Excuse me ....

Excuse me, I know not many people read this blog (thank goodness!) but the reason why I haven't been writing is because I haven't been eating at restaurants the last week. The reason being since my dear wife is not in town, I will be saving lots of money and eating hawker food! My first love! And of course, I will be trying the Pan Pac Indian Buffet! More details to follow about that!

I always cotradict myself. Some of my friends consider me a big contradiction. But I consider myself a walking oxymoron, just without the oxy. I will be meeting tasty bites in the afternoon to convince him to contribute to this page!!! He needs to work!!!

Some food for thought: Nigella is hot!

Swiss Baeckerei at Frankel Ave

This review is about one week late. So forgive me.

I wanted to go somewhere new with my wife for breakfast. We thought of somewhere in the east and during my reservists, a guy told me that Frankel Ave had a few nice places to try. And so we did. The after my reservists ended, we went to Frankel Ave to have breakfast.

We walked in to the cafe, it maybe had 8 tables maximum, the smell of fresh bread permeated the place. I liked it. My wife ordered the eggs and sausage, I ordered the special veal sandwich with melted cheese on the top. Let me just say that I am not a cheese person but I thought that my sandwich was fairly good. My wife liked the eggs and sausage as well. They have this gargantuan $23 sandwich that my reservist mate told me about. I actually wanted to try and order that, but decided I didn't want to kill myself so early in the day.

Service was slightly disorganized but still okay for a small restaurant. We even ordered some sausages and ham which were excellent and bread to go. The total bill was about $45? But I thought it was alright considering all the food we bought for the next few days. It was a good experience. To our surprise, there was even a Cedele's there on the stretch and a seafood restaurant transplanted from Clarke Quay called Blue Lobster. I should be going back pretty soon.

Food: 6/10
Service: 5/10
Value: 6/10

Bring your wife there for a quiet breakfast or the after sex meal in the morning....

Hope this helps.

PS Cafe, somewhere in Singapore

PS Cafe is neither the post script cafe nor the poser synonymous cafe. (Thankfully at least). A long time friend of mine was finally having her birthday and she wanted to share this special day with her friends. Another friend of mine, who was also a friend of the birthday girl, and a good friend might I add, so good that their boyfriend's name sound almost too similar if you ask me in more ways than one, anyways, she decided that PS Cafe would be a great place to go to for her birthday dinner for 13!

So after leaving my wife at the airport with a broken heart, I rushed down and managed to catch a ride with my great and also long time friends at their home in the east, strategically placed near the airport, and together we left for the dinner in eager anticipation of where this place was. I have to say that when we got there, we were impressed. I was not so impressed by the fact that I had a SMS a day before being told that I had to abandon my berms and t-shirt; things I do for friends. I was impressed by the setting. It was like a restaurant in midst of a forest. The glassed exterior and the yellow lights made the restaurant shine in the darkest of places. Immediately, I thought this place was classy! And I should bring my wife here the next time.....

Only God knows why the long time friend who suggested this place wanted to sit outside, at the huge varendar of the restaurant. As you walk through the sexily lited wooden walkway of the restaurant, I was thinking and so did my buddy's wife, a free meal for mosquitoes! When we entered the restaurant, it wasn't as sexy as I thought. Sure they had low couch like sofas and short tables for those who want drinks and nice dark wooden tables with nice chairs, inside of the restaurant. One wall of the entire restaurant was filled with chalked writings to the day's menu, specials and wine list. I was impressed again. Chalked writings on the walls is a sign of a great restaurant is it not?

Fortunately, there was no Lord of Flies. There was no mosquitoes! We sat outside and it was nice. The ambiance was fantastic and company lovely. Once everybody got in. We ordered. I skimmed through the menu hoping that I wouldn't order the same thing as my buddy and his wife. True enough, we thought of the same thing. He wanted to order the steak sandwich, and his wife the flamed prawn pasta. I had no choice but to order one of the specials of the day, one chicken wrapped risotto with a shrimp scampi. Wait, my chicken wrapped risotto is also wrapped with bacon. So its double wrapped. People around me ordered similar things. The mousakka, or what I call the Greek lasagna, the steak sandwiches and beef ragout, which some members of the party pronounced it as rag-out. But I digress.

I ordered my drink of crushed mint and lime soda which tasted like soda water and some lime with lots of leaves inside. We even ordered dips to share. They offered the humus, some chilli padi thing, and some bean like humus thing. Imagine red beans, but mushed. Anyway, the pita bread that came along with it was lovely while it was warm, and no one touched the chilli thing.

So my special came. Okay, not that special. Sexy looking though. We tried a little bit of each others dishes. The steak sandwich was pretty good, the pasta was average, my special wasn't very special but okay, the ragout was somewhat dry, but that was just me. People started talking about this blog and I felt uncomfortable. I guess because some were wondering what I would write about the restaurant. Then all of a sudden, I was thinking, tonight isn't really a night for reviews. It was for friends.

