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

Monster Curry

Was loitering at ION orchard and did not have any idea what to eat at all until I saw this logo with comical dragon that has 7 heads at ION basement.. so cute!! Orange color somemore ^^  I always like dragons and I believe they existed..but I prefer them to have wings..hehe..Anyway that's out of the point.

 

All heads are smiling and look so "steady", like they know they have good curry..

 The name also sounds promising..so I told myself I have to try.

The way they work is you have to order and pay first outside before they bring you to your table. I was seated in a "cubicle", the partition was quite high. I like the privacy and won't be affected by the noises other tables make. Old already, noises give me migraine..I prefer to have peaceful meal.

Like traditional Japanese restaurants, they displayed the dishes vertically at the counter..do you know that these displayed dishes are not made from real food? Do check out in youtube on how these are made. The plate so big right! Real or not?! 

So I ordered Mountain Monster Curry that has my favorite sausages, and pork katsu (fried pork), pork shabu shabu (pork thin slices) and chicken karaage (fried chicken cubes) at $24.

They have spice level of 1 to 5. I ordered 3 (hot) to "test water"..let's see..

My order finally arrived and the plate was indeed huge!! How to finish??!!

  You see my hand compared to the plate! I bet the plate is bigger than my butt!

You see the red sauce in the curry? They are the spice in the curry..hot! I don't think I will spend another $24 to take the spice level 5..

Really cannot finish the plate although we had 2 pax, so in the end we packed the remains..

Overall here's my view:

Ambience 2.5/5
Food 3/5
Service 3/5
Price Slightly steep
Toilet Availability 0/5 (please use the 5 stars ION toilets)

I will I may go back if I win lottery..ahahaha..it is quite a luxury..

If you are Japanese curry fan, do give it a try. 

Check out their website at http://www.monstercurry.com.sg/ for other outlets.

I will post another curry rice place next!

xoxo

Lunar New Year reunion dinner

It's the 10th day of Lunar New Year..did everyone have fun celebrating? I had great time with my grandparents and cousins, sitting together and do steamboat. Hot steamy food and laughter...I hope every year we will be the same..well maybe next year instead of steamboat we can eat kfc..hehe..steamboat really take alot of effort and $$..

 I stole abalone to eat while cousin slicing them..so nice to eat...(please don't say we look like the black and white generals with long tongue)

 These bear-face fish cake cute right? Can't bear to eat them..the crab meat were very tasty too..

 Quail eggs..looooove them.

My cousin and uncle bought and prepared all these just for the reunion dinner every year! All we do is eat and criticize what are not nice..haha...that's why next year we shall have kfc better! No need to spend time in preparing and washing the dishes..

While waiting for everyone to arrive, cousin and I sat in the room to take pictures..

Then we tied up our hair to enjoy the hot steamboat..hehe...no more lady like manners so no pictures..

After the long dinner, we rubbed our tummy, stayed in the room to drink some nice peach wine while other cousins played card games in the living room..my luck always not so good so I didn't play..

I guess most girls beautify themselves before lunar new year right? Cut, dye, perm hair, mani and pedicure, buy pretty clothes, shoes and bags..I still not so bad, at least I colored my nails for new year and Valentine's day too..

I bought 2 OPI lacquer from Tammy again at very affordable price! Again I must mention, she is very reliable and she sells genuine OPI lacquer, together with China Glaze and other lacquers..fast delivery and nicely wrapped.

 Golden shimmer for lunar new year! Huat ah! (nail color: Glitzerland)

I'm very lazy, I just did another layer of pale pink color that has love shape pieces on top of the golden shimmer for Valentine's day (nail color: Nothin' mousie 'bout it)

So did I celebrate Valentine's day? I had a great lunch with my sister on that day..but because it rained so heavily, I went home to watch 大太监...have you checked out the price of a bouquet of non-red roses?? It's almost $100?! Scary...

Anyway, people who like curry rice, stay tuned!

xoxo

Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar New Year everyone! I hereby wish you all:

永远青春 Forever young

永远美丽 Always beautiful

 

丰衣足食 Good life (and sleep)

横财就手 Luck is in your paws

步步高升 Climb higher

龙马精神 Always alert

甜甜蜜蜜 Sweet sweet and loving

龙精虎猛 Smarter than dragon, fiercer than tiger

笑口常开 Smile!

