EATFOODBALL

New favourite grape variety :)

2011-12-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

Recently I have the good fortunate to try a whole range of Riesling from around the world and found that it is a style of wine that I liked generally.

Riesling is one of the interesting white grape variety which can produce extraordinary wines in every style from the bone dry to the super sweet style of wines. Riesling is like a Sauvignon Blanc which expresses the different flavours when planted on different soils and produce distinctively different wine styles depending on the climate where it is grown.

German Riesling are the most famous. There is different level of clasification on the level of sweetness for German Riesling:

The most dry style ( least sweet) will be the Troken. In increasing order of sweetness will be Kabinett, Spatlese ( Late Harvest), Auslese, Goldkaspel ( Gold Capsule), BA ( Beerenauslese ) ,Eiswein ( Ice Wine) and most sweet will be TBA( TrokenBeerenauslese).

Auslese is considered as very good quality and sweet. BA, Eiswein and TBA are dessert wines with the TBA as been the rarest of them all. If anyone has tried a TBA do let me know how is tastes like.

A lot of the New Zealand and Australian Riesling been made are more of the off dry style. This means that there is the acidity which is well balanced against a sweeetness in the body with a good finish. Actually riesling goes very well with almost all types of food.

For Alsace Riesling, the ones that I have tried are more of the drier style which means that it is not sweet and what you get is a lot of minerality. I still prefer the sweeter style of Riesling.

Currently, one of my favourite Riesling excluding the German Riesling Spatlese and Auslese is the Mount Brown Riesling 2010 from New Zealand Waipara Valley. It is a light bodied wine which has good acidity balanced with sweetness hence making it a very refreshing wine by itself or with food.

Lunch at Jin Shan at Marina Bay Sand

2011-08-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Jin Shan at Marina Bay Sand. It is located on the 1st floor at the hotel. We decided to order their Peking Duck as well as a selection of dim sum and main dishes to try out.

Trio of seafood dumpling with different toppings. Unlike the versions that I had tried at other places, where the skin is quite hard, this version skin was delicate and gently encompass the fillings.

Peking Duck, One of the best that I had. The skin is so crispy and was excellent with the crepe. The sauce which accompanied the duck skin was full of flavour.

My mum absolutely loved it as it was oozing with the char siew and gravy.

The meat and pumpkin from the pumpkin soup which was lovely in flavour. Meat though was almost tasteless as all the flavours are in the soup.

Stewed Chicken Feet and in the background it is the salted egg yolk prawns. The chicken feet was very tender but it was a tad not salty enough. For the Salted egg yolk prawn, it was delicious. the saltness of the salted egg yolk did not over power the natural flavour of the prawn.

Prawn paste chicken. The prawn paste was evident and it was juicy. It is good but not outstanding.

Long Beans fried with mince pork. It is fried with a Sizchuan style. The flavour is outstanding and go perfectly with a steaming bowl of rice. The slight down point is that the long beans were a bit soggy and not crunchy.

Coffee flavoured pork chop. It is a well balance dish with the coffee flavour evident but not over-powering unlike how it is prepared at other places.

In general, the dishes were good with a few stand out dishes such as the Char siew Pau and Peking Duck. Price though is on the higher price point. Budget should be about $50 to $60 a person ordering dishes that are not fresh seafood. Service in general was quite good though quite a few staffs are more comfortable conversing in Chinese.

Boon Tong Kee at Bong Keng ( New place to have yummy chicken rice)

2011-08-09T01:24:00.000-07:00

Recently I have moved place to another area of Singapore hence a new journey to explore the food in the area. One of my current favourite food haunt is the Boon Tong Kee Chicken Rice near my place. It is usually full during the weekend lunch and dinner crowd.

We decided to order a selection of their dishes as well as their famous chicken rice. I totally loved the rice as it is fragrant and light on the palate.

Famous white steamed chicken. The chicken meat is tender and the gravy goes perfect with it. Together with their chilli sauce and black sauce, totally awesome.

Stirred fried Kang Kong with sambal. Nothing outstanding.

Fried Prawn Roll. I quite liked it.

One of my favourite dish. Stirred fried pork liver in claypot. The pork liver has a lovely texture and the sauce goes well with the rice. :)

Beancurd with crabmeat.

Recently, we have went by a couple of times and one of the dish that I would highly recommend is the seafood bee hoon. Really dish and full of flavour.

This is a nice place to go for some home Zi Char dishes as well as for their famous chicken.

Personel sentiments of Election 2011

2011-05-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

This year election in Singapore has been one of the most anticipated elections in many many years. There has been a higher caliber of candidates from the various opposition parties and coupled with the introduction of a new PAP team which has been perceived as more of an elite group and not able to appreciate the ground sentiment.

In addition, the ground sentiment is that the government in the past few years has not paid heed to the various grievances such as cost of housing, public transportation, in flux of foreign workers and inflation in Singapore
This has made this election much more of a closer call and I would dare say it could be the benchmark of the upcoming few elections as the Generation Y voters will play a more significant role in the votes casting.

This is the first election in which social media such as facebook, Twitter and YouTube plays more of a significant role and it allows more people to view the speeches provided by the various candidates. I have been very impressed by the eloquences and energy of some of the new opposition candidates.

The opposition parties also brought up a lot of ideas. The below are some of the proposals and areas which I am impressed and the government should consider looking into it.

1. Pegging minister/members of parliament pay against a multiplier of the median pay in Singapore rather than GDP. GDP is an overall number and is not reflective of the ground situation. A Median pay will be more representative of the ground sentiments and will drive the MPs to look into ways to improve the overall pay of Singaporeans. I do not fully subscribe to PAP idea of paying top dollars for MPs. We must reward the MPs for their sacrifice to be in parliament but if they are going into parliament for the pay then it defeats the core principle of an MP. An MP is a representative of the people on the ground and should serve the people.
the current perception is that the people are tax to give high pay to the MPs.

2. Public Transportation, the proposal to de-privatize the public buses and MRT. Though the concept of privatizing these crucial infrastructure is to lead to more competition and lower prices. However the opposite took place as transport keep on increasing prices as they are run as private business and are accountable to their shareholders. These key infrastructures should be run more as a public service. When average Singaporeans are finding transport cost is increasing and when you hear SMRT profits is running in the hundred of million, it is quite mind boggling.

3. Using other means of measuring Singapore Growth, GDP is only one aspect but it may not be the best and the opposition had proposed a couple of other means which may be more reflective of the society.

In my opinion, the government in the last few years has project an image of arrogance as they do not seem to take the ground sentiment seriously. It also seems to be less caring as they are always looking at GDP numbers and other hard numbers which are not reflective on the ground.

In spite of that, the government in general has managed to keep the country growing and our strength of our dollar is very strong. At least in my case, the candidate had delivered what he promised in the last election.
Also some of the proposals raised by the opposition is also not realistic such as the idea of free education and health care, who will bear this burden. Now we will be able to do it as our budget is plentiful but in the long run how will it be possible to sustain. The idea of moving our of manufacturing and fully focus on service is not viable. Manufacturing is one of the core of the economy and hires a large amount of people. Getting rid of it will cause a lot of lose of jobs. Manufacturing is an area which is less volatile to cyclic downturns unlike service industry.
Now the key issue for all Singaporeans is whether would you want to vote for a change in the system and it is a step into the unknown or you would rather keep to the present situation and hope the government understand that we are not always looking at hard facts but want them to engage us and appreciate what the ground is feeling.

We only hope that we will not end up in a situation where we will spend all our time debating issues without any actions while the world overtakes us.

We will know on the 7th of May 2011, how things will develop.

Unique Western food joint near Art Museum

2011-05-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

For this eatery, it was a mistakewhich led us to try the food. We had actually wanted to go to the National Museum to view some exhibitions but due to my poor sense of direction we landed up at the art museum and saw some exhibits which we did not know what is been shown.

Anyway after the error, we spotted a cafe which is the Food for Thought Cafe and gave it a try. An interesting concept they have is they are will support a good cause in which they will donate part of their profit for good causes such as donating for the UN food programme.

We ordered a few dishes to try.

Interesting concept cafe with afforable comfort food that is quite generous on portions.

Fries with rosemary garlic. Simple but delicious

Calamari, prawns and salmon Risotto. Wanted to try what is a Risotto and realised it is too rich for me as too cheesy. Very filling though did not really fancy it :(

Hoisin Har Cheong Baby Back Ribs. It is supposed to be one of their more popular dish and it really showed. The back ribs was very well flavoured and it goes well with the potato gratins. Excellent dish and highly recommended.

Ice lemon tea. Nothing to say :)

Highly recommended restaurant for Healthy Chinese food with an elegant touch :)

2011-05-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

This is another long overdue posting. This restaurant was recommended by a friend and it is really very good.

The name of the restaurant is Restaurant Ten. It is located at 7 Purvis Street #01-01. Telephone number: 6333 9901.

It is a restaurant which focus more on classic wellness in a contemporary style. Below is a selection of the dishes which I had ordered there during my previous visit.

Table setting. They will offer a very pleasant starting drink.

Egg White with dried scallop in a potato nest. The contrast of the fluffy egg white with the crispness of the potato nest and the slight saltiness of the dried scallop is a wonderful combination.

Herbal Chicken. One of the best I had, the meat is super tender and infused with the various herbs that was used in the preparation. Highly recommended dish to order.

Stirred fried apples with pine nuts. Interesting combination and flavours. Something that will appeal to guest who wants a bit more crunch for their vege dish.

Ee Fu mee. Excellent in taste and presentation. Had the Wok hei flavour and succulent prawns.

Special selection dessert platter. Three very distinct flavours of dessert with the order to enjoy it from left to right.

If you are looking for an interesting place to have Chinese Food with a modern taste which is tasty and healthy, do consider this place :)

Latest update: The restaurant has unfortuntaley closed recently :(

New Favourite food haunt for great food @ good value ( Ka Soh)

2011-03-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

This is my first entry in quite a while as have been very busy with work.

My dad recently recommend us to try the food of Ka Soh at the Alumni Association @ No.2 College Road ( near Outram MRT).

One of the highly recommended dish is their fish head bee hoon. We decided to order a selection of dishes to try. The below are the review of some of the items that we tried during our 2 visits to the place.

Stirred Fried Hor Fun with Fish meat. This dish was superb. You get to enjoy the Wo Hek feel for the Hor fun ( not many places do it well) and it is so fragrant and tasty. Absolutely must try this dish

The next dish we tried is the fish meat bee hoon. It was good. However if you are a fan of fish head, it is recommeneded that you have the fish head bee hoon which gives the soup a much more complex flavour.

Ka Soh version of cold dish ( my favourite item was the gong pao chicken pieces)

Fried prawn ball with spicy sauce. The prawns was very crunchy and the sauce was excellent.

Prawn Paste Chicken. Nothing much to shout about.

Wasabi Prawn. It was good but I preferred the version tried elsewhere where the prawns is coated with a layer of the wasabi sauce.

Special Fried Pork. I totally loved this dish which is both crispy and the meat is juicy with full of flavours.

Stirred fried chill Kang Kong with cuttlefish, It was delicious and there was the spicyness in the chilli.

In general, the dishes were excellent especially for the stirred fried items. On the pricing, it is quite reasonable as it is priced closer to Zhi char pricing then a restaurant price. If you would like to try some local Chinese food, I would recommend this place.

Visit to Paradise Dynasty at Orchard Ion 4th floor

2010-10-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks back, my friend and I visited a new Chinese Restaurant on the 4th floor of Orchard Ion. It is called Paradise Dynasty and is opened by the Taste Paradise group. It specialized in Xiao Long Bao and their special item is the eight flavours xiao long bao which is shown below. They also served la mien and a selection of side dishes and Shanghai and Beijing Dim Sum.

The first item to come is the 8 flavours xiao long bao. It consists of the original flavour, gingseng flavour, foie Gras, black truffle, cheese flavour, crab roe, garlic and sichuan flavour. They even recommend a sequence to have the various flavours. The most memorable one is the Ginseng flavour. You really get to enjoy the flavour of the ginseng and it goes very well with the soft and tender meat filling. Highly recommended.