We ordered desserts, the mango and apple crumble and orange cake to share. The birthday girl had a nice chocolate cake and ice cream. The service was pretty good even though it was hard to manage a 13 person table. They even made the birthday girl do a stunt, as vaguely as possible, imagine a bench with the husband at the end and his zipper down. Insert shot glass half filled with baileys in pants, where zipper is open. The bench is lined with whip cream from where the husband sits till the end, and the girl has to lick the whip cream from one end to the other and finishing this entire stunt by drinking the drink in the husband's pants without the use of her hands. My wife would so do this but not because she loves me. But because I think she might love whip cream more!

It was a fun night of catching up with old friends. It was a night that I realized that time was catching up with me. I do over senitmantalize things but I do think that as I get older, I love my friends more. And sometimes going to a restaurant is not really about what you eat, it is more often who you are with. And this night was one of those nights.

Value: worth the $50 bucks per person for this kind of friends.
Service: things I do for friends: not wear berms on their birthday
Food: nothing to crow about food does taste better around great company.

Bring your friends there.

Sunset Bar and Grill

Legend goes that there is a need for a place that not many Singaporeans know. And this is the place that we should sup. I believe this place is Sunset bar and grill.

Probably well known among pilot cadets or Seletar East Camp NS men, Sunset Bar and Grill is a rustic and quiet. My table seated at the platform facing the run way was way cool. I loved the ambiance. It was nothing fantastic but it was just something about the place that I liked, that casual be yourself type atmosphere is both endearing and engaging. My friends ordered the fried chicken wings which were pretty good, and the level 2 buffalo wings which were already very spicy. For those Jessica Simpsons out there, buffalo wings are not from buffalos. Its chicken wings , which is shaped liked a buffalo. Don't ask me why, but this is what I have heard. And by the way, chicken of the sea, isn't really chicken either, its tuna.

As I was saying, we ordered also the hamburger with bacon which was just okay, a BLT sandwich which my wife liked, Nachoes and cheese and fried Calamari. Yeah, we ordered quite abit of finger food. But it was all good. I would have preferred sitting inside to escape the mosquitoes but outside was fine. The boys downed some beers and the ladies adhered to the soft drinks.

I left the place reminiscing my flying days. The days when I was care free and dumb .... Even though I have never flown a plane before, or flown like Superman before, what struck me was that food goes well with flying .... Just a thought.

I wouldn't mind going back again. Even though we did pay $13o for finger food and drinks. I thought it was worth it. This is a place to DEFINITELY bring your girlfriend. Lots of makeout corners in the camp.

food: 6/10
service: 7/10
value: 5/10

Hope this helps.

Hanabi at Odeon Towers

It was Father's Day some time ago, and since I wanted to celebrate Father's day, I decided to bring myself, my wife, my mum, and last but not least my father for a meal. I decided on Hanabi because I read quite a few things about it, rather inexpensive, and the week after I decided on the restaurant, the Straits Times did a review about it.

One of the things that I have learnt since I have been back in Singapore is never trust their sports news and the other thing is their food review. Their reviewers either have dead taste buds on their tongues or they just think that if the food looks good and if they are served well, damn it. The food IS good. I have been to many Japanese Buffets before and this one was no different. I called earlier in the day and managed to make a reservation for the family.

When we got there. I liked what I saw. The place was pretty with darkwood furniture and pretty lanterns. My parents were as usual late and when they got there, we started the ordering. We ordered a lot. A lot of food. Sashimi, sushi, their grilled items, tempura and all that good stuff. The food was average at best.

Their service, the thing about Singapore ala carte buffets is the fact that the management tries to manage the customer TOO much. What I mean when I say this is that if I were to order the second round of Sashimi, there will be a marked decrease in the number of slice fish. In fact, it was a marked decrease and an incessant effort to "forget," what we ordered. That bothered me quite abit. And to a point, I felt that I was talking to the server's hand then to the server because when ever I would want to order something, they give the hand. I swear its the registered response in this restaurant. Not only did it bother me that the server that took our orders was sniffing away and using his hands to block the mucus from running down his nose, oh wait, the same hand that I believe served us the food, but the hand,that bothered me.

I mean the restaurant isn't very big and it was crowded, but the server to customer ratio was pretty good I thought. But the servers at some times were no where to be seen. hmmmm ...

Food: 5/10 same old same old Japanese buffet
Service: 3/10, the hand thing drove me nuts ...
value: 5/10, can't complain about average mediocre Japanese food not meant to offend

Maybe I shouldn't be bringing my parents out for meals after this 2 horrific mother's and father's day experience? ahahahahhahaha ....

Hope this helps.

Pizza Walker at Wisma

Pizza is something I enjoy every once in awhile. When I was in the United States, the every once in awhile meant every week. So when I say once in a while in Singapore, its about once every 2 - 3 weeks. Some days, I get so desperate that I even settle for the not so good Canadian Pizza and the plastic tasting Pizza Hut. We were out walking around shopping in Orchard when I felt like Pizza again. So we went out to Wisma, as we were at Taka to try this Pizza Walker.

