Favourite Chicken Rice stall

The article is previewing my favourite chicken rice from my childhood. It is called Evertop Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice

During my childhood, it was located at Tanglin Halt. It was in a coffee shop which was next to the open air carpark which had a few other stalls. However whenever I went, almost all the tables were having the chicken rice. They decided to apply for a halal license to cater to more patrons.

Last year, they moved out to a larger floor space at Clementi which is the first photo shown below. Their current location is at Block 354, Clementi Avenue 2.
They are still offering their signature chicken rice but also have included a few more new items into their menu offering.


The below photos show the whole chicken that we ordered as well as the chicken internal organs and a plate of vege respectively.

The food arrived very promptly and the chicken is still s good as ever. The meat is very tender and tasty and it goes well with the fragrance rice and the chilli which accompanies the chicken is excellent.

It is very good and I would recommend people to try it out.

Opinion on Manchester United stuttering start to the season

This season for the first two weeks of the EPL, there has been some shocking and surprising results. For example, Manchester United been held to a draw to Reading at home and the shock loss for Tottenham against Sunderland on the fist game of the reason.

The surprising team so far in the season has to be the performance of Manchester City.

However this post is more looking at the poor start made by Manchester United. ManU first three games are two draws against Reading and Portsmouth and a derby away defeat. The common theme in all three matches is that Manu dominated the control of the game but there were not that many good shooting chances. A lot of the time the shots had to be made outside the penalty box. There were also a number of occasions that the final pass made in the opposition penalty box is wayward or easily intercepted. A lot of fans are blaming the lack of a proper striker ever since Ronney was injured in the first game and the problem was further compounded by the loss of Ronaldo for 3 games after his red card in the second game.

This reason I feel is quite valid. Ever since the loss of Ruud, Manu has been playing without a targetman upfront. It was able to work last reason due to the great scoring success of Ronaldo from midfield. However with the teams in the EPL getting more used to the style of play of Manu they know that Manu is highly unlikely to hit 50/50 balls into the penalty box which mean that whoever manu play upfront there is no real need to mark very tightly on him as Manu is more likely than not to try to pass their way to goal. Currently the only striker that seem to be able to play the so called target man would be either saha or ronney but neither of them is prolific.

I feel another reason for the poor start is due to the poor pre-season preparation. Firstly they came to Asia for their pre-season which meant that they were playing games against not so strong opposition and there is also a lot of wasted time wasted flying from country to country which could have been better used for training. In addition, the new signings except Nani did not join these training games due to injuries which made the integration of the new players into the team more difficult.

After they returned to England, they had two friendlies which were against stronger team which are Intermilan and Chelsea( Charity shield is just a high profile friendly) which Manu did not do so well. After which during the one week before the EPL, they arranged friendlies against weak opposition from the lower divisions where they had the team split into half to play two friendlies at the same time. This did not help in building teamwork among the team in a match situation as they would have only played as a team during training but not in match situation. This could explain the number of misplaced passes in the first few games that have been played.

In summary, the poor start could be blamed on the injuries suffer upfront as well as the poor pre-season training. Hopefully the team will improve in the next few games else the title chase will be over by September.

Photos taken during Hong Kong trip

This article will be different format. It will be only photos of food I tried during my visit with a short description.

Photo taken at coffeeshop. Noticed the cut of the roast pork is so thick unlike in S'pore.

Crab porridge in a restaurant specialising in noodles and porridge. Very yummy and rich in flavour.

Side dishes ordered at the restaurant mentioned above.
Packet food from nearby roast meat and Zhi Char shop. Excellent as usual and there is both quantity and quality for the items ordered.

Seafood claypot. Full of ingredient

Garlic prawns

Suckling Pig. The taste was totally out of this world!

Other dishes ordered at local restaurant

Breakfast item in a local eatery.

First visit to Crystal Jade Dining in at Vivocity

In VivoCity , there has been a lot of restaurants that have opened along the side of the building that is facing the waterfront. One of which is opened by the Crystal Jade Group of restaurants.