My friend had the beef brisket la mien. He did not fancy it so much as the soup based do not complement well with the rich taste of the beef. The soup in a way made the beef taste be diluted.

For myself, I had the seafood La mien. For this dish, the soup complemented well with the seafood as the seafood flavour was well infused in the soup. I found this dish quite good.

The next dish is the jellyfish. This is one of the best I had. the texture was chewy and it was complemented with a excellent sauce. Highly recommend ordering this dish.

Next is the Guo Tie. I loved it a lot though my friend was not too keen on it. The based was crisp as it was pan fried and the filling was full with the meat juice and the tender meat within it.

For the salad chicken, this is one of the dish which did not stick out.

The service was excellent and they also had a specialist to pour the tea into your cup using the big teapot and pouring a distance from the table. The decoration of the place was also very sleek. Best part of all, the prices of some of the items are not as expensive as suggested from the decoration of the place.

Excellent place to visit to enjoy the xiao long bao.

One of my favourite Food Centre ( East Coast Lagoon )

2010-10-03T06:13:00.000-07:00

East Coast Lagoon has been one of my favourite food centre. It has a huge variety of delicious local food, it is near the beach and there is great atmosphere where local and tourists enjoy the food under the moonlight.

The only inconvenience is that it is not that accessible for people who is staying not near the area. Usually it is a place that you would like to visit when you have a private transport. There is ample

A couple of months back, my mum friend who is from the UK visited Singapore and this was one of the place that we brought him for dinner to let him sample some of the local delights.

Photo of the entrance of the food village.

Name of the shop where I ordered the Char Siew Noodle.

Photo of the Char Siew Mee. The serving of the Char Siew is very generous. For this stall they used the sauce of the Char Siew as the gravy for the noodle. This give the noodle a sweet and rich taste. Quite excellent value for money.

Char Siew Kuay Teow. My guest really enjoyed this dish.

On the left of the picture is the chicken and lamb satay. On the right, it is the BBQ chicken. The satay was full of flavour and the lamb was especially delicious. The BBQ chicken has a tender texture with a lovely aroma.

Chinese Rojak. It is local salad which comprises of cucumber, dough fritter, cuttlefish, radish which is mixed with a prawn based sauce and roasted peanut.

Next is the grilled sting ray with sambal chilli. It looked intimating for my guest but he was game for it and took a bit to try. He found it a touch too spicy for him. For myself, I also found it too spicy and I needed to order 2 ice cold drink to quench the fire in my mouth.

The below is the fried oyster omelet. My guest did not try this as he does not like oyster. However this is one of my favourite dish. The egg is fried to a crisp and it goes well with the quickly cooked oyster and the chilli. Fantastic dish!!

The below is the dessert that we had which is a chilled jelly and an ice kacang which is a local dessert. Perfect for an evening under the moonlight.

My guest really enjoyed the experience as well as he was amazed with the myriad of delicious food all located in one area. This was the type of experience he was looking forward when he came to Singapore.

Tasting of Wines from Alsace in France

2010-09-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a trade tasting of various wines from the Alsace region in France. Alsace is located on the France eastern border and adjacent to Germany and Switzerland.

This is a region in which wine cultivation has been going on for centuries which reached its peak in the 16th century. It was disrupted by the Thirty Years' war which devasted the region and it only started to recover only after the First World War when the focus was getting the best quality wines.

In this region, the main focus of the grape varieties are Sylvaner, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Muscat D'Alsace, Piont Gris, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Noir. Among all the grape varieties, only the pinot noir is made as a red wine. The rest are all whites. Hence Alsace is a region famous for the quality of their white wines. Two of the most famous grape varietals from that region would be Riesling and Gewurztraminer.

During the tasting, I managed to try quite a few different style of Riesling from Alsace. There is quite a different taste between the Alsace Riesling and the Riesling from Germany. The Riesling from Alsace are more of a drier style with a refined and delicate fruitness. Some of which also have mineral notes. Personally I prefer the German Riesling as it is not so dry and like the sweetness of the German Riesling especially the Spatlese.

However the Alsace Gewurztraminer is something which I enjoyed. It has a full body with a very rich bouquet of sweet fruits,flowers and spice. It is also full of flavour and totally enjoyable.

I also managed to try a bit of the Pinot Blanc. It is a dry style white as well which is well rounded and delicate. The one which I tried did not have a long finish. There is a good acidity and will go well with seafood.

It was really an eye opening experience and really let me know more about Riesling as have always tried German Riesling and thought Riesling in general is of the sweeter variety. I also was surprised about the Alsace Gewurztraminer.

The below is a photo of a bottle of Riesling from Alsace. The design of the bottle is always this elegant shape.

Photo from Wine foot

Peranakan Dinner at Vivocity

2010-09-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

The other day my family decided to try something different as have always been having Chinese food and Western food. We decided to try a Peranakan outlet at Vivocity. It is located next to Tung Lok Seafood. The outlet is known as Nyonya and Baba Peranakan Crusine.

We decided to order a couple of dishes to try.

Appertizer is Archar.

The next dish is the mixed vegetable nonya style. I did not really find it that nice though.

It is followed by the satay chicken. This is my favourite dish as the sauce is very tasty and go well with the plain rice which is served.

The below is a photo of a chendol. This is very refreshing.

The below is the sambal sotong. I would prefer if it has more gravy. It will then go better with rice.

Five Spices meat roll. This is very good. The exterior is crispy and the inside is juicy.

The last dish is the chilli crayfish. This dish was not really that impressive.

In summary, the food was ok as there is some highlights but some lowlights as well.

Lunch @ Tony Roma's ( Suntec Outlet)

2010-08-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, my parents and I went for lunch at Tony Roma. It is a place which I have wanted to visit many times but never end up there. When we were there my dad told us the portion served here is large, and when the dishes started to come, can see what he meant.

The complimentary starter is a bread with garlic spread.

Next is our order of the Tony Roma appertizer platter. It consists of cheese roll, chicken wing and potato skin with bacon and cheese. The best of the lot is the potato skin with bacon and cheese.

First my dad order arrived which is the half roast chicken. The size of the roast chicken was huge. It looks more like a turkey then chicken. The chicken meat was tender and delicious as I took a sample to try.

My mum had the steak and fried prawn combo. According to her the beef was good but the breaded prawn was a bit disappointing.

I had thier famous ribs with breaded prawns. The ribs was superb. It is tasty and easy to cut. Really loved it a lot. The prawn was nothing to shout about.

It was a nice and filling lunch. I think I will go with their ribs and chicken combo the next time when I visit the place again.

Dinner at Rakuzen at Milennia Walk first floor

2010-08-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

My dad and I had dinner at a Japanese Restaurant at Milennia Walk. The restaurant name is Rakuzen. The service experience was excellent right from the moment we were entering the restaurant. We were warmly welcome and service for the drinks and the refills of the drink was very prompt.

The menu had a wide selection of Japanese dishes ranging from sashimi, sushi, japanese style grilled, japanese orientated Chinese Food, various rice sets, appertizers and fried selection.

We ordered the following items shown below.

The first dish was a salmon, salmon belly and salmon roe sashimi. The salmon was very fresh and really the salmon belly was excellent. It has a richer taste and the meat had a better texture. The salmon roe was very nice though a bit salty :)

Next is the grilled squid. Unlike other places where the grilled squid will come with a sauce, this came without any sauce, which gave me some doubt about the dish. However when I tried the first slice of the squid, my pre-judgement was way of the mark. It was excellent. It was just grilled with salt. The meat was a bit crisp on the exterior but it just managed to maintain the water content in the squid. This gave the squid a very nice chewy texture. Favourite dish !!

Next was the spider roll. ( Actually it is soft shell crab maki covered with roe) The crispyness of the crab which is covered with the warm rice and generously coated with the roe gave this dish and extra dimension. The roe on the rice when u bite it will give a nice sensation which compliment the intial taste when you have the soft shell crab.

It was followed by the snow crab sushi on the left of the picture and the salmon belly sushi. As can be seen from the photo, the meat is bigger than the rice at the base. The sushi were yummy.

My dad had the grilled fish set. The fish was quite nice.

I had the Roast Pork Ramen with a pork based soup. The serving for the roast pork was generous. The meat had a very nice texture and flavour. The ramen was also delicious. The slight downside was I felt the soup was a bit too salty for me.

I really loved the sushi and the spider roll especially. It was an enjoyable dinner with good and efficient service and great food. Will plan another visit :)

Wine Dinner 2nd visit ( Burgundy wine theme) at Bistro Amigo

2010-08-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

This is my second visit to Bistro Amigo at Funan Centre second floor to attend a Burgundy theme wine dinner. For this burgundy theme wine dinner, the wines that will be featured will be Pinot Noir which is a light bodied red wine. Hence the dishes that are designed for this dinner, will feature seafood and white meat. All the Pinot Noir featured were the 2006 vintage.

The first dish which I had was the prawns with orange. The prawns were very fresh and nicely prepared. It was paired with Sylvain Cathiard Vosne Romanee. Personally I liked this wine a lot as it is not tannic and as quite a light body. This is a wine that can go well on its own.

The next dish was the Char Grilled Large Hokkaido Sea Scallop, Side Coated with Cauliflower, Light Garlic Mousseline topped with Basil Leaf, Romeso Sauce. It was paired with Perrot Minot Vosne Romanee. The scallop was excellent. It was full of flavour and it still maintains its water content which a lot of places are unable to do so. The sauce went perfectly with the flavour of the scallop and the crispy basil leaf gives the dish a nice touch. For the Perrot Minot, the wine is a bit more tannic than the first one and it went well with the dish that was presented.

The third dish was the grilled 'Live' Japanese Surf Clam, Cherry Tomato Confit, Sauteed Savory Cabbage, Caviers and Onion Foam. It was paired with Eugenie vosne Romanee Les Brulees. The gravy for this dish was out of this world. Super excellent ! It was full of the richness of the clam and the cabbage and Cavier further gave this dish additional dimension. The clam had a wonderful taste. However I did not really understand placing Onion Foam in this dish. Something unusual to see onion looking like foam :)

The wine that was paired with this dish was a bit more heavy on the palate compared to the first 2 wines.

The main course is the slow cooked Les Fermier Landais ( Yellow Chicken), Corn Mashed Potato, Sauteed Seasonal Vegetables, Chicken Red Wine Sauce, Truffles Oil Foam. It was paired with Robert Arnoux, Vosne Romanee Les Suchots. The chicken was superb. It was the first time that I have tried a chicken dish where the breast meat was even more tender the drumstick. The sauce was full of the flavour of the wine as well as the chicken.

For the wine, this one was the best among all of them. It has a nice body and it was not too tannic and you get to enjoy the grape flavour. Excellent wine.

The dessert was warm chocolate Moelleaux with vanilla ice cream and it was paired with a sherry. I found the sherry to be a bit strong but it actually goes well by pouring it over the ice cream and having it with the chocolate Moelleaux.

It was another wonderful experience with excellent food and wines. A very enjoyable experience :)

Lunch @ Majestic Restaurant

2010-07-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I went for lunch with my mum and aunt to the Majestic Restaurant at Cantonment Road. I had previously visited this restaurant for a company function and was very impressed with the food. Hence decided to visit again to try their a la carte menu.

We decided to try a few of their dim sum items as well as their mixed platter and a couple other dishes.

The below is the Char Siew Pau. It was quite good.

The next item was the scallop dumpling.

The har gaw was excellent as it was full of prawns and very flavourful.

The siew mai was also another excellent dish.

The next dish is the Peking Duck. The version that was prepared here was very good. The skin was very crispy and flavourful. The sauce that accompanied it was one of the best that I had. Highly recommended.

Majestic Platter. It consists of 4 of their popular items. There is the roast pork, deep fried soft shell crab, wasabi prawn and stirred fried crab meat with bean spouts served on the lettuce. All the dishes were excellent. Special mention for the soft shell crab and the wasabi prawns.