I like the location. You can be seen. So advice for young couples if you want to look cool. You will be seen here. If you are like me, one who enjoys the quieter life, then I say don't even think about it. We ordered 2 small, I mean 6 inch pizzas. One was the all mushroom pizza and the other is the parma ham pizza. The service was pretty good. Being as annoying like I usually am, I wanted to test the service because they had this $6 continuous iced-tea refill when one glass was $3.50. I had like 3 glasses of that within the first 5 minutes. And each time, the server came and was nice about it and kept refilling my drink without complaints. I was fairly impressed. I had a total of like 7 glasses in the 30 minute dinner.

The pizza was average I thought. Nothing to write to mum about. But the great thing about this place was that you can people watch and comment about what they are wearing, this was something Kelly and I did to our fullest, which was fun. The total bill came up to only about $35 which I thought was reasonable.

service: 7/10
food: 5/10 - its pizza, you can't go THAT wrong.
value: 6/10 - quite okay for something in the middle of town.

Hope this helps.

Oscar's at Conrad International

The missus wanted to have some buffet breakfast on Sunday morning. I did a brief research on the internet and thought that maybe we should give Oscar's at Conrad a try. When I say brief I mean go through 2 web sites and look through for 10 mins.

When we got there, we were surprised. It wasn't EXACTLY a breakfast buffet. In fact, it was a Sunday brunch buffet. Which means they didn't have the bacon and eggs and waffles and the breakfast stuff. What they had was the lobster, the sashimi the works. My wife asked if we should go to another place for breakfast food but I was too lazy and the weather was getting dark. She knows that I get grumpy when we go to a buffet like this and she doesn't eat the expensive stuff, I get mad. Seriously, if I am paying $70 for her for a buffet, she better eat the money's worth! Sure, call me stingy but what about the kids in AFRICA?

So as per every other buffet, I hit the expensive stuff first. I went for the lobsters and oysters. Kelly went for the breakfast stuff first i.e. the egg station, Danish, and some juice. The oysters and lobsters were fresh. By the way, when we arrived at the hotel, we even got a brief introduction of where everything was; which was nice. Kelly loved the breakfasty stuff. She loves breakfast. Our usual Sunday breakfast is MacDonald but today was different. It was breakfast with an edge. It was highly entertaining personally that my breakfast on this day was lobster and sashimi. Unlike the many other buffets that I have been to, this place had quite abit of sashimi. Besides the regular salmon, tuna, squid, there was the 2 other meats whose names that briefly escape me, they were fresh, tender and scrumptious.

My wife then decided to make my day by taking half of a Boston lobster. I couldn't help but have a smile on my face. She was so sweet. Anyways, back to the assault! Even though this was a buffet, I was thoroughly surrounded by foreigners and I have to say that the service was excellent. They cleared our plates promptly, continuously refilled our water, and even advised on what was the best thing to eat at the buffet. I was actually impressed with their service!

I have learnt from my many buffet tour of duties that one should never take food from the section where nobody ever goes. The pre-cooked section. However, this time I was a little curious. They had some curry there and I felt like curry that morning. The chicken curry was average but somehow the pampadam was fantastic. I just didn't know why. Kelly took a slice of roasted ham which she thought tasted a tad bid dry, it looked dry, thats why I never took it, some tim sum which was pretty average. Later, she attacked the fresh unadulterated cheese, which she loved and bread, which a basket of these fine babies were placed on the table. Ahhh, how clever I thought. Trying to carbo load the customers so that they can't eat too much! I wasn't fooled! Actually, I was. Kelly and I finished all the bread because we loved the bread.

Anyways, to top off everything, I tried foie gras for the first time. Foie gras is something that I have always seen on cooking shows like Iron Chef but never thought about trying. Tasty Bites loves foie gras and lives each day to eat it. I am exaggerating here but I say this with love and compassion in my heart. The lady at the egg station was also responsible for the foie gras. I have to say. It was fantastic. How can something so bad like duck liver taste so good? I sms'ed Tasty Bites and he told me to remember the taste because I will be wanting more in the future. The foie gras was smooth, tender, sweet and dare I say melts in your mouth. I expected liver to be like those we eat at the coffee shop chicken rice store. Alas, how wrong I was!

The dessert was very good. Kelly and I hit the crepes, the ice cream, the brownies, the sherberts, the special conrad chocolates, and the waffles. Advice: don't try any other ice cream but the vanilla because it was heavenly, and save space for dessert at Oscar's.

Before I forget, I even had time to try a brief bowl of bak kut teh which I thought was very well done. The soup was eu naturel, no msg, it was herbal and delicious but not overly pungent but the pork ribs were slightly overcooked in my opinion. There was even some musical entertainment that I could barely make out. This is because the singer had a pretty bad enunciation problem singing hits from jobim. She wasn't bad. Its just that was she sang girl from Ipanema, all I could hear was wah wah wah, like those Charlie Brown cartoons. But I have to say that the guitarist was excellent.

