Paul Bakery

Finally can sit down and update this blog after a sad week. Still grieving though..I guess those who had the same experience of losing loved ones can feel for me. Anyway, let me introduce PAUL BAKERY that sits at Ngee Ann City, Orchard!

Every time I took the escalator and see the Paul, it will remind me of 2 characters: 1. my flute teacher, Paul; 2. the alien in Paul the movie..

Hehe..it's a funny alien who is soo humanized. love it.

Both characters are pleasant to me, so I thought maybe I should give Paul bakery a try. The place was indeed pleasant, seems high class and I expect service to be tip top.

 Inside of the bakery. We chose to sit outside for more privacy and peace.

I normally will order a slightly expensive dish and a normal one to see whether they worth the price. So we ordered Cafe Surprise and Escargot Raisin. 

Cafe Surprise ($12.90). It has Creme Brulee, 1/2 moelleux chocolat slice, and 2 mini macaroons, accompany with a coffee, tea or cappuccino. We added $2 to change the drink into ice chocolate drink. We had specifically asked to change the drink and the waiter had almost a 3minutes conversation with us to explain the additional charges and which cold chocolate drinks we can choose from, but the drink still end up a hot one. Maybe the waiters and waitresses should reduce chatting and increase effort in paying attention to the customers. Anyway I guess they just pour the hot drink into ice and served us because it tasted dilute, I would rather have ice milo at Mac Donalds. Sorry Paul, beside the taste of food, service shows me the standard of your restaurant too.

Their Creme Brulee's caramelized layer was very thick, almost like a piece of sweet instead of something that will melt when you put a spoonful of creme into your mouth. I do not know what the traditional creme brulee is like in France, but this is not to my liking.

Macaroons were alright, nothing fanciful, really mini. 

The  1/2 moelleux chocolat slice, which I think should be the main in the plate, tasted like a plain Jane dark chocolate cake. It can be more wet and spongy, something special. Although it indeed melt in my mouth, it should increase its texture, and not something that makes me thing "is that it?". A renowned French bakery should be more than that.

Escargot Raisin ($2.80). I hope I get the name right because I was quite annoyed by the service and the food that I forgot to take note of the name of this. It looked like the Sultana Croissant in Delifrance (without the cherry in the middle). Paul's Escargot Raisin is full of raisin and is wet enough for me, although it was quite sour because of the overwhelming raisins. Overall, not bad. 

I think people enjoyed more of Paul's bread and sandwiches, and the ambience of the bakery. Will hope to try them out some day. 

Here are my views:

Ambience 3/5
Food 2.5/5
Service 2/5
Price Slightly steep
Toilet Availability 0/5 (please use Ngee Ann City's toilets)

Address:

391 Orchard Road

#03-16/16A/17 Ngee Ann City

Tel: 68365932

Next, Gardens by the Bay! Do stay tuned!

xoxo 

Farewell my dearest Ah Gong

Totally couldn't sleep last night, my brain was so overwhelmed by everything despite how much I told myself to calm down and my heart just beat so fast throughout the entire night.

Without a single wink, I went to my best poly friend's wedding at chijmes this morning, so happy for her! Until I received a call from my uncle that my Ah Gong was unstable and might leave anytime. He fell down again and admitted into NUH for less than a week..he was still smiling and holding my hand last evening! I decided to leave the ceremony and rushed home. Ah Gong already left.

I really wish that it was just a nightmare but it wasn't. He is really gone, and later on we will be separated by the coffin glass, then later we will have to see him being sent into cremation hall and by then, we really really no longer able to see or touch him. This year I will not receive birthday blessing from him, and I will never see him for our future lunar new year dinners. Within a year I've lost an uncle and one and only Ah Gong.

It is really tough.

I'm glad that I was able to spend more time with him during this period, every second was a gift.

For the following 1 week I will be sending Ah Gong off for his last mile, so I won't be able to update soon. Thank you everyone who has sent your condolences. I appreciate that very much.

xoxo

P.S. Ah Gong, in case you can surf my blog from above, thank you for remembering my birthday, buy me roasted chicken whenever I visit, open durians for us to eat, joke and laugh with us. You are finally free from sufferings now! Do pop by my dreams when you are free. Miss you!