Pan Seared beef with sesame sauce. This is their signature dish. My mum and aunt loved it. It was so well prepared that the usual beef smell was completely removed and the texture had a melt in your mouth sensation.

The below is the Honey Glazed USA pork. This dish was the best. The meat was tender and juicy. It was so full of flavour and the two sauces that accompanied the dish gives the meat an additional dimension.

Brocoli stirred fried with garlic. It is a simple dish but the taste was very good. The service staff informed me that the brocoli was brough in from Mexico. Hence the unusual shape. The vege was crunchy and the combination of the fresh vege and the fried garlic was lovely.

This is the stirred fried duck meat from the Peking Duck with the Ee-fu mee. It was very well prepared and it had a bit of gravy unlike some places where it can be quite dry.

The last item was the chempatek fried ice cream. The outer shell was a very thin crisp and inside of it was the ice cream. I feel the essential skill for this dish is that the ice cream inside must still be cold and not melting when you consumed it. They were able to accomplished it and the ice cream was also very rich. Super delicious.

The overall food experience was really superb and my mum and aunt were very impressed and will let their friends know about this place. The service was also very good.
This is one place where I highly recommend to visit if you really want to spend a bit for quality food.

Dinner at Soht & Baay at Orchard Ion 4th floor ( Thai food )

2010-07-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Last week I had dinner with my mum and aunt at a Thai restaurant at Orchard Ion level 4. It is a new place for us have not visited it previously. We went to the dining hall which was actually located at level 5 as level 4 is actually all the private dinning room. The stairs to the dinning hall does not look impressive. However the setting at the dinning area is very impressive. There is a pianist playing soothing songs.

We decided to try the following dishes: Mixed platter of appetizer, seafood tom yum soup, chicken stirred fried with basil leave, deep fried fish thai style, black pepper soft shell crab and oyster sauced kang kong.

Picture of the rice serving. Cute design :)

Seafood Tom Yum Soup: Soup was sufficient spicy with the lemon grass flavour. Seafood used was also fresh

Mixed platter of appetizer. It consists of 7 different appetizers. The stand out items were the Thai Style fish and the fried fish. The only disappointment is that the Thai style otak otak was not spicy enough.

Black Pepper soft shell crab. Fantastic. My personal favourite. The sauce is super tasty and go well with rice and the soft shell crab were deep fried to a crisp and the sauce makes the dish stand out even more.

Fried fish with Thai style sauce. The fish was fresh and tasty. However did not really liked the thai sauce. Hence this dish was a bit of a disappointment.

Chicken stirred fried with Basil leaves. This is a typical Thai dish. This was another excellent dish and complimented well with the rice.

Oyster sauce fried kang kong( morning glory) . Usually we always have it with chilli, however the version on offered there was with oyster sauce. The kang kong is very fine and surprising this style of prepartion goes well with the kang kong. Enjoyed this dish as well.

We finished the meal by ordering two Thai dessert as shown below. Both were very good.

The dishes in general were excellent and the ambience of the place was also very good. The only downside is that it is quite expensive.

World Cup Quarter Final matches Update

2010-07-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

As it is, we have witness 3 quarter final matches with two unexpected results. Both South American giant nations (Brazil and Argentina) have been eliminated at the quarter final stage. The other team that has made it through to the semi final is Uruguay.

For Brazil, they actually played well in the first half of the game and was dominating the game and Holland looks like they were out of it. Only after the mistake made by the Brazil defence that led to the own goal before Holland started to force themselves back into the game. In general, Brazil elimination was caused by two defensive errors on their part as well as the stupidity of the defender Melo to stamp on the dutch player.

For the elimination of Argentina, they were torn apart by the incisive passing of the youthful German midfield. It looks like Ballack injury which rule him out of the world cup is a blessing in disguise. Due to his injuries, they were able to use the outstanding Muller together with Mesut Ozil and Bastian Schweinsteiger which gave the midfield more energy and cutting edge. Germany has been outstanding in the elimination phase by trashing England ( old rival) by 4 goals to 1 and against Argentina the score was an emphatic 4 nil win. Looking at the age profile of the German team, this could be a team which will be a major force in World Football for the next decade.

For Uruguay, they were lucky to make it to the semi final. If it was not for the striker who intentionally blocked the goal bound shot, they would have been eliminated as the attempt came close to the end of extra time.

The last quarter final will be played later this evening between Spain and Paraguay. Based on form guide, Spain should have this match wrapped up without too much of a hassle. However based on the recent results throughout the world cup, anything is possible.

World Cup 2010 End of Group stage

2010-06-27T03:48:00.000-07:00

Now after the group stages are over, we are in the business end of the world cup. Elimination time !
Some of the big name countries which have not made it through the group stages are Italy, Serbia and France as well as some of the African teams such as Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

Out of all the teams which were eliminated, France is really a sorry sight. They had infighting within the team and the management as well as players who were not motivated to play their best. For Italy, the main reason they are not through to the next round is mainly because they could not beat New Zealand as well as their normally water tight defence did not come to fore. It could be due to the lost of influential keeper Buffon in the first match which hurt them quite a bit. Another problem that Italy suffered is due to in-sufficient creative midfielder who could break down tight defences.

For Serbia, they were not consistent throughout the group stage hence were eliminated.

Two of the second round games have been completed and both Uruguay and Ghana has made it to the quarter final at the expense of South Korea and USA respectively. South Korea were close to eliminating Uruguay as they had two excellent one to one chances with the keeper before Uruguay scored their winning goal. Uruguay seem to be contented to sit back after taking the lead and were lucky to win this game as a team with a better poacher in front of goal would have taken one of the 2 chances on offer. For Ghana, they managed to be the flag bearer for the African continent by beating the USA who unfortunately were not able to come back a second time after their equalizer at 1 -1.

For tonight game, it is a crunch match between two European rivals, England and Germany. There have been many memorable games in the past and should be a high intensity match. This is a match that is difficult to call as we do not know which England team will show up. Germany will play their attacking football against the English. This match should be a cracker. I think it will end up a draw.

Hopefully the games will get more exciting as there is no benefit playing for a draw now.

World Cup 2010 South Africa ( Group Stage)

2010-06-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

It is now about the mid-way point in the group stages of the world cup. This world cup has been quite boring in general with the exception of a few games such as matches involving Argentina and Germany. The average goals per game is about 2 goals maximum.

In general, a lot of the teams seem to be happy to sit back on a goal lead and hope to win on the counter. This led to a lot of the games meandering to draw or low scoring games. I wonder if it is due to some of the teams are still adapting to the altitude and weather condition that some of the games are been held.

It seems that the goal keeping errors have been leading to a number of goals. Example are the goal conceded by Robert Green as well as the Japan GK error in the match against Holland. I wonder if it is partially due to the new ball used in this world cup as a lot of the mistakes seem to be due to a misjudgement of the ball trajectory or after bounce.

In general, the European teams have been quite a letdown in terms of their performance especially the big teams. France and England come to mind. France seems to be on a downward slide for a couple of years as now the team looks very disjointed and a lot of infighting within the team. For England, their performance against USA and Algeria has been dismal. It seems that England has lost their qualification form and making it very difficult for themselves to qualify for the next round. For Spain, after their unexpected defeat to Switerland, they will need to buck up else they may not make it to the next round.

A pleasant surprise has been the performance of teams from Asia and Central America. Both Japan and South Korea managed to get their first world cup win on foreign soil. North Korea had a good match against Brazil. Mexico and USA has performed quite well in their 2 games.

Argentina has been playing some of the most gung ho soccer in the tournament. The only worry that they may have is their defence seems not very solid and both Nigeria and South Korea could have caused more grief for them if their finishing was better.

Hopefully as the tournament proceeds to the knock out phase, there will be more excitement and brillant goals and less of goalkeeping errors.

Dinner at Mellben Seafood

2010-06-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I met with some of my ex-colleagues for dinner. We decided to try the famous coffee shop which specialized in the preparation of crab. I understand from my friend that only on weekday that they accept advance booking. For weekend, no booking allowed and the waiting time for a seat is on average 45 minutes to an hour.

We ordered a selection of seafood dishes as well as two crab dishes to try the various style.

The first dish is the fried beancurd which is one of their popular item. The beancurd was quite tasty.

The next dish is scallop in yam ring. The yam was done quite well. It managed to maintain some of the moisture hence it is not too dry to the palate. However I found the scallop quite bland in taste.
The following dish is the cereal prawn. The prawn is big in size and fresh and it was fried quite well. However the cereal was a letdown. It was not crispy. To me for cereal prawn the cereal must be crispy and compliment the prawn dish.

The next dish is salted egg spare ribs. This was one of my favourite dish. I found the spare ribs was tasty and the salted egg brought the flavour out. I will order this dish again if I visit the place again.

The next dish is dou miao stirred fried with mushroom. This was very good. The taste was excellent.
Below is fried mantou. Normal
The next 2 dishes are what the place is famous for which is their crab dishes. We tried 2 types. One is the chilli crab and the other one is cream crab.

The first one is the chilli crab which is shown below. I quite like the taste of it. It was a bit spicier than the few I have tried.
The next version is the creamy crab. The sauce is quite well prepared. It was not too creamy.

In general, the food was not bad but will stay off the cereal prawn. It is a place that really need to make advance booking before going over else you have to wait for a seat before waiting for the food.

First experience of a Wine Dinner

2010-05-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

Recently I was invited to attend a wine dinner which was held at the Bistro Amigo. Bistro Amigo is both a wine shop as well as also a French Bistro. It is located in Funan DigitalLife Mall on the second floor.

A wine dinner is where they try to match the wine with the food that will be served. I am really a novice in wine so it will be an interesting experience. The theme of the dinner is to feature a selection of Bordeaux second wines. What it meant are these wines are the second wines from some famous Chateau such as Mouton Rothschild, Montrose and Beaucillou.

The dinner start first with a serving of french bread with some dip and a serving of Champagne. The Champagne is really very good. ( Only later I learnt that it is Pol Roger which is a good Champagne)

The below is a screen shot of the menu.

The first dish served is a cold dish which is Jade Tiger Abalone with Cavier with a passion fruit sauce base. The abalone is surprisingly delicious as usually I thought that the only way to enjoy an abalone is by braising it. This dish was paired with Clarendelle Blanc '06.

Truth to be told, I am still not sure what they mean by the wine match the food? Is it you have the food before the wine or you have the wine before the food? ( Hopefully someone can enlighten me about it)
The next dish is Pan Roasted Barramundi with melted leaks and crispy onion with the fish red wine sauce. This dish was fabulous. The fish was so full of flavour and the sauce compliment it perfectly. The onion was so crispy. This dish was paired with La Dame De Montrose '06.

The third course is the Pan Roasted Foie Gras paired with Grilled Cep Mushroom. The sauce is Port Wine Reduction. The Foie Gras was roasted to perfection. It has a slight crisp outside but the interior is still moist and full of flavour. It has a melt in your mouth texture. The mushroom was also very delicious. This dish was paired with La Croix De Beaucaillou '04. ( This wine was my personel favourite among the red wines presented on the day)
The fourth dish is oven roasted lobster accompanied with moral mushroom and sauteed savoy cabbage with a prawn bisque sauce. I loved the sauce which was used for the dish. It was perfect with the lobster. Ah the meat of the lobster is so so delicious. Sometimes the lobster meat is a bit dry but this one was so well prepared that the natural flavour of the meat is brought out to the fullest. This dish was served with La Chapelle De La Mission Haut Brion '07.

For the last of the main dish, it was supposed to be a beef dish. However as I do not take beef. They substituted it with a pork fillet dish. I had placed both the photos of the beef dish as well as the pork dish.

The pork was really tender and taste was great. Would have been better if got more pieces of the pork. The last of the main course was paired with Le Petit Mouton '04. For the majority of the guest to the dinner. They really enjoyed this wine. For myself, I found it had a bit tannic and did not like it so much.