This a place that I would recommend for people wanting to impress your clients or future in laws. Future because once you seal the deal, just bring them to the coffee shop for some local breakfast. Go there in the late morning and stay to 3. You'll have a good meal, great ambiance and you can impress the people you need to impress at the right time. The total damage was about $150. It is expensive for a brunch but I don't eat like that so often: having lobsters for breakfast.

Food: 7/10
Service:8/10
Value:6/10

I would say one of the best expensive hotel buffets around.

Billy Bomber's at Century Square

My wife wanted some burgers for the day so instead of sticking to Mickey D's, we went to Billy Bombers. What I have always liked about the place is that it is trying to be an American burger joint. That's cool. Their burgers are above average and reasonable and service is reasonable as well. I love their MALTs. One of the best Malts in Singapore. I can't deny that. But this time, I was bothered by something else.

2 annoying racists and vulgar young Singaporean Chinese men were sitting behind the wife and I. They were going on and on about America and how they were going to say the N word that ends with digger but without the d when they were in the south. I am not American. My wife is. But being educated there, I have to say that those 2 were an embarrassment to Singapore and I was thoroughly ashamed. My wife gave them a look and they knew it, and they still carried on talking about it. At this point in time, I wanted to ask the kind servers to change our seats but my wife didn't want to. She is kind of confrontational like that. But that's the way I like her.

When our food came, the cowards promptly left. And while I was eating my semi-delicious burger, those 2 annoying young men were walking in front of the restaurant peering in to look at me. They looked not even 21 and those idiots were acting like the biggest pricks in the world. Sorry, didn't mean pricks. I meant dick heads. Wait, didn't mean that too. So sorry. I mean mother f***********************************************sonof a************************. Well, you know what I mean.

Even the great tasting malts could not take away how irritated and ashamed I felt for those ugly Singaporean men. The portions were as usual huge and food was above average. I think that sometimes food can be affected by the ambiance around you. I think so even more after this.

food: 5/10
service: 6/10
value: 6/10

Chippy's at Raffles City Basement

Brief post: I was there yesterday with my wife. I thought I wanted some good British fish and chips after I walked by the store a couple of times. The server got my order wrong. That's okay. But they charged a small plastic container worth of ketchup and what I believe to be Mayo for $1. I think its ludicrous since the fish and chips cost $4.15? By the way, I also ordered the fried mars bars.

Bad service and it left a bad feeling in the tummy the whole night. The food didn't sit well. I think the owner of the store wanted to test the stranglehold those other little Taiwanese stores have around Singapore. But I do hope that their quality of food and service improves. I like the place and its in a great location but something just doesn't feel right. Oh wait, that's my stomach.

Food: 4/10
Service: 4/10
Value: 6/10

Hope this helps.

Menottis at Raffles City Inside Esprit

I was bored and I wanted to bring my wife some where new to eat some pseudo western food. I have always liked the deco for Menottis. I have been there once with Tasty Bites, but it wasn't memorable. So I wanted to see if things might have changed.

Service was average. I can't complain too much. My wife ordered the eggs benedict and I had the warm parma ham sandwich. I downed my food with some hot earl grey tea and and my wife ordered a latte and later the classic chocolate drink. I have to say it was average. The egg serving was huge and my sandwich was actually warm! Which I liked of course. It was an unfortunately ho hum meal. There was nothing wrong with the food, absolutely nothing. Maybe I was expecting abit more but I personally think I left Menottis the same way I went in. The place isn't memorable.

Sometimes in life I wonder if we already have pre concieved notions and we just do things to re-affirm those values or do we have no pre-concieved notions and we just live life finding out what they are .... just some thought. I personally think its abit of both but thats just me.

This is the place where you can bring your date. For sure. Great place to bring your date. If your date doesn't mind average food and just want to be seen, even better. But just keep in mind that your date is most probably a show off or just don't know much about food.

Service: 5/10
Food: 5/10
Value: 5/10

Hope this helps.

A Brief Thought About Starbucks Coffee

I have never been a real big coffee drinker. So one day, I decided to try the single shot espresso at my favorite Starbucks at City Hall. It was actually pretty good. Oh wait, I had my first expresso at Tampines Starbucks but now the espresso is my most favorite coffee drinkso. It helps cleans the palette and it leaves a good taste in the mouth. My wife thinks it stinks of coffee but I beg to differ. Its a thick cup of cuppa and I can't wait ....

I am an addict ....

Morton's at Oriental

I LOVE BEEF! So every year, I tell myself that I shall have beef once a year and it has to be good. So for this year, I thought I should go try Morton's at Oriental Hotel. This beautiful trip was suggested by Tasty Bites and Mrs. Tasty Bites. Before I continue, I lied. I already had steak when I was in Vegas but in my defense, it was free because somebody paid for it, so you can't count that. The attire for the restaurant is smart casual and I wanted to wear a hat with my shorts and t-shirt. Thank goodness Tasty Bites reminded me of the dress code!