Have a long and enjoyable holiday! Remember, don't eat FINS ok?

xoxo

Hands-on baking lapis

I am a fan of kueh lapis. I will always buy them every time I go Batam or occasionally from Bengawan Solo. Occasionally because I heard that kueh lapis is very fattening and quite pricey, especially during Lunar New Year, a 7 x 7 inch lapis can cost $40 and more...unbelievable right?

Currently I saw Groupon and Deal.com had a few deals on hands-on baking lapis but I didn't really look into them until the deals were gone. Yearning to know why people said lapis is fattening and also the reason for the price, I looked at Phoon Huat website, hoping that they will teach lapis baking also..and Voila! They were indeed teaching lapis baking for one week and the week was ending! I immediately booked and attended last Friday..

IT WAS FUN! I was almost late for the class as I was not familiar with Clementi area..The studio is situated at Block 432, Clementi Avenue 3, #01-286.

 

Luckily, I made it on time, otherwise I will not be able to catch up. Chef Philip Lee was very thorough and definitely very very experienced. One thing about attending hands-on is the chef can brief you on the steps, tips and tricks, and ingredients reactions..it's like attending Chemistry course..you can't bake an excellent cake just by reading the recipe, but you have to keep doing trial and error..and my first trial and error is with the help of an experienced chef. 

Chef Philip said that kueh lapis required longer time to finish. The class was supposed to end at 10pm according to the website, but Chef warned us that it may end at 11 - 11.30pm. I was abit worried that I may not be able to catch the last train home..luckily, I shamelessly tagged myself to 2 pretty ladies who know what they were doing..(Vani taught me a clever way to reach mrt station and managed to catch all the last trains!)

 Suk Mei and Vani

Suk Mei, Vani and me. These 2 pretty ladies kept me company during the waiting time for lapis to be baked layer by layer.

I almost forgot the experience I had with Phoon Huat 7 years ago, it was in teams also..but this time, it was quite rush, the mixture have to be ready ASAP so that we have time to bake them layer by layer..thanks to my 2 partners, they guided me along the way and told me not to be stressed about doing it wrongly. I was worried that I will be scolded by Chef Philip because he really will scold one if you ask stupid question or make mistake in front of him! 

Chef Philip Lee. A very honest and super experienced chef.

Finally, the mixture was ready and split into 3 portions: Suk Mei's, Vani's and mine. We were ready to bake! Woohoo!

The tins were ready with greased baking sheet (thank you Phoon Huat), all we had to do is to scoop a bit of the mixture into the tin to make individual layers. Then Chef Philip helped us do the dirty job, i.e. monitor the temperature and readiness of the baking. He even placed the tin right to our tray based on our names! So nice of him right?

 

 Suk Mei and Vani taking notes..I always got to copy from them..hehe..attentive students they are..

My first layer done..

 Forth layer: put in the prunes and cranberries. All provided by Phoon Huat.

 Towards the end, I was free to take picture of the baking lapis..this belonged to Vani..no igloo!

 My lapis! 

 The only guy in the class: KY. He's cutting up the extra lapis baked for the student who didn't come in the end. Everyone had a chance to taste it..I didn't because I was busy taking pictures and after the hands-on, I think I should save my stomach for my own lapis.

Tada...my lapis got cut up once I reached home..It was moist and soft..Chef Philip said it will be better if we put into the fridge the next day onwards and for a week.

 My breakfast with Ah Huat white coffee...shiok!

So the reason why people said it is fattening is because of the amount of butter used to bake a 7 x 7 inch lapis, almost 3 cubes of butter. And I guess the effort for doing the mixture and layering them (each layer takes 8-20 minutes to bake) make up the steep cost.. 

In case you wonder how the black and white layers are done, the "black" layer is actually the skin of each baked layer..therefore there is no need a separate black colored mixture. All along I thought they are separate layers! hahaha...

So will I make lapis at home after this class? I don't think so because my family are not lapis fans and I can't possibly finish the whole thing by myself..(also don't want to sabo my gfs with the amount of fats) For the effort, I will rather buy a slice from Bengawan solo..hehe..I'm simply lazy.

5 more days to Lunar New Year! Yippee!

xoxo