For desert, it was veloute of chocolate, mixed berry and ice cream. They arranged a surprise wine to go with the desert. It was a late harvest hence it has quite a bit of residue sugar in the wine. This make the wine of a sweeter variety. I personally liked sweet wines.

Though I was told recently, what makes wine enjoyable is to taste the various subtle taste ( fruitness of the wine, the finish). As the person told me, sweetness is the easiest taste to create. ( still learning how to appreciate wines)

The food were all excellent in terms of taste and presentation. I highly recommend this is a good venue to enjoy good food and wine. The ambience of the place is also not bad as there is live performance on Friday evening. If there is only 1 small improvement :), it is in the hope that the portion of the food can be bigger.

It was my fist experience with French Food as well as a wine dinner. Have to say it was an eye opening experience.

Dinner treat at Shimbashi Soba Soba Gozen

2010-05-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

This article is about a new Japanese restaurant which my good friend had kindly invited me to try and also give me a treat :)

It is a Japanese restaurant which specialized in Soba as can be seen from the name. It is located at B1 at Raffles Shopping Centre and is next to the highly popular Din Tai Fung.

It was my first time trying soba as usually in a Japanese food place I like to go for Bento ( need rice to be satisfying ). However when I looked at the menu, there is no bento at all. Therefore I went for the next best alternative which is the soba together with 5 side dishes.

I had chosen a hot soba as really do not fancy a cold noodle. The below photo is the hot soba.
The texture of the soba is really very good and the soup base was also excellent. Only thing is I found the soup a bit too salty for my liking.

The next photo is an overview of the 5 side dishes which came with the set. The following photos are each inidividual dish close up view.
The first item is the california roll. It was ok.

Next is the mushroom with tofu. The tofu was soft and the sauce complimented well with the main them of this item.

Salmon and another fish sashimi. It was fresh and the meat was marvelous.

The last item is the mixed tempura with prawn, mushroom and lady finger.

After the main course was served, it was accompanied with an ice cream with red bean paste. It is a typical Japanese desert. I found it quite good.

The dinner was really very good and it was a great recommendation from my friend.

Wine Fatal Attraction (Beginning)

2010-04-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have not tried any alcohol beverages in my life till recently due to my latest job role. My first go at wine tasting was during a sampling training where there were a few wines been featured.

The first wine which I tried was a red wine and the first impression is not fantasic. As can be seen, the first encounter was quite disappointing and bad for my throat.

After the first glimpse into the world of wines ( not a pleasant glimpse!), I have tried many other types of red and white wines.

Personally I have come to enjoy white wine better especially the wines which have a higher residue sugar content. Examples are the Moscato as well as Riesling from Germany. They have a higher degree of sweetness which when well chilled are pleasantly easy to drink and enjoyable.

Moscato in general have an alcohol percentage between 5.5% to 7 %. They have a very fruity nature and the alcohol after taste is quite well masked by the fruitiness. The below are two brands of moscato which I have tried. Both have different characters.

The first one is Boroli Moscato which is from Italy and it is sweeter than the second one which is from Australia under the Brawn Brother label.

Last lap for the Championship in the BPL

2010-04-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

This has been one of the most fascinating Barclays English Premier League season. The race for the Champion has been a close fight between 3 clubs. ( Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea)

The race for the fourth spot has also been a keen battle between a number of clubs ( Liverpool, Aston Villa, Manchester City, Tottenham)

For this season, the top clubs seem to be dropping many more points than normal. Wonder is it due to the quality of the overall league is getting better or the top teams are getting weaker.

For Arsenal performance, they have been inconsistent throughout the season. They have dropped points against their nearest rivals as well as some unexpected teams. One reason could be due to the many injuries suffer by their various departments over the season. Another weakness is also due to the keeper inconsistency as he has made a couple of howlers in the season which does not inspire confidence in the backline.

For Manchester United, although it pains me to say it but really Manu have become over reliant on the use of star players for the offensive side of their game. Ronaldo has been carrying Manu offense for the last two seasons. This year Rooney has done very well to take over the mandate. However this also lies the problem, when Rooney is injured, there is a significant loss in cutting edge.

Even though Valencia has been a solid signing but the loss of Ronaldo as well as Tevez has been quite significant. In addition, the existing midfielders has not really managed to up their offensive game. A major downside has been the influence of Carrick. He was supposed to be the main creative force in the centre of midfield but his performance has been quite bad. Park and Fletcher has been playing well but their main role is to strengthen the centre of midfield from a defensive point of view. There is not much creativity in the centre of the park. This caused Manu to attack by the flank most of the time which makes it predictable for opposition.

For Chelsea, it can be said that out of the 3 teams, it is the most experienced as well as the strongest in depth as their bench is full of experience international. They also have suffered from players who suffered major injuries such as the loss of Essien and Ashley Cole. They have recovered well from a blip in the second half of the season.

Chelsea has just beaten Manu and are 2 points ahead with 5 games left. Based on the fixture list, their toughest assignment will be going to Anfield and not get beaten as they have a superior goal difference than Manu.

Manu have some tough games coming up which are away such as the Manchester Derby as well as Tottenham away.

Arsenal has relatively easiest run in to the end of the season. However they will need both Manu and Chelsea to drop a few points. It maybe possible for one of the two to drop a couple of points but not likely to have both teams dropping enough points for Arsenal to overtake them.

Chelsea is in a very strong position for the title. However based on this unpredictable season, both sets of Manchester United and Arsenal fans must be hoping for a last minute twist for the race for the title.

Dinner @ Long Beach King Seafood

2010-03-21T09:52:00.001-07:00

Recently we went to the Long Beach King Seafood which is next to the Kallang Park's Macdonald for a family dinner.

We decided to order their special seafood menu which highlights include chili crab and the Geoduck ( personal favourite).

The first dish to arrive was the Geoduck in sashimi style. It is also accompanied by a soup based on mushroom and chicken stock. The soup is for those who prefer to poached the geoduck before having it. Personally preferred it raw as the sweetness is best expressed.

Geoduck Sashimi ( super tasty)

The next dish below is the chili crab with the fried man tou ( fried buns). The gravy is quite rich and goes well with the mantou. Maybe for people who like their chili crab spicy will be disappointed as the spicness for this dish is not really high. The crab was also very fresh and huge :)

The next dish is one of their more popular dish. The chicken meat was very tender and when you cut it, the meat comes off very easily and it is juicy. The only downside is that it is a bit on the sweet type.

It is followed by the chili fried lala. Lala is another type of shell fish and usually stired fried with chili.

It is swiftly followed by the vegetable cooked in superior stock and mushroom. It is quite ok.

The next dish is the steamed fish with an assam like gravy. The fish was fresh and the gravy is not too bad.

The dish below is their specially made seafood filled dough fritters. Unlike a lot of places, the filling here is very generous and flavourful. Excellent dish !

The below is the fried rice. Nothing really special.

We tried 3 of their desserts offering which are shown below. They were all quite good.

It was a really enjoyable dinner and hopefully can go again soon.

Friend's wedding dinner @ Qian Xi (Farrer Park)

2010-03-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

Recently I had attended a friend wedding at the Qian Xi restaurant located at Farrer Park. It was a nine course dinner.

Suckling Pig Cold dish
Braised Shark Fin Soup with Crab Meat
Roasted Crispy Chicken
Steamed Red Garoupa
Braised Duck with Sea Cucumber
Fried Prawn with Cereal
Braised Abalone with Spinach
Fried Rice in Lotus Leaf
Yam paste with Gingko Nut

The first dish is the cold dish. I found the jelly fish a bit too sweet for my liking. The rest of the items is ok, nothing memorable.

The next dish is the shark fin. They are quite generous with the sharfin and the crab meat. Me really enjoyed it.

The third dish is the crispy chicken.

The following dish is the steamed red Garoupa.

The above is the sea cucumber and the duck meat. I find this dish quite yummy as I liked duck prepared using this method.

The fried prawn and cereal. This was excellent. The prawns were big and crispy that you could eat the outer shell. The best was the cereal. In the end, it turned out everyone wanted the cereal more than the prawns !

Braised abalone with Spinach. Nothing outstanding

Fried rice in lotus leaf ( a dish nowadays more popular @ wedding dinner)

I find that overall the dishes was ok and only one or two dishes really stand out.

Dinner at Paradise Inn @ Sommerset 313 B4

2010-03-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

In recent times, there has been a lot of new malls that have taken root along Orchard Road. Example are the iconic Orchard Ion as well as Orchard Central and Sommerset 313. These new malls have a lot of new and exciting eatries for foodies to explore.

Recently, my friend and I visited Paradise Inn which is @ Sommerset 313 B4 located near the escalator. It is operated by the Paradise Group which also have outlets at other places like the Singapore Flyer.

The below is the snapshot of their opening page to their menu.

We decided to order 3 dishes to share and try out. The dishes are seafood with tofu and pork floss on top of it, sweet and sour pork and chicken fried with young ginger.

The first dish is the chicken fried with young ginger. The chicken is flavoured with the ginger and deep fried. The meat is very flavourful with the taste of the ginger and the meat is very tender.
This dish was excellent.

The next dish is the seafood tofu with the pork floss. The seafood gravy was very good and it went exceptionally well with the rice. The tofu is very soft and has a melt in your mouth texture when you bite into it.

The last dish is the sweet and sour pork which is absolutely delicious.

The food were excellent and match or exceeded our expectation. The only downside is the rice serving is very small. Even my friend who is not a big eater also required 2 servings of the rice.

The pricing is quite reasonable as it is about slightly more expensive than a zhi char. This is a place I would recommend people to go and try :)

Random post about Yahoo Fantasy Football

2010-01-25T07:32:00.000-08:00

I am sure some of the people watching the BPL do play some of the online Fantasy League games where you either pick 11 players or 14 players from the pool of all available players in the BPL. The choice of players will be limited based on a 100 pts system.

The objective of the game is to pick the individual players whom you think will perform the best for a particular week. The only constraint as mention above is the whole team total worth is 100 pts.

I have already played it for 2 seasons yet I still not able to get the hang of it.
It seems this game favour players who keep on shooting since the points awarded for a goal is 7 pts but an assist is only 3 pts. Playing this game makes us support more on individual then an overall team performance.

I have tried choosing players where the allocation is focus on two areas (striker and midfielder) and for the rest of the position it is really picking the players to fill the numbers. I have also tried going for an all rounder team allocation. However none seem to work well :(

If there are any other people who is playing this game and is able to advice on the best strategy I am all ears for it :)

Lunch at Angus Steak House (Takashimaya)

2009-11-03T08:01:00.000-08:00

These days fusion food is getting more popular as it seems people are more willing to experiment the various cooking techniques across different culture with existing/new ingredients. A good example is the use of Wasabi in Chinese cuisine.

Angus House can be considered as a fusion food as their menu offering is mainly based on American and Italian dishes but there is a fusion of Japanese cuisine in the preparation of the dishes.

The decoration of the place is classy and spacious. The place has a warm ambience created by the background music from the auto-piano shown in the background of the below photo as well as the warm rays of light gently propagate from the exterior.

The below photo is the table setting.

We ordered their set meal to try out. Their lunch set meal consists of a soup of the day, a salad, a main dish and a dessert.

The first dish to arrive is the Japanese theme salad. It is a bit different from the normal salad in the sense the dressing instead of thousland island dressing, they used a soy sauce based as the dressing. Guess it will be more healthy :)

The next item is the day soup which happen to be mushroom soup that day. It was creamy and very rich in taste. Loved it

The soup also came with some toasted bread as shown below.

The below are some of the main courses that we tried.

The first one is the fish and chips. The fish was very tasty. The only downside is the portion is not so huge. Would have been better if there is one more slice.

The second one is the black pepper steak. As I am not a beef eater so not able to comment about the taste but like the arrangement.

The next one is the seafood platter. The seafood were really excellent but the serving is really too little :( The seafood were grilled and then a very excellent sauce is used to tied the dish together.