The service is EXCELLENT. No wonder you are paying so much for the food. I think they are probably the most engaging and friendly servers I have met in Singapore. They are prompt. Water is always refilled. They are informative, and they give you good relevant advice for the food to order. I really wish that WDA go pay them a visit to ask them to conduct customer service courses. We ordered the double porter house, a bone in prime rib. Sides of mashed potatoes and friend spinach and mushrooms. The wives ordered their cocktail drinks, and all was good in the world.

The ambiance is fantastic. I didn't think I was in Singapore at all. Well, being surrounded by Ang Moh helps. I was thinking that the restaurant had probably the most ang moh per square foot in a restaurant that I have ever seen! Not that any restaurant should have this kind of a statistic, but I thought it was interesting. The lights were dim and yellow, the dark wood furniture made the surrounding comfortable for fine dining.

The warm bread was delicious. It was big enough to feed the 4 of us without even ordering starters which I was actually quite tempted to do. We chatted and laughed about everything under the sun, then the food came! Stunned Silence! The friggin thing was huge! The double porter house could have fed 3 lions. Instead, it was a lot for 4 people. All the meats we ordered were all medium done. My advice is that because the double porter house is so big and thick, order it medium well. It might take a little longer but because it is SO thick, it might actually come out medium. I didn't particularly like the double porter house. I guess because there wasn't much beefy flavor in the beef. It tasted great mind you. It just didn't feel that it was aged enough .... That's just my feel. The boned in prime rib on the other hand was flavorful and tender. The fat and juice was succulent, and I scoff at vegans when I was chewing that piece of steak because they sure don't know what they were missing. The prime rib was done very well. We even had the server cut the meat for us!

The desserts had to be pre ordered 40 mins before because they were freshly made. They weren't fantastic. But they were good. We got the hot chocolate cake as well as the apple pie, the pie was without the crust but it was good. Both came with a side serving of vanilla ice cream. I didn't really concentrate on the dessert because I think the wives were. I was already too full from the beef and Tasty Bites was gnawing everything off the bone. HE THE MAN!

The total bill came up to be about $433. I thought that the amount was just about right. It is worth it if you have steak once a year, or twice, wait, I think this is the third time I had steak this year! Anyways, my point is that if you love steak, and only try a once in your life in Singapore. Have it at Mortons. Its the BEST STEAK IN SINGAPORE. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.

If you want to go to the United States to eat steak, then give me a call and I'll tell you where to go.

Service: 10/10
Value: 7/10
Food: 7/10

P.S. This review sounds like Hammy from Over the Hedge talking .... My mind is all over the place today.

TCC at Raffles Place MRT

I don't like this place at all. Okay? I like the finger foods, I like my tea that I ordered and I like the furniture at the place, love the ambiance, hate the Art. What I don't like is being told that I can't sit at a table with 3 chairs instead of 2 because they are afraid that they might lose some customers. Love the customer service when the place measures cost effectiveness over customer preference in a freaking half filled place. What is this world coming to?

Instead, I had to be put together with ladies around me sipping their tea and listening to them complain about their husbands or work to one another. Why? Why? Why?

Service: 6/10
Food: 6/10
Value: 6/10

Don't go to the place because it has the sign of the devil. But it was actually pretty nice.

Yan Palace Tim Sum at Hong Lim Complex

My Mother is Cantonese. So I would like to believe that my taste for the Cantonese cuisine has to be pretty good. At least I think so. I have never been a big fan of Chinese food in particular and can live without it for a very long time even though I am from Singapore. What has actually started me to eat tim sum often is because my lovely wife has suddenly fallen in love with "char-siew."

We have been to many places for Tim Sum but the one place that I have always liked is Yan Palace at Hong Lim Complex. It is a pretty old style restaurant. Old wooden chairs with those big round tables. It even smells like an old restaurant. It feels like another country inside. The wait is always long on weekends and the tim sum crowd is pretty huge there. Sure, this place doesn't have the push cart type of tim sum but they make it up with the quality of the food. I always somehow go there in big groups and order 2 of everything. I love their char siew bao and char siew pastries. They taste fresh! Their century egg porridge is delicate and their lotus seed bao is something I dream about sometimes.

This new thing that they have, the banana and shrimp combo wrapped in a type of white skin is fantastic, their roasted meats taste great. The har gao and siew mai always heats up my cold body and the chee cheong fun is pretty good as well. I don't like the chicken feet but have been told by my friends who have tried it there that its pretty good.

Don't expect too good a service at this restaurant. But the quality is something you live by if the food is that good. The last thing is to expect the restaurant to be very noisy and you can't make reservations over the weekends.

Food: 7/10
Service:5/10
Value:6/10

One of the better Tim sum places to go to in Singapore.

Hope this helps.

Super Sandwich

I absolutely love sandwiches. This is one of the best things ever invented from America since the hot dog, and my wife. I read a review about this place from another website and decided to show up with a couple of my long time buddies for lunch.

I was 45 minutes late for the appointment but both my friends were very nice. They already ordered their food and one already finished his. So being late, I ran everywhere and still could not find the damn place. The funny thing is that when you actually find the place. You're actually surprised that its there. Not that I wasn't expecting it there but this place is literally "around the corner," at China square Central.

