Solar System Japanese Food at Wheelock Place

So last week was Pampadam's birthday. Well, just to clarify. It wasn't exactly Pamapadam's birthday, it was a week that we were all free, and her birthday was much earlier this month. We discussed on where to go for lunch after much pushing and shoving and we decided on Sun with Moon at Wheelock place. It sounded familiar but I didn't argue with the birthday girl. Its been raining all weekend and I thought some good Japanese soup would help.

Unlikely of Pampadam, she was actually early and sm'ed me to tell me that the menu looked brilliant. So I was expecting something better than Sakae Sushi. The wife and I slept in that day and we were hungry. We always walked by the Sun with Moon because it was right next to our favorite breakfast place, the Cedele at Wheelock Place.

Entering the restaurant, the ambiance was nice but not as hot as Sushi Tei at Raffles City. When I say hot, I don't mean the temperature, I actually mean the surroundings. It was hot. So anyways, after walking a round of the restaurant, we found the birthday girl hiding one corner looking through the menu. After 10 mins, we hit the menu, and we ordered our food. we ordered the 5 varieties of sushi and a rainbow roll which was excellent. There are no pictures of those appetizers because we were that hungry! We sat down and we devoured the sushi before I remembered to take a picture!

I ordered this:

I honestly can't remember what its called but this is one of the specials. Its like a whole bunch of sushi on top of the sushi rice. I have to say this though. The fish were all fresh, rice had the hint of vinegar and didn't break into pieces like other restaurants might. It was highly enjoyable. My set also came with some Udon noodles and this stewed chicken with mushroom that was brilliant.

The missus ordered this:

It was a mushroom nabe soup, served with grilled eel with rice. I have to say. The soup did not have an overwhelming mushroom taste as you might have expected, in fact, it was light and sweet. The carrots, 4 types of mushrooms, tofu, what I thought was daikon radish and potatoes made the soup great. The rice with eel was alright but the soup again took the points for me.

Pampadam ordered this:

This was a Japanese concoction of what I think is their version of Singapore's clay pot rice. Where the rice and ingredients are all cooked int he same heated pot. This is served with the udon noodles and fruits (which came with every set). Pampadam seem to like it. At least that was what I thought she was saying through her non verbal cues!

Our dessert was:

This was a sample platter. The middle was green tea ice cream with red beans which Pampadam thought was brilliant, I actually preferred the bottom dessert, the sesame custard type dessert that was peppered with what else, sesame! The top dessert, I didn't try because it looked milky and I actually don't like milk. That drink on the top is my wife's Japanese grape smoothie which I thought was sweet and lovely (like my wife) and it ended our meal in a good note.

Japanese cuisine can be a real hit or miss sometimes in Singapore. The restaurant was familiar to me because we went there for our wedding anniversary dinner, but at Chijmes. The deco there was WAY HOT. The bill turned out to be quite abit but I thought it was okay. I can't state the price because Pampadam might read it. As an alternate view, one half of the FANTASTIC Gohs, i.e. the MAN-GOH, didn't really like Sun with Moon, and I could see why. But the most important thing I feel is to go try it yourself.

Comments Posting

The idiot in my technology brain switched off the comment portion of the blog and I just managed to turn it on. I have to say, I thought some people I don't know were posting comments. So please! Carry on posting comments and tell me what you think. I am not an attention whore but some constructive comments and thoughts would be great! Sorry about the not allowing the comments to be posted. I didn't know how to do that till today!

My parents must be proud.

Penny Black at Boat Quay

As I tried to allude to in my last post, I am a very big Liverpool fan and last week, I was invited to watch the match at Penny Black which apparently is Liverpool central for game nights and I have to say the atmosphere was outstanding. There was singing of all the Liverpool songs and cheers for the players. Even my wife liked it.
The only complain that I do have is just the quality of my hotdog I ordered. It was bad. And it was $9. The beer was outstanding and the wife ordered a screwdriver.

I highly recommend this place for game nights if you are a true red. Its like you're there at the game only you're staring at the screen and the players can't hear your cheers.

Last note, don't order the hot dog.

Madam Butterfly

It was a strange day last Friday. I met the missus in town and we wondered along Duxton Hill. Living in Singapore for so many years, I have to say I have never been to Duxton Hill before and since my wife officially became the Mrs Food-critic, she now knows where are the "cool," places to go whereas me on the other hand have absolutely no idea where to go and what to eat.