Paradise Inn

I once worked at City Hall for almost 5 years and Funan had been one of our lunch places, occasionally Paradise Inn for birthdays and farewells. This time I went there to eat with my sister (an ex-colleague whom I'm close to and everybody says we look alike!) for our mini lunar new year celebration. We love the fish head there and have been drooling to eat it again.

As usual, this place is always packed with office workers during lunch hours. Sometimes it can be really noisy with all the business talkings and the service can be quite slow.

We ordered vegetable, meat, fish and definitely, as Cantonese, we must have soup (we are soup critics too..hehe..).  Then we will chat away with our food, sister almost choked on a fish bone while we chat. Luckily she has fish eating experience of level 21, so a fish bone does not cause any harm at all..

 Black Chicken with Ginseng Soup, good for women! The soup is really tasty..but don't know why we need to drink a lot of water after drinking the soup..

 Sauteed french beans with dried shrimps and preserved turnip. Good to eat with rice, slightly oily though..never mind, once a while only!

 Crisp fried shrimp paste chicken (wings). Great with rice too!

Steamed 'Song' fish. Used to be with homemade garlic chilli, which was alot more delicious. Now they use ginger paste, we are really not used to it. I think we will only eat it again with the garlic chilli paste.

Overall here are my views:

Ambience 2.5/5
Food 3/5
Service 3/5 (depends if it's peak hour)
Price Slightly steep
Toilet Availability 0/5 (please use Funan toilets)

Check out their website at http://www.paradisegroup.com.sg/ for their weekday $1 special. They have membership too.

xoxo

Coco Ichibanya

Japanese Curry Rice again!!

This time it was not on purpose too. We were loitering at 313 Somerset basement looking for cheap food to eat (well, not cheap after all once you see the prices below) and then we saw Coco Ichibanya at one quiet corner of the basement. The big plates of curry rice displayed in their shelf were waving at us..since there were seats and the noise level was tolerable, we headed in to try..

The place was quite pleasant - clean, good air ventilation, bright..

Sometimes I find Japanese are too detailed and slightly complicated in their food..or in fact, almost in everything.. Here we thought we can just point at the menu and the food will come, but no..we must:

first choose the curry dish we want, 

then choose quantity of rice (with a price. you can also reduce your rice amount that comes with reduction of price too), 

then you choose the spicy level (the max. is level 5, but technically it has 7 levels. First 2 levels are for children and level 0 for standard respectively. *roll eyes* level 0?!), 

then choose to have extra toppings or not (with a price of course) 

We chose Thin-sliced Boiled Beef Curry with additional sausages (for yours sincerely) and Beef Omelet Curry, both at spice level 2 - Hot. The service was really fast, made me worried abit and started imagine that all the food were actually cooked in the morning and they were reheated using microwave..just my thoughts..maybe Japanese has invented some machines that can pressure cook them in just 1 minute.

 

 Thin-sliced Boiled Beef Curry ($12.50 + $1 sausages)

Beef Omelet Curry ($14)

I find the sausages were very short (size does matter to me), tasted not that bad..but there were room for improvement. The Omelet curry was a so-so..it was like when you put a spoon of omelet curry rice into your mouth, you will just think, "hmm...ok this is egg, this is rice..oh, here is the beef.." somehow I couldn't taste the harmonization of the ingredients..I don't feel the must to eat them together. Same goes to the Thin-sliced boiled beef curry..

Well the plus points are the environment was alright but soft-talkers and easily-migraine people like me..there was funny jazz played in the background in medium volume - which was good. The other customers behaved themselves by not laughing or shouting loudly, the kids were tamed too..I was just lucky.

Here are my views:

Ambience 2.5/5
Food 2.5/5
Service 2.5/5
Price Slightly steep
Toilet Availability 0/5 (please use 313 Somerset's toilets)

Operating Hours

Mon - Fri: 10:00 - 22:00
Sat - Sun & PH: 10:00 - 23:00

Next: Paradise Inn! Stay tuned!

xoxo