I put down my bag and ordered. Well, not really ordered. I took some suggestions from the counter lady and she was nice enough to have me order the Texas sandwich. Its a roast beef sandwich between 2 slices of untoasted white bread. She insisted untoasted because she feels that I can taste the sandwich better. I feel that toasted bread is better simply because it doesn't stick to the top of my damn mouth. Anyways, I relented and for $12.80, I got a side pasta salad as well as a cup of lemon tea.

Its a small place. Not cozy, but "apple-esque," white furniture with made in China plastic feel. Anyways, I liked it. I was surrounded by a handful of white people in the restaurant. The food was served to me after 5 minutes of my order and I finished it in less time than that. The sandwich which contains melted cheese, lettuce, Mayo, roast beef, and tomatoes. It was a good sandwich. Its definitely above average. I wouldn't say its the best sandwich I have had, but it was pretty good. If only I had it on semi toasted bread!

Food:6/10
Value: 4/10
Service: 6/10

I don't know if I would pay $12.80 for that sandwich. It might be a little on the high side for food that is going to be stuck on top of my mouth.

Cheese Cake Cafe

I don't like cheese and neither do I like cheesecake. In fact, I would never eat cheese alone. It's that bad for me. But cheesecake? I might. Depends on how good it is. I think the best one I have ever tasted is the one at Carnegie Deli in New York. Creamy, smooth, sweet, delicate, grounded with the right amount of crust and topped with freakin huge strawberries.

Cheese cake cafe is nothing like that. In fact, I would say that the cheesecakes served at this cafe are different. Good different? I would say yes. The cheesecakes here are smaller, taste a little bit more like ice cream and not as creamy and smooth. No crust is involved except the American cheese cake. There are distinct variations of the traditional cheesecake. Things like Rum and Raisin cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, I remember they even had the green tea cheese cake. I like variety like I like women. That sounds weird. But the bottomline is that variety is good.

I love the ambiance of the place. Its well but dimly litted. The furniture are teak and Indonesia/Bali style furniture. The service is always fantastic. Always might be an exaggeration, how about most of the time if not nearly all the time?I wouldn't normally pay $1 for cheesecake, but here I would gladly pay five over dollars per slice. The tea that you order is refillable and I even get a 10% discount using my UOB card. There are tons of the latest magazines for you to read.

We ordered a tiramisu, a oreo cheesecake and chocolate cheesecake with camomille, Darjeeling and a latte. The damage was $41. A little bit rough but I think its worth it every so once in a while. The great thing for me is that not many people know the place YET. So its still pretty cool in my book. I was once asked what is the difference between having coffee at starbucks and coffee at a regular coffeeshop. I was thinking about this when I was sitting in the cheesecake cafe last night. And I thought to myself. There is a heck of a difference! Whether you want to admit it or not. Anybody wants to be seen in a place like cheese cake cafe. Its cool. It exudes cool. It tells people you're in. A great place to bring a date and a great place to go after dinner! You want to be seen just like you want to be seen at Starbucks. Is the coffee better at starbucks? Not necessarily so. But it is better to sit on a comfortable couch than at a sweltering coffee shop.

If you love cheesecake like I like my women? You would be remissed to miss this place.

Another gem in the east!

Food: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Value: 5/10

Hope this helps.

Blooies at Jalan Tua Kong

For some of you who have been paying attention to this blog, you might already know that I live in the east. I am an East Coast kind of guy with a West Coast attitude. If that means anything. Last week, I went to this place to collect a pair of speaker stands that I purchased online. That restaurant caught my eye because it was really unusual.

When you turn into Jalan Tua Kong, what you see initially is a small coffee shop on the left and just a bunch of terrace houses. What most people don't know is that after the row of terrace houses, there is actually a restaurant and its called Blooies. I have to say, I thought the title reminded of boobies, but that's just me. The entrance is lited with some tiki torches and immediately you think its a beer place. I was seated with the bar behind me and a wall filled with what I think is pictures of happy and satisfied customers on the other wall, fenced by a lot of branches. Its pretty much an open air place but it is strangely cool. The place is of an average size, not too big, and the ambiance was perfect for the food it was serving. It was calm, relaxed, a wee bit noisy and a good mix of the hip East Coast crowd.

We ordered burgers. All 3 of us. My buddy ordered the mushroom cheese burger, the missus ordered the bacon cheese burger, and I ordered the wrong thing. At least I was told that way. I asked for a double bacon cheese burger, but its actually called a double cheese bacon burger. I thought the name was strange because double bacon denotes 2 slices of bacon, whereas double chess would mean 2 slices of cheese? But my burger contained neither 2 slices of cheese nor 2 slices of bacon. What it had 2 slices of was 2 slices of beef patty. Semantics? Maybe. I was curious after I was corrected by the server.

Talking about the server. I have to say that this place needs more servers. There were only 2 ladies serving what I thought was about 25 people. Service was abit slow and the food took awhile. I am okay with waiting for food if the restaurant is cool and there were 2 televisions there. So time passed pretty fast. Everyone around me was ordering steaks and ribs. So maybe this might be a good place for those some other day? The servings also looked huge. So I was happy.