The last main dish was the Japanese style spaghetti with scallop and crab roe. This is my favourite dish. As I am not really a cheese person, this dish is perfect for me. The stock of the spaghetti is really light on the palate and it fits perfectly with the seafood in the dish.

Recalling this dish is giving a urge to go there and have it again.

The last item is the day dessert. It is a slice of a cake with some custard cream if I recall correctly.

The taste of the dishes were excellent and the service was also quite prompt. It is quite a nice place to have a quiet dinner. The only downside as can be seen is on the portioning.

Jumbo at Dempsy

2009-09-13T04:50:00.000-07:00

The following review is about Jumbo at Dempsy. The below is the photo taken at the entrance of the place. You are able to choose to dine in the air con dining hall or the outdoor area.

When we arrived at the place, due to the high number of reservation, the only seats available are in the outdoor section. We decided to order a couple of dishes to try out.

The first dish was the deep fried squid with honey. It was fried to a crisp and it was very crunchy. If you loved sweet and crunchy stuff, you will really loved it.

The second dish is the fried boneless chicken. It was quite good as well as it was not too oily.

The third dish is the deep fried prawns with cereal. It was very fragrant and the prawn is also big and juicy as can be seen in the photo below. It was an excellent dish.

The last dish was a home made tofu dish with mushroom. The tofu is mixed with spinach to give the top surface the greenish appearance. The tofu is very smooth and the vege compliemented with the taste of the dish.

The food was good and the service was also not too bad. It was an enjoyable meal.

There is also a lot of other nice eateries in the Dempsy area.

As anyone tried some of the eateries there, do share your experience :)

Recent trip to Phuket

2009-07-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

This is about my short trip to Phuket about 5 months ago.

It was a free and easy trip and was an opportunity to laze about and enjoy the slower pace of life there :)

We arrived in Phuket in the late afternoon and had our dinner at one of the seafood restaurant along the seaside. We had a couple of seafood dishes and a vege for dinner.

Pineapple Juice in the foreground

Chilli squid, grilled plain lobster and grilled prawns

Closed up view of the lobster. It looks plain but the lobster was grilled very nicely and the taste of the meat was wonderful.

Closed up view of the grilled prawns. It was not that good. Felt that it's taste was a bit too blend.

Stired fried squid with chilli. This dish was very good. Favourite dish :)

Stired fried kang kong with chilli. It is not spicy enough :(

For the next 2 morning breakfast, we had the buffet spread provided by the hotel.

It was quite a good spread as it was a mixture of local food and international breakfast.

Hot items selection which range from sausages/ham/pancake to fried koay teow (thai style) and some stired fried local dishes.

Fruits and desert selection. The pineapple were super sweet. Yummy!

Cold cuts/cheese and cerel selection

Bread selections. Me prefer the one I had in Holland.

After which we went for a day tour around phuket island. We were brought to some of their local places of religion as well as to the highest point on phuket island. The picture below was taken there. We also managed to go to a cashew nut factory to observe the manufacturing process for the cashew nut.

After the tour, the local guide brought us to a local coffee shop for lunch. We had their local noodle dish which is a stired fried noodle as well as pork satay and pork intestine satay which are shown below.

Stired fried noodles with fish cake, sotong and prawns. It was ok.

Pork satay and Pork intestine satay. This was a favourite of mine and really enjoyed it. The only downside is that the pork was too thinly sliced hence it was not so juicy.

After lunch, we proceeded to walk the various street stalls and the shopping areas along the beach front. We had our dinner at one of the more modern shopping belts. The below photo is the water display in front of the restaurant that we had our dinner.

It was a quite well done up Thai Restaurant. We ordered some appertizer and main dishes to try out. In general, all the dishes were quite good though I had a few favourites.

Prawn toast. I loved this dish it was crisp on the outside and the interior is full of the prawn flavour.

Tom Yum soup in the background and squid cooked with garlic. I liked the squid dish but not so keen on the Tom Yum Soup.

Egg stirred fried with pork.

Kang Kong fried with garlic

Deep fried fish with curry sauce. This was surprising good.

Pineapple Rice. It was not very good as I felt the rice did not have enough of the pineapple flavour.

Dinner at Thai accent ( Vivocity lvl 2)

2009-06-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

After spending the day at Sentosa, we decided to proceed to vivocity for dinner. At the recommendation of one of my friend, we decided to have Thai food as he told us it was quite good and the price was quite reasonable.

When we reached the place, there was a slight queue in front of us which is a relief as I was hungry and was not looking forward to having to queue a long time to go in.

Anyway we were ushered in a short while and actually the dining space available there is quite a lot.

The below are the dishes the group ordered:

Basil leaves stirred fried with chicken

Fried koay teow thai style.

This dish was very well prepared and it was delicious.

Pineapple rice with seafood.

I find it very tasty and enjoyed it a lot.

Green curry chicken

Stirred fried beef
Seafood tom yam soup which was very nice.

In general, the food was very good and the service was also quite prompt for a busy saturday. I also liked that they also took time to answer any clarification that you may have about their dishes. It was quite a pleasant experience.

Recent visit to Holland

2009-04-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

This is a pictorial summary of the various dishes I tried during my recent trip to Holland. It was a 2 days 3 nights visit to Holland. During the duration of the visit, we stayed at the Hotel Amstelveen which also include the morning buffet.

The following photos are showing the offering for the morning buffet.

Various selection of breads

Some fruits and cereals

Cold cut selection as well as bacon, sausages, baken beans and egg in various style

Variety of jams and spreads to go with the bread.

What I had for breakfast.

There were so many variety of breads on offer but my favourite is not the dutch bread but the croissant. It was light in touch and crisp on the outside. For the spread, there were also a lot of variety but did not really fancy it as still prefer bacon and sausages.
I really enjoyed my breakfast during my stay at the hotel.

For the first day lunch, we had it in the town centre of Amsterdam after our morning guided tour of the city. Amsterdam is a lovely city with a rich history and the building architecture is very lovely.

The below photos are some of the pictures of Amsterdam on a Saturday morning.

For lunch, we went into one of the local cafe. The slight problem is the menu were all in dutch but thankfully, they are able to communicate well in English. Hence we just ordered without reference to the menu. We ordered the day set which includes a soup and a main dish.

We tried the vegetable soup and the tomato soup. The vegetable soup was not nice as the base of the soup was not very strong. My aunt was jokingly said it was just like boiled vegetable. For myself, I had the tomato soup. It had a strong flavour of tomato. Maybe too strong for my liking as I did not really fancy it. The garlic bread was nice though.

Hence for the starters, it was a bit disappointing. However the main course is different. It was very good and the portion is also quite big. My mum mention the beef steak is excellent. For the grilled salmon, it was nicely prepared. The amount was so much till we were not able to finish the fries and the mushroom.

Grilled chicken at the top of the picture and chicken burger with a generous amount of melted cheese.

Beef steak and grilled salmon with accompaniment of grilled mushroom.

For dinner, we also had it in the city centre so that we can continue our shopping after our meal. At least the shops there close later than in London.

Some salmon appertizer. (Forgot the name) Very delicious though

Too creamy and cheesy for my liking though the bacon was nice.

For the next day tour, we went to Volendam and a few other places. For lunch, we had it at Volendam which is famous for their seafood as it is a port town.

For the meal, the stirred fried prawns was very delicious. However for the fish and chip, they prefer the version in England which is beer battered. For the one they had, it uses another form of batter. For desert, we tried the dutch pancake. It is very thin and crispy and you can place various types of sugar and syrup on top of it.

Dutch pancake

For the dinner, after all the travelling, we decided to visit the nearby restaurant 'TGeregt. We each ordered a set meal each which comprises of an starter of your choice, a lobster and shrimp soup, a main course and a desert. ( Quite expensive though about 30 plus Euros)

Once we arrived, they gave us a complimentary appetizer which is shown below. It is a spread on a bread crumb. It was quite tasty.

The first starter to arrive is the sauteed mussels which is shown below. This dish was excellent. The mussels were very nicely done and there were so many :)

The other starter we ordered is the veal meat with some fruit based sauce. The veal meat is at the base of the plate and it is very thinly sliced and well marinated. Some more the presentation is also quite visually appealing.

The below is the lobster with prawn soup. It was not thick enough but in terms of the taste it was really good but the prawn was more like shrimps but it was plentiful.

The next 3 pictures are the main courses. The dishes were very well prepared and they were delicious. The only downside is the quantity is really quite small. Another interesting thing is for the accompanyment, it is served separately as can be seen in the last of the 4 photos below.

Lastly the below are the deserts that we had which is the creme brulee and apple strudel as per shown below. For the creme brulee, they did the carmelisation in front of you as can be seen in the photos below.

Apple strudel with whipped cream.

In general, the trip to Holland was really enjoyable and also managed to try some of the European style cruisine which is quite different from what is found in Asia.

Favourite Penang food buffet in SG ( King's Hotel)

2009-01-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

This is a review of the Penang buffet which my family will go to when we think of having authentic Penang food. The place is King's Hotel. It is a Penang theme buffet and its name is Princess Terrace if not mistaken.

There are a few cooking stations. There is one area for DIY rojak. ( mixed fruit salad penang style)
There are also 2 stations of traditional Penang deserts. ( There are some snapshots below)
There is a selection of about 8 hot dishes which include the famous Penang Char Koay Teow, satays which is super nice and juicy and some other dishes which they will change on a daily basis.

There is also an area in which the staff will prepare po piah and pie tie on the spot as well as some of Penang famous soup noodles dishes such as laksa, koay teow ting, prawn mee ( super nice) and duck drumstick mee sua.

The dishes in general are very delicious. To bring attention to are the prawn mee, char koay teow and the satay. These 3 items are my personal favourite. The desert selection is also very good and is quite authentic.

Sample of hot dishes

DIY rojak section

Self made rojak !Pig stomach with ginko nut soup

It is a banana gravy applied on the white pastry. ( Forgot the name)
Presentation of the dish

Kueh Selection ( all are nice)

Ice kacang DIY station

Penang style Chee Cheong Fun
Po Piah and Pie Tie
Prawn Mee

Koay Teow Ting

Duck Drumstick Mee sua

Recent short visit to KL ( 1st visit)

2009-01-19T22:40:00.001-08:00

This is a short summary of the recent trip to KL just before the Christmas Holiday.

It was an eventful trip as saw some things which are not your everyday event.
Felt need to be alert there ( personel opinion)

Anyway the below is the fotos of the food that we had during the trip.

Dinner at Hard rock Cafe (Near our hotel)

In general, the food there is quite ok and the portioning is sufficient for at least one.
I loved the mashed potatoes. Very yummy and the chicken was also very nice. Though it would have been better if the meat used is from the thigh as the part they used is the breast meat which is harder than thigh meat.

Other than this slight issue due to personal preference it was an enjoyable meal. Quite good.

The first item is a mixed of their appetizer ( spring roll, buffalo wings, fried potatoes, onion rings and fried fish), accompanied by 4 of the house sauces.

Grilled chicken with mashed potatoes

Grilled fish with mashed potatoes

Next, we will review the complimentary breakfast that come with the hotel we were staying in.

The breakfast was very good and there is a good mix of western and eastern crusine. My personel favourite is the freshly made waffle and the egg section in which we can request the chef to prepare a variety of egg dishes. There is also quite a good selection of juices and bread.

View from our table

Waffle and selection of bread and pastries

Grilled tomato, sausages, sauted mushroom and many other items

Third serving for the day.

After which we proceeded to go shopping at the local mall. Due to the heavy breakfast, therefore we were not able to eat too much for lunch.

Hence we pop into one of the eateries at the basement of the mall that we were at. It is called Emperor Q hence we had the impression that the food were mainly chinese.

However when we looked at the menu, it seem more of a fusion food between Chinese and Japanese food. We saw on the menu roast pork sushi. A first for me.

Anyway we ordered a few dishes to try out. There was nothing outstanding and for the price paid, we could have been better eating the the food mall. Only the mapo tofu was something worth praising. The rest of the dishes were disappointing.

