaurants more than twice before I write an improper review, so this week, I have decided to retract on 2 positive reviews for this 2 restaurants.

Canele served me burnt bread for my sandwiches and did I also mention that they forgot about my sandwich order after I told my server what I wanted? And in typical Singapore fashion, they ask me if I still want my sandwich because they are in the midst of making it (like 20 mins after I ordered), so I thought the sandwich had to crazy delicious since it took 25 mins to make, but it was not. It was burnt. No apologies were made. No discounts were given. And the minestrone soup tasted like colored water, vegetables and pepper. Lots of pepper.

Sing Hai chicken rice on the other hand was different. Service was better than Canele but the food standard dropped. Ever figure that whenever you order half a chicken, you're actually given less than what you ordered? I don't mind restaurants diversifying in putting other dishes in the menu but the very second you start putting in something really obtuse in your menu arsenal, I think it just shows that they've lost the plot. To serve nasi padang in a chicken rice store. Really?

But since this is Christmas, I want to end the review on a good note.

Eat Chicken Rice, Order a Sandwich, and Drink Minestrone soup.

But not at Sing Hai and Canele.

And since this is the festive period, let me give you one more non food advice for free.

Don't watch the movie AUSTRALIA.

A Beautiful French Mistress

There I was, walking, minding my own business and at the corner of my eye, I saw this beauty. I didn't know what to say. Shy and unassuming, and a long name that didn't rhyme. No matter what I thought. My friends have been telling me about those Australian and Chilean beauties but I continually choose to ignore them. Deep in the recesses of my wondering mind, I knew that going the French way was the best. I might have been endangering myself but again, I had to reassure myself, and I finally came to a conclusion ...

The 2nd wine by Chateau Lagrange is a bargain. At $42 SGD (even cheaper in the US, like $20 USD )and on sale at Cold Storage, it was waiting to be drunk. Problem with most French wines is that they age better than most, so drinking a 2004 in 2008 wasn't exactly ideal. You still need about 5 years to mature. But the drink is still very French. A slight spice note on the tongue, a beautiful fragrance of blackberry and chocolate and a velvety top end with a medium finish. The wine isn't as complex as what most aficionados might like but still worth a punt. I kept it for 3 days and as the tannins wore off, the taste and flavor of the wine was still there, it became smoother and easier to drink. More fruity characteristics were prevalent as it wore on.

Before I forget, nobody grows bushes like the French. Wine Bushes that is.

Me no Bob Parker.

My Niece Turns 2.

Blocked by a beauty of a cake that my sister ( I shall call her Carrie from Sex in the City ) baked, my niece reluctantly turns 2.

Wait till I tell her about the politicking among the 3 year olds!

Happy Birth-mas Z!

Moscato Battle Royale

I drink Moscato because I love my wife. I love my wife because I think she smells of honey and she tastes sugar sweet, like the Moscato that she loves to drink.

Call me an Alchie but ever since I decided to collect wine after my Bali holiday in May, I have been drinking many a bottle. The great thing about Moscatos is that they're cheap. All the bottles shown are less than $35 and are readily available in the grocery store. They don't taste of too much alcohol, in fact, these wines have unusually lower alcohol levels and they're sweet. As some of you already know, my wife has a sweet tooth, correction, a sweet lower jaw, and we can go through bottles of this without being filled in the spirit. The funny thing is that Moscatos are usually slightly carbonated. And my wife hardly drinks anything carbonated.

So for the young lovers, this is the drink to drink. Not too drunk to not know whats going on and classy and mature enough that you're drinking wine.

But which one to drink? I reckon the best value is the Long Flat Moscato. Its only $19 on sale in any grocery store, carbonation level isn't high and its not too sweet that it tastes like a dessert wine.

The moscato with the worst name is Brown Brothers.

If you really want to impress your girlfriend or wife, buy the Italian Moscato d' Asti. More carbonation in its liquid, and usually less sweet than most other moscatos.

Hand picked was purchased because I thought Saruman from Lord Of The Rings owned the vineyard.

I am no Robert Parker.

Not All Wines Are Created The Same

A childhood friend of mine introduced me to the great Australian Shiraz. He collects nothing but Australian Shiraz, I shall call him AS? No. I won't. I shall call him DONG. Tasty Bits helped introducing me to the Elderton label and I have to admit, like sex, once you drank it, you'll always think of it.

And so there I was at Cold Storage, at the wine section again and thinking to myself, what can go wrong with a $24 bottle worth of unwooded Chardonnay? Everything.

Robert Parker rates this wine as if the devil ate asparagus and peed it out on God's green earth and man somehow made it into a drink. This would be what I would think of this wine and thank goodness Robert Parker never said what I thought he would say.

I bought this wine based on my familiarity with the label. I tried all their Shiraz and they all tasted great, so the Chardonnay can't go that wrong right?

Stay Clear.

I am no Robert Parker.

The Eye Still Has It

So the eye still has it.

I read wine magazines the way a teenage boy reads a porn magazine. I study carefully what the editor says and I just see the magazine for the pictures and scores i.e. vital statistics?

Unknown to myself, I bought this wine a couple of months back and recently it was Tasty Bits (I MISS YOU!) wife's birthday and the dad had enough sense to buy his daughter in law this fantastic bottle of wine.

Decanter rates it as a 5 star purchase, Robert Parker rates it at almost 98 -99. So I was expecting the shit. And it delivered. It was, how you say, more than meets the eye?