We got our half dozen of mussels in tomato sauce as appetizer. It was alright. Nothing to tell mum about. The sauce was a little spicy and mussels were very mussel like. When the burgers came. I was ready. Have you ever picked up a burger and realized that you can't put it down once you pick it up because its either so darn thick and so darn big that if you did put it down, everything was going to fall apart? My burger was THAT burger. @ thick patties with cheese and bacon. No ketchup and mustard, those condiments are self served in a basket on the table and filled with lettuce and onions. Once I picked it up. I had to keep knowing at it. The burger was done medium well, everything was dripping, but the burger was juicy and tasted like a real burger. I liked it. The buns were nice and warm and were done just the way I like it, which is slightly toasted. The Cajun fries were perfect. Hot and spicy. Just like the Cajun fries I have had in Louisiana! The only downfall for this burger was the inclusion of coleslaw on my plate. I don't understand why there is coleslaw on the plate. COLESLAWS DO NOT GO WITH BURGERS. I left it untouched showing what I thought of it.

My buddy and my wife enjoyed their burgers. They didn't love it. But they thought it was pretty good. Burgers. Love them. I thought this was one of the better burgers I have had in Singapore. I would recommend this place to people. Bring your date. Its a cozy place and it'll make your date think you're in the know for,"cool places." Overall, the damage was about $69. My wife had a Mai Tai and the rest of us had water. My double something burger was only $16.

I think its good to come to a place like this every once in a while. Don't expect gourmet food. Expect good grilled burgers, steaks and ribs with fine ambiance.

Service: 5/10
Value: 6/10
Food: 7/10

Hope this helps.

Fei Fei Wontan Mee at Joo Chiat Road

I have only been working for the last 2 years and I have discovered that there are a few things that I can't live without through the work week. One is to skive from work and the other is won tan mee at Joo Chiat Road. Not any other wontan mee stores, but in particular Fei Fei wontan mee.

I have been patronizing that store for the last, many years. I have been there since I was dating, many girlfriends ago. Anyway, what always attracted me to the store was that it was deep in the middle of Joo Chiat that not many people knew where it is and the wontan mee is actually pretty unusual. Its not like the traditional wontan mee that is mixed with dark sauce, this wontan mee is actually pretty pale in comparison but makes up for it with its taste. My boss, literally, is from Kuching and loves this wontan mee store because it reminds him so much of the wontan mee at home. I reckon this wontan mee store is a beg away from a bad Oliver Twist movie.

You have 2 choices of wontan mee, small or big. Not the bad sizing Mickey D's does with their small, regular and large. Here, small is $2.50 and the large is $3. You don't get soup with this wontan mee and it is served in those old school bowls with fishes decorated around the bowl. Its THAT type of store. The noodles on this day were average. A wee bit dry, maybe not enough oils and sauce. Wontan was fantastic. Char Siew was right. And vegetables were, vegetables. I don't normally take chili so mine is usually mixed with tomato ketchup. I have been told that the chili for the wontan mee is potent. So be warned!

Don't be confused. There are actually 2 Fei Fei wontan mee stores along Joo Chiat Road, and they are just 150 meters away from one another. There have been many stories circulated about why there are 2 stores and what have you but this is not a website to do that. The store I always go to with my colleagues is the 24 hour one. Its the earliest store that you see when you enter Joo Chiat Road from Still Road. The coffee shop serves one of the best otah I have ever tasted, so you can try that, and its serves a variety of small side dishes like Ngoh Hiong, Fried fish cakes, and friend wontan. On this day, the sides dishes were bad. My side order of fried wontan were tremendously small, and very countable. The ngoh hiong was great, but I have to say that it keeps shrinking everytime I go there. And because our wontan mee doesn't come with soup, we had to order an extra bowl of wontan soup. The soup broth is okay. Average. The wontan, was great! Its so contrasting that it actually puts the entire focus on the wontan. Brilliant! Maybe. Is this by design? Definitely not.

If you are not ordering the wontan soup, you have to take your finished bowl of wontan mee, and bring it back to the chef, if you can call him that, and ask for more. More? Yup. You have to beg for soup at this store. I remember when I was young, I was so afraid that the guy would reject my requests and always made my parents go get the soup. Sometimes the owner made a face, now its more of a known fact that you have to ask for soup. Fun!

Service: 5/10. Its a small coffee shop!
Food: 7/10. Just order the wontan mee and otah. Don't order anything else.
Value: 8/10. Just order the wontan mee and otah. Don't order anything else.

Besides this store, the other famous wontan mee store is actually on an adjacent road from Joo Chiat Road called Tembling Road. And that wontan mee store is fantastic also. Its called Ang Moh wontan mee. But I guess that's enough wontan mee for now.

P.S. If you're still hungry, there's still a very good ZANG or rice dumpling store further down and good karaoke if you really want to hang around little Vietnam.

Bring your in-laws, they'll be impressed.

