This food update is nothing about food, but my niece.
Isn't she delicious? She's growing up to be such a lady!
Girls Gone Wild
This food update is nothing about food, but my niece.
Isn't she delicious? She's growing up to be such a lady!
Trung Nguyen Coffee
Trung Nguyen Coffee. We were stuck there last friday over the long weekend in Singapore. Again, I am not a huge coffee person, but since the place was empty on a public holiday, and the Pacific Coffee that my wife wanted to go was actually full. We entered not expecting much.
We ended up staying for about two and a half hours and maybe 5 people walked into the coffee place.
So while my wife read one of the books from the Twilight series, I was twiddling my thumbs and wondering what to do.
I wish they had a copy of the newspaper there.
Oh, and the coffee was actually decent.
Magarita's ( East Coast )
Magarita's at East Coast is a conundrum. Service is decent. Location is good because it's near my place. But there's something about Mexican food that I can't put a finger on. How about this? I don't really like Mexican food. I think its a bad Asian cuisine imitation. This is just my view since there are more Asian people around me.
Now, why does a place serve $5.50 for a small bowl of chips and salsa is beyond me. Pork Con Carne was good, but for $36? And the quesilldas were $20. Now, this is way too much to pay for imitation.
I am not saying that Mexican food is bad. I like to eat my occasional burrito, fajita, chimichanga, rice and chicken and I love salsa. But $36 for pork con carne, even for good pork con carne is way too much.
Not going back again. Unless of course the wife wants to eat Mexican food. The food was good but costs too much.
Oriole Cafe & Bar
Oriole Cafe and Bar is a new place that I recently discovered because Jigga Man himself recommended. It can't go wrong. Singapore's Barista 2008 and 2009 Champion actually does coffee in this place so obviously the thing to have here is coffee!
The espresso was actually very good. In fact, I would say the best I've had in Singapore. Again, this is coming from a non-coffee person and I only drink double espressos. If you're into the other coffee sub-sets, I probably can't tell you how it taste like but just on pure coffee alone. It was very good.
1 Movie Star!
Gwenny's Blog
For all you Coldplay lead singer's wife fan, her semi food blog.
Oh, she's the one in the middle.
http://www.goop.com/
NEMESIS
After learning that somebody I am related to has a nemsis named Zac Effron, I have recently discovered that I have one as well.
World. Meet John Cho.
TV NYC - Soda Shop Edition
The wife wanted to go to a soda shop in NYC and we managed to find one that was around the corner from where my sister's hotel was staying at while she was in NYC.
We hurried down with K-Bo and Lola to the Soda Shop and we ordered ourselves 2 chocolate shakes and malts and 2 vanilla shakes and malts.
They were excellent. And they sell tons of old school candy as well!
Fun!
Everybody's identity is protected on this blog. Therefore I have placed Hello Kitty pictures over the faces and given extra-ordinary well thought through nicknames so that no one can recognize who or what I am talking about.
Low crime doesn't mean no crime people.
TV NYC - Bar Jamon
It is tradition, as it should be; that we end our trip with a great meal with K-Bo and Lola. We have visited other restaurants in the pass, which were all Mario Batali joints. Inspired by the PBS special, On the Road Again with Mario Batali and Gwenyth Paltrow, I decided on having some tapas. With our great foresight, we did not make our reservations a month before for Casa Mono, so when we tried to make a reservation a few days before our dinner date, there were obviously no tables available. Wait. That would be exaggerating. There were tables available. Only at 1030 at night.
So we went one better, next to Casa Mono is Bar Jamon, a small tapas bar opened by Casa Mono and you don't need reservations. Just show up early. Without much hesitation, we wondered soaking wet to Bar Jamon on a Thursday night at 5pm, just as the bar opened and we were the first in line. By 530, and I am not exaggerating here, the bar was FULL.
We ordered the following:
Pan Con Tomate - Like a bruschetta but the garlic and tomatoes are rubbed into the toasted bread. Lovely!
Beets with Valdeon - Hardly had beets before in my life but the beets here tasted like steak tomatoes and the combination of blue cheese made this dish mouth watering.
Coliflor with Salsa Verde - Tangy and slightly off spicy, the capers and cauliflower was a compliment to the salty and spicy dish.
Mussels en Escabeche - The mussels and the acid in the vegetables made this a COMPLETE mussel tasting dish. If you love mussels, this is it. The essence of mussels on a plate.
Chorizo with Pickled Peppers - I never had such good chorizo before. The pickled peppers were a perfect complement to the smoky and luscious chorizo.
Duck Liver with Apricots - The Foie gras melts in your mouth, and the combination of the apricots and apricot jam on the bread was heavenly.