Mapo tofu set.

3 kinds of fried prawns. Nothing outstanding, rather disappointing

Stirred fried sotong. Still ok.

My fren had the below desert which is green tea ice cream in red bean soup. Something unusual but my fren did not really fancy it.

For dinner, we went to a sushi bar for dinner. It was Sushi King. The price was reasonable, however it could have been an off day for them but the food was disappointing. Only the fried items were passable.

The below dish was quite ok.

Softshell crab was nice.

Grilled sotong did not really standout.

Fried shrimp

Grilled salmon set. My fren remarked that the salmon was disappointing.

Fried sotong

Salmon sashimi

Salmon sushi

Unagi Sushi

After a day of shopping, when we went back to the hotel, I decided to try their room service.

Hence ordered a nasi goreng and a desert. Both dishes were quite good. Below are the fotos.

It was a short trip to KL which happen to me my first trip there. It was an interesting trip and the only downside is due to the limited time in the country hence did not really have time to try the local food which I heard is quite good. Hope to visit the place again in the near future :)

House warming party at Air Itam for new place

2009-01-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

This article is covering the house warming dinner held at my uncle and aunties new place at Air Itam. As there were quite a lot of guests invited hence the dinner was held at the function room.

Due to the large number of people, they had ordered a caterer to provide the food for the dinner.
However as we were worried that the food maybe insufficient as there were some additional guests hence we also prepared some small dishes as well.

Something new for me is for this caterer, other than providing people to serve the dishes at the buffet table, there is also 3 stalls setup outside to cater for the char koay teow, laksa, ice kaching and satay. The price they had charged was also quite reasonable.
I will comment on the catered food later in the article.

Table setting for the buffet area.

Fried rice
Stirred Fried Vegetable

Braised Tofu with vegetable

Curry Chicken

Deep fried fish fillet with sweet and sour sauce.

Loh Bak ( Chicken ) and deep fried prawns with oats

Spring roll and seafood stirred fried with dry chilli

From left Fruits, egg tart and mango pudding

Stall serving Char Koay Teow, Laksa and Ice kaching
Additional items prepared

( Fried Mee Hoon, Pork Loh Bak, curry chicken and stirred fried prawns)

The turnout for the dinner was quite good and almost all the food were cleared by the end of the evening.

For the taste for the catered food, I liked the deep fried fish fillet a lot super nice and was the first item to be cleared out. The other buffet items were ok nothing outstanding. Did not try their curry though so not able to comment.

Enjoyed the char koay teow althought a bit too salty. The laksa was very good and the satay was quite nice as well. ( me love satay a lot so satay ok)

Everyone had a good dinner and this conclude my stay in Penang as I came back to Singapore the next day morning.

Additional pictures on 3rd day in Penang

2009-01-03T06:00:00.001-08:00

For the third day of the visit, we were getting ready for the housewarming party for my aunt new place at Air Itam hence we had to go to the market at Pulau Tikus and that is where we will have breakfast as well.

The first foto shows the street in front of the market.

Snapshoot of scene at the market

After the marketing was completed, we went to the coffee shop near the pulau tikus market for breakfast. The below photos are taken there.

Firstly, it is the Char Hor Fun. This stall is very popular and there was a long queue. Had to wait 20 mins for this plate to come. It is better than the one I had at Kuching Lane. There was an abundant of yummy ingredient and the best part is the koay teow was stired fried till it has the "wo hei" taste. Yummy !

Next is a dish my aunt had which is the Ipoh Koay Teow.

Spare rib noodles. It is totally filled with the ribs. Did not try so cannot comment on taste.
Hokkien Mee ( Must have for me for every breakfast, really loved the soup)

Chee Choong Fun. This is the Penang style in which there is no filling and it is prepared by having the Choong Fun mixed with a bit of oil, "har kor" ( prawn paste), chilli sauce.

Char Koay Teow. Another must have dish. Totally different from the Singapore version.

This is tasty and not soggy. Best part all prawns and cockles.

Penang Curry Mee. There is a lot of different ingredients in this dish and the soup is a thick based lemak soup. Me like the dish except for the pig blood.

Char Siew Mee. This is a much better one than the one at Kuching Lane coffee shop. The noodles have a nice texture and went well with the gravy. Abundant of ingredients is another plus point.

After the breakfast, we proceed to went on a car tour of Penang and when on the way back we stopped by at Bangkok Lane to eat the Mee Goreng.

This mee Goreng is very yummy. It is fried quite spicy and there is a very nice aroma. Taste wise it is very good and one of my favourite item in this dish is the dried cuttlefish that is added as well as another fried item.

The second photo is a close up view of the first photo.

For dinner, we had actually went to New Lane for dinner. However I forgot to take the camera hence no picture. There is actually many stalls there. One of my personal favourite there is the chee chiong congee. It is a congee where there is quite a few ingredients mixed in it and cooked.
Hopefully will retun to take the fotos if visit there again.

Pictures of yummy food during visit to Penang (2nd day)

2009-01-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

The next day we went to the coffee shop outside my granddad house at Kuching Lane for breakfast. ( literal translation means cat lane, wonder why is it called this name)

The first item is the Char Seow Mee. As can be seen below, there is the fried and steamed won ton and a few pieces of char seow. This particular stall was super nice in the past and was one of my favourite however I was very disappointed at the standard that day.

Next is the Hokkien Mee. It was delicious. Really loved the soup very much. In Singapore, when I eat noodles, I usually ordered dry as the soup base usually not that great. However, in Penang, I will order the noodles in soup as usually the soup does not disappoint :)

Char Koay Teow, super delicious though not a healthy dish

Koay Teow Ting, it was good but prefer the one at Rangoon Road.

Char Hor Fun. It is usually a mixture of mee hoon and koay teow together and stirred fried with prawns and meat in a thick gravy.

We went to Gurney Plaza to do some shopping hence we had our lunch in the food court over there. The meal that we had over there could be considered a lowlight. It was quite expensive and worst part it is not nice except for the Mee Goreng.

Chicken Chop. The chicken was quite nice however the side dishes were disappointing.

This was some fried rice with seafood. Disappointing!

Toasted bread with kaya.

Mee Goreng. It was very fragrance and it was spicy. Shiok. Downside quantity not as much as expected.

After which my uncle drove us to a restaurant near the beach. Forgot the location of the place.
The star dish is the spring roll which is handmade and there is limited quantity made per day. My uncle had to call in advance and order the number of rolls that we wanted and some more they do not allow people to order take away for this item only. ( Had to try it out)

Anyway the below is the signboard of the place.

The next picture is the view from the restaurant. Very nice sea breeze as about to rain.

The first dish to arrive is the butter prawns. It is big and juicy and nicely flavoured by the butter which complemented the prawns.
Next is the stired fried mee. I really liked this dish a lot. Anyway I loved noodles in general.

Next is the prawn paste chicken. It was good but not outstanding.

The last dish is the star dish which is the handmade spring roll. It really was super nice and the taste was fantastic. The wrapping is fried to a crisp and the filling of crab meat, assorted vege and chicken meat was really full of flavour. Top class dish :)

In summary, the second day food journey started well but was let down by lunch. Dinner was very good and help to offset the disappointment during lunch.

Pictures of yummy food on first night in Penang

2008-12-31T20:50:00.000-08:00

This is my first entry in a while as have been quite busy recently. Actually this is reviewing my trip to Penang in middle November.

This entry is about the dinner we had on the first night we reached Penang. We had originally wanted to go to New Lane for dinner but unfortunately it was closed for the day hence we ended up going to Rangoon Road where it is another collection of hawker stalls. There were about 30 stalls selling a variety of local dishes.

The below are the pictures of the dishes that we had.

The first picture is the Penang Char Koay Teow which is one of the most famous local dish. It is a different version from the one commonly found in Singapore. The Penang style is fried without a sweet sauce and it is fried till it is dry.

The one that I had over there did not disappoint. The prawn was very succulent and the koay teow was very tasty.

The next dish is the satay. We ordered two different meat. The satay on the left side is the pork satay and on the right is the chicken satay.

Both types of satay were very tender.

The below is the Penang style Ngoh Hiang. There is actually quite a lot of different items that you can select. My personal favourite is the loh bak, prawn fritters and the steamed octopus.

You can have the items with either the chilli sauce or the other sauce shown below.

The below is the cuttle fish with kang kong. It was ok but did not really standout as compared to the other dishes we had over there.

Next is the Hokkien Mee. It is actually prawn noodles as can be seen below. The soup base is a mixture of prawns and pork ribs. It is accompanied with prawns, meat and the pig skin which is shown on the bottom left hand side of the bowl.

It is one of my must have dish when I am in Penang.

The following is the Koay Teow Ting. It is a clear soup base which could either be based on a chicken stock or duck stock based. For the one, I had over there, the soup was very refreshing and it went well with the koay teow. The fishball that is generally offered is usually smaller than the ones you can get in Singapore.

The last dish is the Penang curry mee. It comprises of pig blood, prawns, tao pow and cockles in a thick soup based. It is quite different from the one in Singapore.

It was also very yummy.

It was a lovely dinner on my first day on arrival in Penang and was looking forward to enjoying the local delights for the rest of the trip.

Opinion on Arsenal performance in the BPL in the 08/09 season

2008-11-17T19:44:00.000-08:00

This year is one of the most competitive season in the BPL. So far what has happen is Chelsea unbeatable home record of unbeaten run has been put to an end by Liverpool. Manchester United is shaky but still on the tailcoat of Chelsea and Liverpool. ( Liverpool is doing very having beaten both Manchester United and Chelsea)

Not only at the top, the gap between the bottom club and the middle table team, is a gap of only 8 points. Therefore if any of the bottom team is able to string a few good results, they will immediately be out of the relegation zone.

However there is one team from the big 4 which has been the most inconsistent is Arsenal.

The below is a screenshot of the league as of the 18th of November.

Arsenal this season has been blowing hot and cold. They are able to beat Manchester United but are losing to teams like Stoke and Hull city. Stoke and Hull City are teams which in previous seasons, Arsenal will outplayed these teams and beat them convincingly. In this season, the Arsenal team seems to be lacking a cutting edge in the final third. They are still maintaining their high standard of intrigue passing and fast movement in the midfield and defence but once it goes to the opposition half, there seem to be something lacking.

In my opinion, Arsenal is crossing more often in the box especially if Walcott is in the team which is something some commentator has criticized them previouslyas lacking width. However, there is usually one player in the box when the cross come in. As a result, the cross is wasted. Their main striker Adebayor is usually not in the penalty box. It can get frustrating at times when you see the sole target man is not in the box but is on the flank. Whether this is intentionally setup in this way so that like Henry previously the main striker will cut from the flank and cause problem for the opposition, however in my opinion Adebayor is not the same type of player.

Therefore in recent matches his effectiveness is less apparent. In addition, the defense of Arsenal seems to be shaky in the last few games. They have been conceding quite a lot of goals. It seem strange that now Toure is on the bench when he was outstanding in center defence in the last few seasons. Gallas has been caught out for a few of the goals.

Arsenal really have a great youth system and there is talent abundance. However in the current condition, they are too inconsistent to last a title race and they do not have a plan B once their silky football is unable to make a breakthrough unlike Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United.

Arsenal will always entertain the fans with their play but are unlikely to win a leagu title unless they add some steel into their team to lead the team when the going gets tough. All the other teams have such a player, example Chelsea has Terry and Lampard, Liverpool has Gerrard and Manchester United has Gary Neville, Giggs, Rooney.

Taking everything into consideration, Arsenal is only a bit behind Manchester United so it is not all gloom.

The future is bright for Arsenal but whether the fans can tolerate a fourth season without any silverware remains to be seen.

This should be a very exciting race for the title.

Visit to Shin Kushiya ( Japanese food)

2008-11-17T18:28:00.000-08:00

The below is a review of the Shin Kushiya outlet at Vivocity.
It is supposed to specialised in the grilled style of cooking but they also offered a whole range of other selection such as tempura/ramen/sushi.

