Shortest Review Ever!

Carl's Jr is the BEST fast food Burger Joint in Singapore. Nuff Said. And so says Alby. (The dog in the picture)

New thing at StarBucks

Even though some people think that Starbucks is the evil empire of coffee just like Chelsea is to the EPL and the Yankees are to Baseball, their variety of new products never cease to amaze me. My new craze is the huge oatmeal raisin cookie. Its the best cookie I have tasted in Singapore. Its $4.50 (abit too much for a cookie me thinks) but it tastes great. Its soft and chewy. It warms my heart to eat it. I never understand why most other cookies are always so tough.

Have a try. Go ahead. You know you want it.

D Cup better than C Cup

Bigger is better. My colleague prefers a handful of it and I believe we should milk it for what its worth. C Cup is in. C Cup might be the new D Cup.

What exactly am I talking about? It's simple. CUPCAKES!!!!. Some of my over "sugar-fied" colleagues have recently been on a sugar binge and have caught the craze of cup cakes. As some of you might know, I'm not much of a sugar person and cup cakes isn't really my thing. When one of my female colleagues came over without saying anything and typed it onto my Internet browser the website, I was like, "What the heck?" But thank goodness, it was a website for cup cakes.

Apparently the orders have been coming in so much that we had to wait 2 weeks for our delivery. I have since found out that this is not a store front. This is business from a home! And I got this forwarded email from one of the other cupcake co-conspirators that they even told us which items they did not have enough to make one of the cupcakes and suggested to us that we should order something else. But of course, they were more polite than that. I respect this kind of service.

When the cupcakes came and the time for tasting arose, it did not fail. I thought the cupcakes were delicate and not too sweet. Will I order it again? No. But I think I might order it for people as gifts. The biggest cup cake in the website isn't really a cupcake. It was more of a mini-cake by my definitions but I digress. Just a note, you have to order up to $80 for them to deliver.

You should probably order cup cakes for your moms that are not on diet, your skinny girlfriend or just wanting to appease that irritating customer of yours. Its a creative gift. Hey, its sweet.

A syllogistic question: If cupcakes is to C Cup then what is to D Cup?

Cedele at Wheelock Place

I once said not so long ago that one should only go to Cedele for soup and bread. I would just like to say now that I stand corrected. After going to Cedele at Wheelock Place twice in 3 weeks for me and the missus' late Sunday breakfast after church, I have to say that its pretty good. In fact, I would highly recommend this Cedele in particular more than the others.

Maybe its not a franchise or maybe it is. But there is something different with this Cedele. No longer is it a transient restaurant where you sit, eat and leave. Here, you seem somewhat invited to stay longer and order more food because the food selection is wider and I personally think that the food is better.

For the past 2 ventures, I have ordered the same thing. The big big breakfast, filled with 3 pieces of bacon, 2 sausages, scrambled eggs, a little side salad with balsamic vinegar sprinkled on as a mix and saut'ed mushrooms. It also comes with a cup of tea. All for $16.80. Some would think that how can you go wrong with bacon, sausages, mushroom, eggs and toast? It can. Trust me. It's not like I hate Macdonald's breakfast but that is almost the bottom of the barrel in terms of how breakfast should taste. The hotels kill the "American Breakfast," genre because they make it into an overkill, just too much stuff on a plate. And my wife who ordered her blue berry pancakes loved her pancakes. I might not be a connoisseur in pan cakes but readers should trust a person who ate pan cakes nearly all her childhood. So she knows good pan cakes.

The only times I have seen Diana Ser is when I am at Wheelock Place and the unfortunate thing is that I have not seen her the last 2 times. And that's the only down side of Cedele. I should write an ode to Diana.

Garibaldi at Purvis Street

The Food-critics aka me and my wife had a very brief discussion about Garibaldi with Mr and Mrs. Tasty Bites and for the sake of summary and purpose lets call this couple "The Gohs." The reason for this conversation was because I have been reading quite abit about the restaurant stating that its the best Italian restaurant in Singapore. The Tasty Bites thought that the food was decent but the quality of the food was not in proportion to how much it was. On the other hand, "The Gohs," loved the place. It was the beginning of the month and I had to date the wife, so I decided to experiment to see how good was this place.