Jamon Iberico Fermin - This jamon (the Spanish version of the prosciutto) was gorgeous. Nutty and natural tasting. The best cured meat I have ever tasted.
Pork Terrine - Smooth, silky and a great blend with the bread!
Service was excellent. The servers could easily explain to you what every dish is and their wine recommendation was spot on.
The great thing about tapas is the fact that you can order so much things and try every one of the various plates of flavor and contrasting and extreme combinations of Spanish food.
I shall return!
TV NYC Iron Chef Edition
I love cooking! Some of the readers here might think: "Of course he loves cooking, because he loves food." But the truth is, I love cooking for the wife and I. But not for other people. Not because I don't like to cook for other people, its just that whenever I cook for other people, things go wrong.
Example 1: It is thanksgiving and my mum has asked me to help in cooking the turkey for thanksgiving in Singapore. Why not right? But it turns out that the oven wasn't working right, so the turkey was only cooked on the top, and when I told me beloved mother that the oven wasn't working right, she refused to believe me. It was then that I knew that my brother in law - he wasn't married to my sister then, really loved my sister as he sat there quietly, making a funny frown when the food came out. FYI, he is in the food business.
So there I go again, shooting my mouth off to volunteer for cook for K-Bo and Lola who have been nothing but great and gracious hosts of ours. Sigh.
I wanted to do some seafood, New Jersey monk fish, shrimp and scallops with a bed of spinach, and the wife wanted to do some risotto blanc. This time, the casualty was a broken cup and a burnt spatula. K-Bo and Lola bought the lovely salamis, prosciutto, foie gras terrine and various cheeses and nearly everything turned out good.
Cheers!
No more cooking for family.
P.s. Sorry for messing up the kitchen Lola!
TV- NYC Clinton Street Bakery
My sister Carrie thinks that Clinton Street Baking Company has the best pancakes in town, which also means that they will have the best breakfast in town. Now, whenever anyone says that I am the best at anything, I always tend to believe them but when my sister tells me that a restaurant has the best pan cakes in NYC, I think twice. Once to see if I even like pancakes at all, and twice because pancakes are round.
We had to rush to the restaurant because we heard that the place normally gets filled up really fast. We reached at around 1030 and I have to say, this place is a very small restaurant. My sister was upset with me because I wanted to be gentlemanly, as I opened the door for 2 ladies, and they got their seat naturally. But due to my vigilance, we were also given a seat after about a brief 3 minute wait.
We ordered the pancakes to share. I ordered the country breakfast (which consisted of the nice looking biscuit, ham, 3 eggs, and hash brown), the wife ordered 2 eggs, and my sister ordered the 2 eggs any style.
For me. I think I am a pretty simple guy. Eggs are eggs. You can't really go wrong with eggs. When you order sunny side up for eggs, you will and should always get sunny side up eggs. So the difference in how good various breakfasts places are is dependent on the other elements of the breakfasts. The bacon, the hash brown, the biscuits and the pancakes.
Again, for what I ordered. The ham tasted like ham. And the hash brown tasted like hash brown. The country biscuits I thought were excellent. And the pancakes, and everyone agreed on the table were very good. Best pancakes in NYC? I don't think so but it was pretty darn good. My sister than later comments that the pan cakes were not as good as she remembered; so maybe our expectations were playing tricks on our taste buds.
However, Clinton is worth a visit. But just for the pancakes, that MIGHT be the best in NYC.
The Voluptuary NYC Random Food Picture
Yes.
Ahuh.
Thats right.
Everything you see there in the picture, is what we ate for snacks on our last day in NYC. There was only 4 of us.
The Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream were the 2 new flavors not available in Singapore. Imagine World Peace (Caramel & Sweet Cream Ice Creams Swirled with Fudge Peace Signs & Toffee Cookie Pieces) and Americone Dream (Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Covered Waffle Cone Pieces & a Caramel Swirl.) All of us prefered Imagine World Peace. We love Stephen Colbert but Americone Dream was too plain.
The rice krispy treats were done by Lola herself and I have to say, it rocked. I didn't want any part of it because there was butter in it but when I sank a bite into it, I needed more of it.
And the Cup cakes, see the review below.
It was a great send off.
Cupcakes Battle Royale Part 128
Before I go on any longer in this Cupcakes debate. I just want to declare: "No Contest!"
It wouldn't be fair to compare Magnolia Bakery to Crumbs. The former has the hype, the latter has the taste. The proof is in the dough. And true enough, K-Bo and Lola's call was spot on. Crumbs brought their A game and they rocked my taste buds off.
The icing at Crumb's was less sweet compared to Magnolia's but the cake was moist and soft and when eaten as a whole, the cupcake from Crumb's delivered a knock out blow.