So we wandered and darn that Broth looked cool but it was full for the night. The other restaurants just looked to either serve bad food, bar food, or just branded food. I thought of Ember and tried making a call, but alas, it was booked for the night as well. We were walking and finally found OSO that just looked also too sexy and it was full. I was down in the dumps and the wife was complaining about her feet being painful because of her heels. I was about to commit blog suicide when I saw the strange red building called The Red Dot Traffic Building. Honestly, I was looking for any place to just sit down and have a meal with the wife. ANYWHERE! And we stumbled into Le Papillon! And it was empty!

Straddled in the midst of bars and smoke, I was surprised to see an empty restaurant. We glanced at the menu and in 10 seconds I said lets go in. A very typical Singaporean like I am would not ordinarily walk into an empty restaurant but I was hungry. Okay, I didn't know it was empty until I walked in. But we were still surprised. We ordered some appetizers, my wife ordered the very sexily bowled mushroom soup which she thought had peanut butter, and I think I ordered and probably by coincidence discovered the best Cesar Salad I have had in Singapore. So good surprise so far.

A bigger surprise would be Mr. and Mrs. Tasty Bites was just next door! They were chillin out at Skin (like any cool advertising exec would I discovered), so in the midst of discovering Liverpool having to playing Barcelona in the Champions League (which Pool will win by the way), and waiting for my main course, in came the boss man himself TASTY BITES! My wife joked that we normally like to book the whole restaurant to have dinner by ourselves wasn't taken too kindly by the staff, which later explained to us that they were surprised that the restaurant was filled except that there were several last minute cancellations. So anyways, we were talking and admiring the cutlery when the main course came. My wife ordered a fish dish, I can't remember what it was and I ordered the seafood platter which contained 2 sexy looking huge asparagus lined up parallel to one another with shrimp, scallop,fish in the middle, and a side of what I thought to be mashed pumpkin. I have to say my dish was delish. It was good. It was clean, it was fresh and it was not enough (my gripe with most French cuisine). My wife loved her grilled fish and it actually looked good.

For dessert, we ordered the orange souffle which needed 30 mins to make, was good. A souffle is difficult to make but an orange souffle that had to be soft on the inside and gentle at the exterior was tough. But I thought the orange ice cream that accompanied the souffle was a slight overkill. My wife ordered her favorite melting chocolate chocolate cake. The type that has melted chocolate inside the small chocolate cake. It was decent. Not enough melted chocolate I thought.

The damage was $170 SGD and I thought it wasn't that bad. It was a great discovery by just walking around but I would probably not go back there again. If you see the hyperlink for Le Papillon, I agree with a certain Wong Ah Yoke that there's still some ways to go to improve the menu but it is still worth a try.

Samui Seafood Restaurant

My wife not being accustomed to spicy food but had a strange thing for Thai food. She actually liked it. On our previous trip to Bangkok in the days or yore, she actually could stomach the foodcourt at MBK. So this experience to Koh Samui helped me see how much she could take.

We entered Samui Seafood Restaurant full of hope and ambition. Like many other seafood stalls along the Chaweng stretch, the restaurants would parade their fresh seafood at the entrance of the restaurant so that they can entice customers to enter the restaurant and you can have the seafood cooked any way you want.

Honestly, I entered the restaurant because I thought it was pretty. Okay? I am the food-critic. I am shallow. Little did I know that the restaurant, if I believe my failing memory correctly, is actually opened by one of the maid servants that took care of the Thai King and actually cooked for him. In Thailand, its a big deal. To me, I was like, if the King liked her food, I would too! (See, shallow.)

I wanted my wife to feel like she knew what she was doing and so I asked her to order something she thought looked good, my wife ordered the cashew chicken. I would normally laugh at her because cashew chicken isn't exactly Thai, but you know for her first time in a pretty authentic (I am using pretty authentic because there is also a huge western menu in the restaurants for the FARANG) Thai restaurant and she was trying her best. I chipped in by ordering the tourist favorites, my tom yum soup, pineapple fried rice, pad thai and my fantastic lime juice.