Hope this helps.

AMALFI Restaurant at Clarke Quay

Before I begin my objective review of this place, I only have 2 words for you. Don't go! I decided on the restaurant the night before after the FA cup shenanigan with Tasty Bites and some other buddies. Honestly, I was lazy. I just went to the UOB and Citibank credit card websites to see where I could bring my mum, and save money at the same time. The AMALFI Restaurant looked interesting. And it was open early. So I decided with my missus to bring my mum there for an early lunch.

Went there around 11. First clue to a bad restaurant, emptiness. I forgot, second clue to a bad restaurant: only patronized by tourists. You ever been to a foreign country and got stuck in a tourist-centric place? They charge you a ridiculous amount for mediocre food? This sentiment best describes how I felt about the restaurant yesterday. We entered the restaurant. Found a seat. And decided to order. The server was cute, and polite. But I have to say her command of English just wasn't there for some reason. My dad wanted to order a sandwich, and in the menu it states that we have a choice of bread. So my dad decides to ask the nice server what choices he had, she initially thought that the sandwich was just white bread, but she later decided to seek a second opinion, and true enough, my dad had no choice of bread. There was only focaccia bread. Sigh. I then decided to see how bad the restaurant was by asking for the Antipasto sampler. Apparently, on the menu it states that I can get one of every kind. Alas, the Antipasto is only available after 6pm. Third sign of a bad restaurant: the restaurant cannot deliver what it states on the menu! So in total, we ordered a farmhouse salad, a very bad salad, a side order of bruschetta, a Roma pizza, topped with ham and mushrooms, a side order of fried scallops and my dad's sandwich.

The bread that came with the bruscehtta was cold. My dad's sandwich bread that he had no choice of was cold, the salads were bitter. The pizza was abysmal. How wrong can you go with pizza? Its the food that every tourist place has! EVERY! And that was bad. For a mother's day lunch, it was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. I wouldn't recommend this restaurant to my enemies. Its that bad.

Value wise, its okay. With the 15% discount, I managed to escape the penitentiary of bad Italian food with a $70 bill. Don't bring your date there. Don't bring your parents or out of town guests there. I always thought Pasta Fresca was the new low for local interpretation of Italian food. I guess, I change my mind after this experience.

Food: 2/10
Service: 6/10
Value: 5/10

Hope this helps.

Prata Cafe @ Evans Road

The wife woke me @ 1030am on a Sunday morning whilst I was barely recovering from the previous night's soccer shenanigans held at a friend's cozy apartment. She was craving for some prata so I told her to go look up the internet for some recommendations on where to eat good prata. I didn't feel like Jalan Kayu Thasevi - too far lah. After sifting through some search results, we decided on Prata Cafe as it was within reasonable proximity to our abode.

As it turned out, Prata Cafe just happened to be one of those places where I've travelled past on numerous occasions but never really bothered to give it a try. Sitting just a stone's throw away from the Botanical Gardens on what used to be the old Eusoff College, Prata Cafe reportedly serves the "best kambing soup" and other local indian muslim fare according to some local foodie forums.

Ok so expectations were running a little high based on the existing reviews. The parking is kinda "illegal" along Evans Road so being the quintessential Singaporean motorist, we parked at a "good spot" where we could watch the car with hawk eyed dillegence in case the little white lambs on scooters were circling about.

This place has got both indoor and outdoor seating. They even sell the daily papers which were conveniently placed on a rack next to the main entrance. The menu contained the usual indian muslim fare of mee hoon goreng, prata, nasi lemak, briyani etc along with the standard teh tarik, teh halia and a myriad of milo concoctions.

I was eager to try the soup kambing but was told that it wouldn't be available till sometime in the afternoon. We ended up ordering 2 plain pratas, 1 egg prata and 1 mutton roti john. The pratas arrived 7 minutes after we placed our order and came on a silver plate with 3 compartments in which one contained the curry.

The plain pratas were quite disappointing. Firstly, it wasn't piping hot, crispy and fragrant. In fact, it looked like it had been sitting around for abit before arriving at our table! I was hungry anyway so I had to take a couple of bites. Left it to the crows after 2 mouthfuls.

The egg prata on the contrary was fresh. At least this one looked like a proper well fried prata and tasted quite alright on it's own. The curry is a tad salty with no chunks of meat/vege in sight. The cheese prata was also freshly made but did not have enough cheese filling to warrant a decent thumbs up.

The roti john looked the part when it first arrived. Crispy on the outside with a decent egg and mutton batter and 1/2 cm chunks of onions. Oh and it had a good squeeze of mayo in figures of 8 on the top. Strangely, there wasn't the customary sweet chilli sauce in sight. I guess it tasted alright - not great but yeah... OK. So we worked our way to the other end of the loaf and found that the batter was only applied to 3/4s of the roti john! 5 uncoated pieces of bread mate.. geeze.

We were left thoroughly unsatisfied and disappointed. I mean bro you gotta get the basics right!!!!!!



Verdict

Food - 5/10 *the egg prata saved it from a sub 5 rating*