Screenshot of the menu

We decided to order a mixture of their offering and of course we also ordered some of their grilled items to try out.

The below is the salmon sushi and a wasabi octopus salad.
For the salmon sushi, the salmon was fresh and the sushi was just prepared as the rice was a bit warm so the combination of the salmon and the rice went very well.
For the wasabi salad, it was quite spicy till it cause a numbing effect but it combined surprising well with the chewy octopus bits and the cool vege which was mixed together.

The next item is the soft shell crab temaki. It is very well prepared and freshly served once it is done as the rice is still warm and the soft shell crab was very crisp. The combination of the crisp from the soft shell crab and the dried seaweed with the warm and soft rice in the center is a delight.

The below is the salmon sashimi. It is raw salmon with an accompaniment of wasaba.
The below is a sample of the grilled items.
We had the grilled squid, prawn, mushroom and the chicken.
I liked the grilled squid the most and the most disappointing is the grilled mushroom as I had tried better ones at another Japanese stall.

The below is the tempura prawn. It was good but nothing outstanding to stand out from its competitors.
The chicken teriyaki below was one of the best we had. It was very tender and the seasoning was very yummy. Thinking about it is making me hungry.
The below is the BBQ squid in Japanese style. It takes about 20 mins to prepare it. It was chewy and very full of flavour. I liked this dish a lot.
The last item was some noodle dish with tempura prawn.
In conclusion, the dishes in general are very nice with some outstanding items. The only downside is the pricing as it is more on the expensive side comparable to sushi tei. Therefore cannot go often as it is a bit pricy :)

Visit to Crystal Jade Xiao Long Bao Outlet

2008-11-17T17:31:00.000-08:00

These photos are taken a very long time back. Some of the dishes shown below seems to have been modified by the restaurant recently.

Anyway the below dishes are some of my favourites when I last visited the restaurant.

The first dish shown below is the fried eel.
It is fried to a crisp and it is coated with a sweet sauce. The combination of the sweet sauce and the crisp texture is a wonderful combination. Usually I will order this dish if I visit the outlet.

The next dish is the jelly fish appetizer. Unlike majority of places where usually the jelly fish is prepared in a sweet sauce, the preparation for this dish is to tossed in the jelly fish in a slightly salty sauce. It is quite nice.

The next dish is the sliced fish cooked with black fungus and spring onion. The fish meat is very tender and has a melt in your mouth sensation. The sauce is also very good to go with rice.

However in my recent visit, I do not seem to be able to find this dish in the menu. Maybe they change the name of the dish.

The next dish is a Sichuan dish. It is called 回鍋肉 in mandarin. In English, it can be termed as a twice cooked pork dish. This is because the pork will be cooked firsly by boiling and after which it will then be cut and stirred fried with some vege as shown below.

They also served some pancake to go with the dish. However personally prefer the dish to go with steaming hot white rice.

The last dish is also another Sichuan dish. It is Ma Po Tofu. It is tofu which is cooked in a spicy gravy with mince pork in it. The version offered here is not so authentic as it is supposed to have a numbing effect when you consumed it but i do not felt it :(.

However it is a great dish to go with rice. The silky texture of the tofu with the rich flavor of the gravy with the mince pork in it is really wonderful.

As can be seen, I am a rice lover hence the dishes I recommended are best to go with rice.

Visit to a unique stall in Lucky Plaza

2008-10-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

This is another old entry which I am trying to update now.

It was a visit to Orchard Road few months back and we were passing Lucky Plaza and my fren suggested to go and try a small eatery in Lucky Plaza. He mention you can try things like shark fin soup and abalone dish at under 10 bucks.

Out of curiosity, we went to the eatery. It was called Rabbit brand Seafood Delicacies. It is located if i recall correctly on level 2. The below is the screenshot of the menu.

The three of us each ordered different set menus each for variety.

The picture below is the Buddha Jump Over The Wall set menu.
I tried the soup and it was not bad.

My other fren had the shark fin soup set.
Myself I had the abalone noodle. I liked the noodle with the gravy and the special chili paste.

For the abalone, I not able to comment too much as not an expert on it. I liked the noodle so much I ordered another plate. ( Me noodle crazy :) )

Anyway it was an interesting experience and was quite value for money especially for the food you get in the city.

Only problem is there is limited seating and is quite full during my visit.

(Guess news spread fast)

Visit to Peach Blossom at Marina Mandarin Hotel

2008-10-01T03:44:00.000-07:00

This is a review of a visit to the Peach Blossom restaurant to try out their dim sum Al carte buffet.

It is only available on the weekend afternoon from 12 noon to 3pm. If you are planning to go, it would be better to give a call a day before the visit to book a table as it is quite occupied.
The menu if i recall had about 30 plus items and there is a selection of deserts although it is limited to one order per person.

The below picture is the table layout.
The below is the stand for the teapot, quite interesting to me as first time see the teapot with a warmer below.
The following pictures are some of the fotos for the dim sum items we ordered. There were more items but was too busy eating and forgot to take foto.

The first item is the har gao or steamed prawn dumpling. It was quite ok. The filling was sufficient and the prawns is fresh and juicy.

The next item is the char siew chee chong fun. The texture was very smooth and went well with the filling.
The below is one of the unique fried items but have forgotten what it is.
The following two pictures are a snap shot of the various items that we had that day.

After which we decided to order the sweets to try out and the below are the fotos.

In general, the food was excellent although the service was a bit slow partly due to the large crowd of people in the restaurant at the time.

It is a place worth visiting again :)

Wedding Lunch at Si Chuan Dou Hua

2008-09-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

This is my first entry in a long while as have been caught very occupied with work as well as playing some online games :)

Anyway this review is about the wedding lunch I attended recently. It was held at the Park Royal hotel ball room and the food was supplied by Si Chuan Dou Hua Restaurant.

The wedding was a very elaborate affair and especially like the entrance portion.

Firstly have to thank the people sitting at the same day as me for the inconvenience of giving me time to take fotos of almost all the dishes.

The first dish to arrive is of course the cold dish. They termed it as Dou Hua Combination Platter. It comprises of Thai Style Silver Fish, Shark Fin fried with Egg, Salad Prawn, Jelly Fish and Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab.

I liked the soft shell crab personally.

The next dish is the 8 treasure seafood soup. It consists of dried scallop/abalone, sea cucumber, crab roe, fresh prawns, crab meat, spinach juice and a superior soup base as per stated in the menu.

The soup was actually quite nice with the predominant flavour of the Spinach and the prawn and crad flavour. I must be unlucky as not able to find the abalone :(

Steamed Red Garoupa.

The people were quite skillful to remove the bones of the fish. Nothing outstanding for the taste as to me it is just a steamed fish.

The next dish is the Braised Sea cucumber and duck stuffed with chestnut. This dish was quite good. The meat of the duck was tender and it went well with the sea cucumber. Only think is I seem not able to find the chestnut.

The below is the spicy seafood combination. The quality of the picture for the below is a bit blur.

Anway it is a dish where there is fish slices, cuttlefish and prawns cooked in a spicy sause. Do not let the color of the dish think that it is a very spicy dish. Actually it is not very spicy and it is a bit on the sweet side with a tinge of spicyness. It went well with the Fried Man Tou though. ( Something like the Chilli crab gravy)
The below is the steam prawns in chinese wine. It was ok.
As I was away from the table when they serve the baked pine seed rice in lotus leave, hence only able to capture what was left after they serve each person one bowl. For the tastewise, it was nothing really outstanding.

The last dish is the double boiled Hasma with red dates and lotus seeds.

Interesting website from Taiwan

2008-07-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

The below link is a fren who send it to me and I found it quite interesting.

http://tw.superfate.com/channel_fortune/

This link to a website which from considering your time of birth predict your fortune as well as other aspects in life.

Interesting for trying out though not sure how much is true.

Do give it a try. Some more you are able to translact to the English version as well.

Opinion on Euro 2008

2008-06-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the final between Germany vs Spain. It should be an entertaining final as both teams have been playing attacking football throughout the tournament.

One of the more refreshing thing in this tournament is the determination by the majority of teams to play attacking football. They will not sit back after taking a goal lead. They will go for the kill and try to claim a decisive win.

In this tournament, one of the surprise so far is the performance of the Russian team. Excluding the first match and the semi final defect both times to Spain, they were really outstanding against the rest of the teams. One of the best matches was the Holland vs Russia game. It was end to end stuff and the passing movement was so fluid.

The other surprise team is tonight finalist Spain. The usual under achiever is playing some of the most fluid football and in my opinion when Cesc Fabregas is playing Spain play a level of football that no team could cope with.

The disappointing teams in this tournament are some of the big guns such as the aging Italy and France sides as well as the Czeh republic.

For the first two teams, I felt that they were counting on too many of their aging stars to pull them through. This is especially true for France which had many of the first team players were from previous world cup and euro teams.

For the Czeh side, they were unlucky in their final game vs Germany as I felt that they had a very strong midfield especially with Modric in the team. He is really outstanding and will be a great addition for Spurs in the coming season in the EPL.

There is no real standout player in this tournament so far and it seems like the team is been given precedence ahead of individualism.

May the best team win the final

Lunch at Sabai ( Thai Cuisine)

2008-05-04T05:28:00.000-07:00

This is really a very belated article as have not work on it since April.

I had brought my mum and relatives to the Thai restaurant located at Takashimaya level 4. The name of the restaurant is Sabai and it was featured in a newspaper review. Hence the decision to bring them there as firstly my mum like Thai food and secondly going to try a new place.

The below is a picture of the entrance.

A picture of one of the displays in the interior of the place.

After reviewing the menu, we decided to order a few items to share which are shown in the following photos.

The first dish to arrive is the seafood tom yum soup. The soup is delivered on top of a flame to ensure the soup is still hot when is served to us.

As can be seen, the soup is very clear which does not look very hot. However believe me when we had the soup it was really spicy. The soup was spicy enough and it had a sufficient sourness which give a very strong flavour and unforgettable flavour.

This was really a very excellent soup.

The next dish is the chicken fried with dried chili. This chicken was deep fried to a crisp and it went well with the dried chili.
The next dish is the boneless whole grouper cooked in Thai sauce. This dish was one of the best I had. They had debone the fish from the tail to nearly the head and they had curved up the meat and deep fried it. Hence from the fist glance of the picture, it looks like there is only the fish head.

The meat was very tender on the interior in spite of the exterior was very crispy and the sauce complimented the fish taste very well.

The below is the scallop cooked in a dry curry style. This was the dish which was not up to the expectation. There was nothing outstanding in this dish.

The below is the sambal Kang Kong. It was quite good.

The below is the deset buffet spread which is charged at 8 bucks. There is about 15 different desert items to choose from. My family really love the desert as it was very well prepared especially for the deserts which contained coconut milk.

In my opinion, if you are a desert loving person, you should have it. The sequent photos are some of the items that were taken from the selection.

In summary, my family really enjoyed the food and mention it was one of the best Thai food they have had. The majority of the dishes were excellent. The only downside is the pricing is on the expensive range.

Sample of local food (Bukit Timah Hawker Centre)

2008-05-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

This article is about my recent visit to the Bukit Timah Hawker Centre. Actually it was my first visit there. It is a two storey building with the ground floor been a traditional wet market ( less common nowadays) and the second floor is the hawker centre.

The hawker centre had about 40 stalls selling a variety of local delights. The below is what my frens and I had for lunch.

The below is the wonton and char siew noodle. The noodles' texture was quite good and the sauce base of black sauce and chilli compliment the noodles quite nicely. The char siew is also quite good.
The next picture is the fried carrot cake. This version is the one fried without the sweet sauce. As can be seen below, the exterior is fried to a crisp and the inside is soft and moist. ( unlike the sweet version)

The one that we bought was actually quite good although it would have been better if the exterior is a bit more crispy.