The verdict: I loved the pineapple seafood fried rice. It was actually served in a pineapple, so it was a plus! There was a good blend of sweetness and the texturing was tangy and perfect. The pad thai was good. It wasn't outstanding like the pineapple fried rice but the key was to mix everything up. The nuts, the sprouts, the noodles and the shrimp, we didn't really do that and I think that's why it was quite disappointing. My tom yum soup was fantastic. Its not the clear broth that I prefer but the amount of seafood and bite in it, took all my other reservations away. Tom yum soup is the type of soup that is flavored by lemongrass and the spiciness only kicks in 30 seconds after you swallow the soup, that's the brilliance of it. The cashew chicken, well, was bad.

I would just like to add again how pretty the restaurant was. The restaurant is located at the end of the busy Chaweng stretch and it was fun to ride the local "bus," i.e. the back of a truck there.

In the end, not the most authentic Thai food but almost there!

Food notes from Koh Samui

I have not traveled to many places in the world. But I have to say that several ethnic foods have conquered the world. Chinese cuisine, Indian Cuisine and now Italian Cuisine. Every corner, there was an Italian restaurant and an Indian restaurant. I was shocked, but I didn't know why. Food is such an influential cultural epitome that it translates itself into corners of the world that even the cunning intellectual would blush. (I don't know what I just said) but in layman's terms, specific cultural foods are everywhere in the world. And in Koh Samui, the wife and I discovered PANCAKES!

Its definitely not the American Pancake but its the Indian style "Pratha," type pancake. I had mine with banana and my favorite condiment of all time NUTELLA and my wife had chocolate and banana but mine rocked! And all this goodness for less than $1.50 SGD? Come on! Steal of the holiday!
Imagine if you will a thin layer of flour based batter fried and you put in sliced bananas and Nutella and fold it up to what I can only think is mad goodness!

My trip to Koh Samui in Food Pictures

Recently the missus and I took a short holiday to the beautiful island of Samui to take a short break and do what every other European were doing in Koh Samui this time of the year. Have a tan. Unfortunately, being from a tropical island, a tan was quite easy to have besides waking up late everyday and gorging on the hotel buffet breakfast, we went about the stretch of Chaweng beach to discover gastronomic adventures that were in the end, more of an anti-climax.

Our first night, the restaurant that we wanted to try was RICE. RICE you would think is an Asian restaurant but it was nothing like it. It was an Italian restaurant. Yes. I was hit with the Italian bug AGAIN! The pictures in the magazine was nice and so was the restaurant. Now, if you could only ignore the telephone wires outside the restaurant!
The deco of the restaurant was nice. The servers were very polite and might I just add that the coke bottles are really glass coke bottles? How cool is that? Anyways, we ordered several dishes. And this was how they looked:

What is not seen in the pictures that I did not include was a bricked oven baked pizza Magherita with just cheese,tomato sauce and basil, which my wife thought was fantastic. I thought it was above average. We got served the breads as a free appetizer and I have to say the breads were tasty, fluffy and warm, they went great with the green olives, tomatoes and butter. I then ordered my squid ink pasta with crab meat cooked in olive oil and vegetables. I thought it was good. It wasn't great but at that price and at that ambiance, it was good. My wife ordered the crab stuffed pumpkin ravioli. I had a piece of it and thought that it was good as well. The taste for all the dishes were clean. It wasn't too heavy on the tummy and I felt it was the right amount.

Looking back, maybe I would not have chosen RICE but maybe Olivio's instead. But that's just me being picky. The damage was less than $50 SGD so I can't really complain. The food was clean and dare I say better than Pasta Fresca and El Forno but nowhere near Valentinos or Garibaldis. It was a good median that I wish Singapore restaurants could present to me. A good authentic Italian restaurant without the high price and the glitz.

If you're in Koh Samui for more than 4 days, this is one of the restaurants to go. If you are in Koh Samui for less than 2 days, don't bother. Try the Thai Food!

Another night of Italian

So last night, I thought of having dinner with me dad and wife outside. Since my mum was out of town attending to a certain new addition to the family in London, I thought I do my part before me dad leaves for the U.K. and I go for my holiday. I actually wanted Japanese but unfortunately, my expatriate wife and local dad could not find the restaurant. I think I should have gotten the hint when I tried to call the restaurant and the phone company tells me that the service is no longer in use. I was going for quantity vs quality as my dad is big eater. But I digress.