It is known as Crystal Jade Dine in. Strange name I feel as Dine in just means eat in but in any case. The entrance to the dining area looks grand and striking as the dominant colour is red quite similar to the entrance at the crystal jade at Paragon except for the colouring.

The view from the dining area is very refreshing as Sentosa with the Wharf and the bridge proving a nice backdrop during the evening.

When we were looking at the menu, we were pleasantly surprised with the dishes on offer. There were some usual stuff like your roast meat but other than that a lot of the dishes are quite unique to this outlet as I have not seen a number of items elsewhere.

We decided to try the Peking Duck as well as a few of the more interesting items.

The below is just a picture of the table setup. Thought of taking a photo as the utensils look unique.

The below item is the prawn and scallop cooked with chilli and something crispy. Cannot remember as this was about three months back.

This was my family favourite dish. The prawns and scallops were big and juicy and the flacks you see on top go absolutely well with rice very shiok. It was crispy and spicy. ( Just recalling really make me hungry)

The next dish was the fish cooked in two styles as can be clearly seen in the photo below. In the background, if I recalled correctly was cooked with salted egg and deep fried. You may have seen this style used on prawns. The salted egg complemented well with the flavour of the fish.

The other style of cooking the fish fillet was stirred fried with vegetable. The meat was firm and when you have a bite the meat is fantastic.

The below is the vegetable. It was ok nothing outstanding.

The below is the Peking duck after it has been de-skin from the duck and wrapped in the rice flavour pancake. The duck was very tasty and the skin was crispy. However I did not enjoy it as much as I personally prefer to have the duck skin wrapped in the yellow coloured wrapping. (Off hand cannot rem what it is called: Eggskin is it ? Hmm..)

The duck meat was then used to prepare the last dish which was the duck mee with crispy noodle. This in itself is unusual as usually the duck meat is usually used to cook Ee- mee which is a flat type of noodle.

Anyway, the noodles were excellent as the flavour of the duck was in the gravy and it went well with the crispy noodle.

In general, the dishes were of a very high standard and the setting is also very good. It is a place that I would like to visit again in the future.

The Starbucks Experience

This is the next book that I would like to review. It is with regard to the company Starbucks.

It looks at our it managed to change people conception about coffee from a 40 cent to a dollar plus drink to become something that people would be willing to pay 5 dollars for a product which in essence is still coffee. When it first started off as a single shop, no one would have expected it to grow till today size.

The author of the book is Joseph A. Mchelli.

The book starts of with the introduction where it looks briefly into the history of Starbucks. It's first outlet was located in Seattle. The founder who was Howard Schulz had an idea. He wondered how would people react if instead of paying the usual 50 cent take away coffee, if he was to provide premium coffee in an European-style coffee shop, would the consumer be willing to pay a premium. On hind sight, it was a brilliant idea as there was a demand for such type of places and with the high level of quality service provided by Starbucks staff, the business continued to grow continuously.

In summary, the Starbucks experience can be experience at 2 distinct levels. The first level is that it has a unique corporate culture where the leaders create a unique culture for the employees to take up responsibility for their action, to give them the room to be entrepreneurship and most important to stress that quality and service is of the utmost importance. This is especially true for anyone in the customer service related industry.
The second level is that these values are been passed down to all the partners as they are the direct contact with the customer in the shops.

In the opinion of the writer, there are 5 main key concepts which are been ever present and could explain for their phenomenon success. the 5 concepts are:

1. Make it your own
2. Everything matters
3. Surprise and delight
4. Embrace resistance
5. Leave your mark

They look very simple but not simplistic. They are also very result orientated goals and can be very powerful when applied. A good example will be Starbucks.

In the book, each chapter will be specifying one of the 5 key concepts. The book is written in a very easy to read style and there are a lot of anecdotes in each chapter which relates to real life situation. It also tries to explain each concept in a very non-technical way and try to bring about the point by sing examples.

Overall, it is a well written book and will be suitable for anyone who wants to find out more about Starbucks or for anyone who is interested in finding out ways to improve their business through better customer service relation.