So for your eye only, this purple hued liquid was consumed in an hour. Not good I reckon. It should have been decanted for at least an hour. The finish is long, tannins are smooth and its sweet, and the longer it sat out, the better it tasted. I still think that this wine can sit for a few more years and you better drink it because it might become an eye sore.

I am not Robert Parker.

Pilgrimage

In my every one-twelfth yearly visit to all that is good and holy of a wine store, I often love myself a lovely French red, most preferably from Bordeaux, but admittedly, my tastes for wine is rather cheap, and to quote Earl Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana, " I have an unsophisticated palate."

So begins my obsession with looking for the cheap deals. Good Sauvignon Blancs from the New world. Montes 2007 Reserve Special is from Chile. The taste with my pasta was decent.

I look for fruitiness and a slight sweet edge with smooth tannins. What I got was a rather lemon citrus finish with smells of grass and what I reckon to be tainted gooseberry (like most Sauvignon Blancs) edges.

For $30. It was worth a try but I'll probably try something else the next time.

I am not Robert Parker.

Crystal Jade Palace Restaurant Takashimaya

Tim Sum, originally from China, then improved by other Chinese especially the Cantonese and now its everywhere. Nearly everywhere. One such everywhere is Takashimaya. And more specifically, Crystal Jade Palace restaurant.

Service was excellent. Food was average. The picture taken should have been 1 complete table with all the dishes ordered BUT we were too hungry and I had been plagued by a case of bad taxi drivers who don't know how to get to my destinations - I was in a bad mood.

I had been here several times before but they were just for lunch meetings. So this time, as a lunch outing with my wife I have to say that the food isn't as good as it is during the weekday. Maybe because I'm not concentrating on the food during office hours but I was disappointed.

What really blew me away was that we ordered glutinous rice wrapped in banana leaf, and that took forever because we were informed that the item was frozen and needed a longer time to thaw and steam. I don't want to knit pick but I think this about sums up what I think about the place.

Seriously average.

Give me my long lines and bad service at Yan Palace any day.

Devil's Food

So the Mrs and I were walking along the Orchard MRT station and we stumbled on this piece of work.

I think the devil serves this in hell.

Reading it makes me want to puke.

Trust me, the picture doesn't give the pizza any justice. It is that bad. And I feel sorry for the dough and the people who will have to pay the extra $25 - $50 in medical bills.

Baby, the Other White Meat

In my efforts to learn more about the human body and how hairs grow in strange parts of the human anatomy, I decided to ask the Gohs out for dinner. They normally know more about topics like this than I do so I thought we should dine together so that their intelligence can be permeated to me during our meal. The venue where the permeation would take place was the Sunset Bar & Grill.

The destination was tough enough to get there in the dark, but we managed to scramble through the weeds and bushes and landed in an area that some believe to be non-existent in Singapore. A piece of land with no nearby concrete housing estate, and no bourgeois smell of affluence.

I can tell that times are bad when baby is on the menu. I mean our dear government is already handing out money to tell us to have babies, but having babies on the menu, even for my low moral standards might be taking it alittle too far.

The general consensus was that the food( the wings we ordered were level 1 hotness, but it was still wings, my sirloin steak had too much fat even though fat is a good thing on beef, the BLT the wife ordered looked like a BLT, chili con carne was average and the BBQ meat combination was bbq!?! )here was average. I don't know what the hopping and hollering about this place was all about but you feel like in the 70s, which might be a drugged up and nostalgic thing, but like the Italian food I suggested in the earlier posts, sometimes Singaporeans don't know what good American food is.

In the picture taken above, Man-Goh was pictured examining the baby to see if it was worth a meal ....... you know like how we pick crabs out at seafood restaurants?

But alas, it was a dream! All a dream. The bad food was the bowels talking. The baby is safe. Nobody ate the baby and the restaurant never served baby. Thank goodness! But I have to admit that it sure was tempting though. Soft skin, fatty legs, juicy arms...

Baby - Good.

Food - Bad.

A Move Will Do You Good

I live a life of convenience. So sometimes I go to places not because it is good. But because it is easy. (Harry Potter anybody?) And one of those places that I for some reason (the calzone) or another (no good italian restaurants in the east) frequent is Al Forno's.

I have brought many people there and I have to say each time I have been rarely moved. Well, my bowels at least. The food has always been mediocre and it seems that Italians don't mind feeding locals with bad italian food because Singaporeans can't tell the difference. I have a curse like Harry's scar on his forehead. So I can.

Recently, or not so recently, they moved across the street. I have been there countless of times but I have to addmit that ever since the move (although a temporary one), their food quality has improved. Before I would gripe about their poor service, and I still do, but their food quality has dramatically improved. I have been back twice since the move and I have to say that each time, I left satisfied (which is quite rare if you ask my wife).

The calzone comes out pipping hot, the stuffings in the calzone has increased, the quality of olive oil has improved, my spaghetti vongole was delicious, not as good as Valentino's but still decent. And I leave the place telling myself that I might actually WANT to come back.

Two Thumbs!

In search and trying to understand my chinese roots. Or in this case, some Chinese people might call it ginseng. I have encouraged my wife and my other half to try to eat more Chinese food.

Well, I have been trying and our recent excursion to Tang Dian Wang gives a glimpse of what I think about this kind of pseudo chinese restaurant with excellent service.

So let me finish this review with another question and an answer.

Who has 2 thumbs and doesn't like this restaurant?

This guy.

But the service was excellent though. Wish the food was better.