We were walking through Marina Square and my wife turned to me and told me that she doesn't want to eat that much. So okay. My initial buffet idea has gone out of the window. So while we were walking to Suntec because I thought we might have Kushin-bo, or fishing bowl like my dad calls it, we took a turn into Pan Pacific instead and lo and behold, up one level was Zambuca. Its a bar and restaurant and its owned by the MichaelAngelo chain, so how bad can it be right?

We walked in and my wife immediately liked the place while my dad went, "Wah, you like this kind of place?" It sounds funny but for those that do not know, it was the first time I was going out with my dad and wife. So its an unusual chemistry. Usually, there would be mum with dad, and us. So it was kind of uncomfortable for awhile.

The deco of the place was nice. The whole restaurant was dimly lit and the roman blinds were at half mass. The servers were polite but the restaurant wasn't exactly packed. Prices are reasonable. For a plate of pasta, it was about $34 average, main course was about $45, and appetizer are about $25. It wasn't that bad. I ordered the soup of the day which was mushroom for me and dad, and we all split some bruschetta. I ordered the pasta fruta de mare, my dad ordered the pasta tandoor (if I remember correctly) and my wife ordered a penne with spicy Italian sausages, with kalmata olives and some assorted vegetable. The total cost was about $165. It wasn't that bad.

The food wasn't that bad at all. Service wasn't bad. Restaurant wasn't bad. But on the flip side, it wasn't very good as well. Its, how you say, ho hum? It wasn't terrible, and it wasn't great. It was mediocre. I didn't complain about anything, but there wasn't anything worth giving too much praise for. Its standard fare. None of the dishes stood out. Well, nothing really stood out. We had a pleasant time chatting and talking about things but the food never was one of the topics that were discussed, which is unusual for me actually.

I wouldn't recommend this place to most people but I have before because I haven't gone to Zambuca until last night. But what do I know?

Not everything that is Italian is Italian!

By MARIA SANMINIATELLI
The Associated Press

ROME -- Imagine a delicious dinner of pasta with meat sauce and grated parmesan. Add a salad of fresh mozzarella and Roman tomatoes sprinkled with Tuscan olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Maybe you'll wash it down with some Amaretto liqueur.

But there's a catch: none of that food was made in Italy.

Foods that look or sound Italian but are produced elsewhere account for $66 billion in annual sales -- nearly half the $135.5 billion worth of real Italian food that is sold worldwide in a year, says Coldiretti, Italy's farmers association.

Italian producers have launched a campaign to set the record straight in hopes of boosting their own sales.
"They might not be illegal, but they are deceptive," Coldiretti's spokesman, Paolo Falcioni, said. "It's wrong for two reasons: You take the [market] of the real food, but most importantly, you're deceiving the consumer."
The fine print may identify food as not coming from Italy, but Italian flag colors or Italian references on labels can lead rushed consumers to think otherwise, Falcioni said.

For Italians, many of whom believe that they have the world's best cuisine, that's tough to swallow.
"I was in China four days ago, and in a supermarket in Shanghai I bought balsamic vinegar from Modena -- with the label written in Italian -- that was made in Germany!" Falcioni said.

Italians say the finest balsamic vinegar is produced in the small northern Italian city of Modena, which is also home to automaker Ferrari. It's expensive: a flask the size of a perfume bottle can cost $100.
The top buyers of fake Italian food are in Australia and the United States, where a mere 2 percent of "Italian" cheeses are made in Italy.

Gary Litman, vice president for European affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said it's too late to rename imitation Italian products that are already firmly established. "You cannot change history that easily," he said. Litman noted that, unlike the European Union, U.S. law requires labels to state exactly where products are from.

In the Know

Falso

Some foods that look or sound Italian but are produced elsewhere:

Olive oil from Spain featuring a label with a picture of Rome's mythological founders, Romulus and Remus.

Roman-style tomatoes grown in California.

Imitations of Parmesan cheese produced worldwide.

Mozzarella cheese made with milk from American or Australian cows.

"Italian" ragu -- meat sauce with basil -- made in Estonia.

Pecorino cheese from Shanghai, China.

"Perfect Italiano" ricotta cheese made in Australia.

Provolone cheese made in Wisconsin.

"Amaretto Venezia" liqueur made in Germany and sold in bottles shaped like that of original Amaretto di Saronno.

SOURCE: Coldiretti