If you have read my earlier scripting about Menottis, please note that I just wasn't too impressed with the place. The pasta was closer to Pasta Mania than Babbo's but the desserts were decent. I made a reservation for 830 pm because I thought the place wouldn't be too crowded on a Friday night and boy was I wrong.

The restaurant is a dimly lit restaurant with an L shaped architecture. The walls looked dark green with the yellow light and there were a lot of foreigners. When I stood at the door of the place, the server had to slide the door open for me to allow my wife and I to enter the restaurant. Cool. Our wait for a table lasted only 30 seconds before a nice lady came out and called my name sounding like I have been there every other week. So far, the service has been fantastic. The impression is good.

As I sat in between more foreigners, the servers started coming around to tell us what the specials were and handed us the menu. I actually thought that the menu price was decent. I mean, if it is the best Italian restaurant that so many people claim it is, it has to be pretty expensive right? We sat down ordered the prosciutto Ham appetizer, my wife ordered the typical American Steak and potatoes which the place is famous for, I ordered the scallop and marsala risotto - I have just been in a marasla phase recently, and 2 types of desserts. The warm chocolate cake and some pistachio based chocolate dessert. 2 glasses of the cheapest wine and the free flow bread!

Is it wrong to state that the best dish of the day was the free bread? A very nice server came and constantly walked by our table and kept asking us if we wanted the sundried tomato and cheese bread. How could you say no? To a point that I had to stop the server from giving me bread because everytime she walked by and asked, I would always say yes. I told her to stop. And she smiled when I told her but somehow she refused to listen to me! Damn, the service is good.

When our dishes came, I have to admit that I was almost full, but I soldiered on. The risotto was decent. There was 3 pieces of scallop and I could tell that the risotto broth had some dried scallops as well. The blend was soothing and comforting. The marsala and scallop mix was good only after several bites. But I liked the flavor. It was something unusual and daring. My wife loved her steak and potatoes. It looked good. The beef was smooth and slippery in the mouth. One can taste the balsamic vinegar base of the steak. The appetizer was fantastic. I never understood how the saltiness and the toughness of ham goes so well with the sweetness and juiciness of melon. The ham was also paired with asparagus and fresh mozzarella cheese. Loved it.

My wife doesn't really drink wine. In fact, I have to say that she likes fancy places and this was one of it. Oh, and she likes to drink wine at fancy places. That's when I know I'm getting lucky that night also by the way.

The desserts were great. The warm chocolate cake with the liquid melted chocolate center was well received. My pistachio dessert was a hit and miss but the pistachio cream was pretty tasty.

I have to say that in the end, I guess I stand in the middle of both the Tasty Bites and the Gohs. I liked the place. In fact, I would say it is the best Italian restautrant in Singapore but it was not worth the amount paid I thought. The dinner bill was $200 some dollars and I was satisfied but not fully satisfied I guess. I highly recommend this restaurant if you are out to impress your wife or girlfriend. Just expect to pay quite abit for dinner!

Tubby Man

I have to admit that over the last few weeks, I have not been inspired to write anything. Some friends of mine, including Pampadam (we shall name her this because this is after all a food blog) suggested that I look at other bloggers to get inspired. Inspired I was not. A sense of insipid horror came upon me that writing for the sake of writing or writing to entertain some of my friends because blogging has become a professional sport. Some of the blogs that I have seen are walking advertisements with great pictures and boring writing or writing with so much inferred winks that it would seem as if the writer was paid by the restaurant to write what the blogger writes.

Some of you might be thinking that the food-critic is keeping his amateur status because he might want to compete in the Olympics someday but sadly, that is not the case. Blogging has to be fun and amateurish in nature. That is the essence of blogging. There are professional bloggers but at least its clearly stated. Don't be fooled by those who you think are actually amateur but are in fact professional.

Since I have opened myself up to much criticism, I have also, at least I think I have, turned on the comment option. Before, I turned off the comment option because I thought since people were just reading this for fun, there was really nothing much for people to say except to shut up and listen. In my ever disgusting need to contradict and be ironically objective, I have decided to turn the comment option on so as to participate in some kind of open forum or at least fun debate on food and food places.

To quote the hatred Bill O'Reilly, the comments have to be pithy.

So with this, I take a small step in my blog, but a giant step to the nearest bathroom because the critic needs a leak.