All I says is true New Yorkers know where the good stuff is at. The tourists like me only watch the tv shows!
Go to Crumbs Bake Shop. It's legit.
What Happened to Gray's Papaya?
I love Gray's Papaya. Whenever I am in New York, I have to go there at least once, maybe twice to eat their hotdogs. I have to say I was severely disappointed when I found out that they raised the price for the "recession special!" to $4.45. What?
Their dogs were still good but surprisingly, and this is just me, unsatisfactory. What happened?
Argh.
D & D
Its the last day in New York and we were desperate. The wife and I haven't seen any movie or TV stars and we decided on a last ditch effort. Let's eat around 30 Rock and see if we can catch any of these cosmic wonders.
Our location was Dean and Deluca's at one of the Rockefeller's and we were looking out into the cold and wondering if we needed a telescope. We raided the store for some cold sandwiches (which to my surprise were not made fresh), some drinks and chips to people watch.
Our $30 investment proved futile as the only stars I saw were the stars in an ever repeating advertisement for fighting against diabetes. The price was alittle high for no stars.
Sigh.
Pilgrimage to Les Halles
Lola, the wife and I finally made the long and arduous trek to Les Halles. Situated minutes from the World Trade Center PATH station, our treacherous journey ended as soon as it began in the midst of the far and maddening New York pre-lunch crowd.
Our trekker Lola navigated successfully to the home, or at least one of the many homes of my foodie idol Anthony Bourdain. When we reached Les Halles, we were glad for our lives and happy that we could live for another day to savour more good food.
Prior to going to the restaurant, I have read up some rather interesting reviews of the place, ranging from how horrible the service was and the food being suggestively average. Like everything else in life on review, take it with a hint of salt.
Les Halles is a simple restaurant, serving casual French fare without much hype and partying. We ordered the asparagus wrapped in bacon, the Normandy mussels, my steak, frites & salad (which is what they are known for), my favorite dish in the world right now - the terrine, and the French Dip sandwich.
Lola loved the mussels ( both K-bo and Lola are in a mussel phase right now - all shellfishes beware!), the wife loved the sandwich and the steak was some good beef. The fries were excellent, service was prompt and proper, water was always poured on time, and they gave us primo seats at a corner so that King Leonidas could hang out as well. Often at a place like this, the hype is built up so much that its more often or not a let down when one would take a taste of the food; but I thought that the food was very good. It wasn't great. But it was of a very high quality and I would recommend people to go, even if you were not a fan of Anthony Bourdain. Everybody at the lunch table liked what they had and everything was good.
Except the terrine. Everybody on the table agreed that the terrine wasn't smooth enough and felt too cold and chunky, like it was just taken out of the fridge.
3 Aries stars for this restaurant!
Meeting 5 Guys at the Airport!
So there we were at the airport, despondent. It is the end of our holidays and we're on our flight back to reality. After taking a ridiculously long flight from New York to Dulles, we were getting hungry and when we alighted, we met some familiar people to help us cope with our sadness.
5 Guys burger and fries, introduced by Mr and Mrs Incredible greeted us at the airport and boy were we excited to meet it! I don't like Dulles Airport. The name itself implies boredom and lack of excitement. The airport has funny looking buses that drive you from terminal to terminal and isn't cool enough to have a sky train or a underground elevator between terminals.
Without hesitation, I sat the wife down and we ordered. A bacon burger, a cheese burger, a big serving of fries that neither of us could finish and a coke. I love you America. This is what its all about. Unadulterated, big, juicy beef burger that only America knows how to do it, and fries from Idaho, I know because they have a sign that tell you that!
It made my return to despondency worth while.
Dear United Airlines Food People:
Let's be honest. You're not Singapore Airlines. Neither are you Cathay Pacific, Emirates Air nor are you Virgin Atlantic. The bar is set where its at. Its not that high but you are the highest barometer in air travel for all the United States airliners. So a certain standard, albeit low is still expected.
Is it not enough that you already hire some of the oldest and rudest flight attendants that don't help anyone fit their hand carried luggages in the overhead compartments? Why is it that you have to torture your "customers," by serving them horrific plastic tasting food? Is it also unreasonable that I want hot buns for my buns? Why give me the butter on the side of the tray when the butter won't melt on the cold buns?
Why is the salad i.e. lettuce that is yellow in color served to the customer in such a way that I know that I am not supposed to be eating it? Your seats have improved. I will give you that. But if my seat spacing increased by several minuscule inches, why can't the food standard improve? Like giving me hot buns so that the butter can melt?
The United Airlines pilot often reminds us that as customers, we can choose to fly with anyone, and all I am asking is give me my hot buns back.
Hot Buns, its why I will still fly with United.
Mileage Plus member since 1999.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)