The following picture is the satay been hoon. It seem to be very popular as there was a long queue of people. My fren commented that the flavour was very good and was worth eating. ( should try it out next time, hopefully the queue is not so long)
The below is the char kuey teow. ( Singapore version) It was fried with cockles and fish cake and most importnatly it was fried with lard which give the dish the extra kick. It was alright although I still prefer the penang style of char kuey teow.
The below is the rojak. This is something quite commonly found in hawker centre. This is a chinese version. There is also the Indian rojak which is something like the chinese Ngo Hiang where there are a lot of fried items.
The last picture is a local desert.

Anyway I feel that if you happen to be in the area, you could drop by and try the large variety of local delights.

Unique buffet at Inter-continental Hotel

2008-04-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

This is an article which has been on hold for too long. Actually I had went there a few months ago. It was in the intercontinental hotel and my fren mention that it was not a bad place to go for buffet.

Anyway the theme of the buffet is mainly seafood buffet and the style of cooking is more towards the European style of cooking which is a bit unusual. The name of the cafe is as shown below: Olive Tree.

The below is a picture of the cold cut selection. The carving of the Christmas Tree using ice was an interesting concept and on the ice bed below, there were cold crabs, rock oysters, poached prawns, scallop in shell with olive oil and some other shell fish as well.

The photo below, is the bread selection which will go well with the lobster soup available. See the many variety of breads.

The following 3 pictures are some of the appetizers that was available. Personally, some of which I dare not try as it looks very unusual from what I am usually accustomed. Guess must be European style cooking.

The next section will be covering the main course items. The below pictures are some photos of the various main courses.

If you are wondering what is the above picture, it is actually stewed venison meat. It was very rich in flavour and the meat was very tender.

The above picture is a whole salmon that have been sliced open and you could pick which part of the salmon you would like to try. A very interesting presentation hence using it as my blog opening picture.

The above is the Spanish speciality rice which is rice cooked in a seafood broth. In this dish, they cooked it with prawns, crab, mussels and other seafood. I have watched a documentary about it before, they put the seafood in first to simmer to create a very rich stock before the rice is entered and it is left to boil till it becomes relatively dry. It was very flavourful and quite a good first impression of the dish.

They also have one section where there a few fresh seafood items which you could choose from and the chef will prepare it on the spot. They use white wine in the preparation. Excellent dish.

The below is the lobster soup which I mention earlier.

The below is a sample of the items which I picked from the cold cut section.
The below are some of the sweets available. Actually there was a round table in which all the various sweets are placed. They had someone available to prepare crepe on the spot for you as well as hot chocolate. There were also many cakes and fruits available. The cakes in general were ok but not really outstanding though. However I love the crepe !

The last item below is the complimentary coffee.
It was a really interesting experience and maybe in future would like to have something unusual and willing to splurge a bit, this could be a possible location.

Dinner at Bottle Tree Village

2008-03-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

The below is a review of the Bottle Tree Village in the Sembawang Park. You can take a bus and alight of at the entrance of Sembawang park and walk in, although it is not recommended.

It is about a 15 mins walk from the main road to the place. The below picture is the picture of the food place and the next picture is the view facing out to the sea. Such a smoothing view.

My friend and I decided to order a few dishes to try out since it is our first visit to the place. The below pictures are the dishes that we ordered.

The first dish is the satay. It was ok but nothing really outstanding. The meat was grilled to quite tender. The only downside was the meat on the satay was not really a lot. Personally I think I have tried in my opinion better satay at other places. Eg: Fisherman Village at Pasir Ris or the satay at the Beach Road Market.

The above is the sambal Kang Kong. My fren found it not spicy enough. Personally I concur with his opinion. It did not have the spiciness.

The above is the fried cuttlefish. This is a dish not likely found during new year as the direct cantonese translation of the name of the dish is to be fired from work. My fren found it a bit tasteless which I agree. However I found the texture of the dish to be ok. It would have been better if the batter used had a stronger flavour.

The above is the fish maw soup which was the best dish of the night. the soup was tasty and the fish maw was also very nice. The soup was a bit too peppery.

The last dish is the prawn fried with salted egg yolk. It was an unsure interpretation of the dish as the normal one that I had usually have the salted egg fried with the prawns. As per the picture, the egg yolk is placed right in the centre and surrounding it is the prawn which is coated with a batter. The batter also could do with more favouring.

In general, the experience was not bad although the price would be steeper than the typical zi char stall mainly due to the fact that you can have your meal near the sea.

Opinion on Grand Slam Sunday in the EPL: Manu vs Liverpool and Chelsea vs Arsenal

2008-03-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

In two days time, it will be what is term as Grand Slam Sunday as the top four teams in the EPL will battle it out against each other which will have a huge bearing to where the championship will be heading to.

The below is the screenshot of the current table as of the 22/3/08. Currently in first is Manu with a 3 point lead. They are followed closely by Arsenal and Chelsea and slightly further back is Liverpool who has regained their form over the last few weeks.

The first match to preview is the Manu vs Liverpool game. This is in normal times a very intensive game but to add on to the intensity of this game is the timing of the game as well as the gap at the top.

In recent weeks, after a mid-season slump, Liverpool has hit the road and is back in a big way. They have recently went on a run of 7 successive wins and are in buoyant mode as they are scoring for fun with the new front pairing of Torres and Gerrard as the free role attacking midfielder. A win at their bitter rivals Manu would provide an additional boost to the Liverpool players that they may come out of nowhere and win the League title.

On the other hand, Manu in the last few games have developed a worrying wastefulness in front of goal which led to the elimination from the FA cup and the narrow wins against Bolton and Derby which in all honesty are quite fragile in terms of their defence. Only the individual brillance of Ronaldo is driving the team towards the Championship.

Therefore in a way we could say this could be one of the worst time for Manu to meet Liverpool. The situation would have been much difference if the fixture was a month ago.

The below is my opinion on what are the potential problem that Manu could face .

If Manu regular center half pairing is not able to recover in time for the game, Torres could have a field day in attacking Manu if he is on the ball as the replacement will have a harder time coping with the brilliant running of Torres and Gerard.
In recent games, Fergi has been trying out a number of combination for centre midfield. If the combination is not selected with utmost care, Liverpool which has an abundance of talent in centre midfield ( Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso) will dominate the center midfield. If that happens, Manu will be in big trouble.
Another area of concern would be the choice of the wingers. If they choose both Nani and Ronaldo, there is a high chance that these players will take the ball and charge to opposition territory. This is more of a direct route and will lead to less intricate passing in the midfield which is something useful to help remove the attention of the opposition players. Another potential weakness about the direct route is that a lot of the manu midfielders will go up and support and if Liverpool are able to take the ball of the dribblers, it will lead to a rapid counter-attack which Liverpool are very good at.
In attack, Manu stiker has hit a lean spell with the exception of Ronaldo, Liverpool could mark Ronaldo out and Manu would effectively be toothless in attack as they lack a finisher upfront. ( Someone in the mold of Ruud)

The below are the potential problem that Liverpool could face:

Ronaldo. He is the main threat that they have to watch out and they cannot afford to give too many direct free-kicks from 25 to 30 yards out.
If for some reason, Gerard and Torres are not on top form, it will be hard for liverpool to sustain attacking pressure on Manu defence. These two players performance will likely determined the performance of Liverpool.
Rafa himself. He has to decide on his team setup and the mentality they approach the game. A wrong choice in midfielder could be critical to Liverpool.

Based on the past history, Liverpool has not beaten manu in the league for a few years already and their last win was 2 years ago in an FA cup tie. However this game will be very close and to be honest during the last few meetings with Liverpool, Manu rode their luck and won games with a very late goal from John O'Shea last year.

As a Manu fan, I am hoping that we can continue the winning streak against Liverpool but it will be a very tough matchup. ( Doubt that there will be many goals)

For the second game between Chelsea vs Arsenal, it will be another tight affair. Chelsea has not lost at home for a very long time. It is a fortress for them.

In the recent matches, Chelsea defence has not looked so solid as evident from the last outing against Tottenham which they considered 3 goals from set play which previously Chelsea was fantastic at defending it. However their attack is still very strong and with Joe Cole and Frank Lampard in hot form, they will cause any defence problems.

Arsenal in the last few weeks with the exception of the Milan game has not been outstanding. They have drawn 3 times in a row against opposition that they were expected to beat. The surprising thing is that in these 3 games, Arsenal did not manage to dominate the games for long period and also need not create their usual array of chances for their forwards to finish.

Based strictly on form, Chelsea should have the upper hand since they are also at home. However Arsenal is one team you do not write off as can be seen from their performance against Milan on their day, they are nearly unplayable.

Therefore I have a sneaky feeling that this match will be a draw. ( Maybe because I am a Manu fan and the best result is a draw :)

Anyway it will be a great Sunday evening of top class football although goals could be a premium.

Pictures taken on last day in Hong Kong

2008-01-18T16:33:00.000-08:00

This will be my last post with regard to my trip to Hong Kong. ( Long time writing this last article due to lack of time )
It is mainly the dim sum that we had for our breakfast before going off to the airport. In my opinion if you are in Hong Kong, there are a few things you must try. They are their roast items like their roast pork, roast goose or Char Siew. They are all excellent. The next item is their dim sum. You can see a lot of people in the dim sum restaurant or tea house having their dim sum while reading their papers or having a meeting of friends or relatives.

The below is a snapshot of the menu of the dim sum items which were on offered at a restaurant near the hotel that we stayed. They had about 100 plus items to choose from!! In addition, the pricing of the items differ based on what time you settled your bill.

Somthing that is unique and at least I have not seen such a pricing arrangement in Singapore or Malaysia.

The below pictures are the items we had at a restaurant located near our hotel.

The picture above is the mushroom with steamed chicken. I think

The above is a close up of the char siew bun with a golden coating. See the shiny surface. The bun is super soft and the char siew is wonderful.

The above is the century egg porridge. This was the only dish which was disappointing as I think the one I had during the night was better.

The above is the meat filled fried dumpling. The filling is a bit sweet and goes well with the outer coating which is a bit sticky.

The above two pics are the chee cheong fun. The first one is the prawn chee cheong fun and the next one is the dough fritter chee cheong fun. The cheong fun is very smooth and soft and it goes very well regardless of the filling and the light sya sauce keeps the dish the extra flavour. Personally, I prefer the dough fritter as the dough fritter was very crispy and it keeps a contrasting texture to the dish.

Guot Tie shown above. ( Another style of meat dumpling)
Chinese style pancake. It is filled with dao sao. I think it is spell like that.
Glutinous rice with filling in lotus leave. This dish was outstanding. The rice was light on the touch and the taste was fantastic. First class, had never tried one so good.
Some fried sweet dim sum. Forgot the name.

Braised spare ribs. Typical dim sum item but it was very good as well.

Siew Mai

Shark Fin dumpling in clear soup

Beancurd wrapped with prawn filling. It is crispy on the outside and chewy on the insert due to the compact nature of the filling which is full of the prawn flavour.

This is the last of my review of the food that I tried during my visit to HK last year. I encourage anyone who wish to try cantonese style cooking to make a trip to Hong Kong.

Picture taken of delicious food on third day of HK trip

2008-01-09T06:22:00.000-08:00

The below photos were taken on my third day in Hong Kong. The below are what we had in Disney Land. Actually the food in there quite expensive in my opinion. However guess that it is expected in a tourist location.

The first two pictures was actually advertised as ramen but after it arrived and we tested it, it seems to be more chinese than japanese in terms of the style of cooking.

The below two noodles was quite good as the soup base was very tasty and the noodles had the right texture.

The next item is the chicken chop. Nothing outstanding.

The following two pictures are the dim sum set. It consists of a contianer of four steam items and four fried items. Eah consisting of 2 items. It was not that fantastic though.
The last item was the spare rib rice. This was very good, the spare ribs was tender and juicy.

The next series of photos are what we had for dinner. The name of the restaurant is the Taiwan Beef Noodle restaurant. Although it suppose to be specialising in beef noodle i guess from the name but actually they sell a variety of items other than beef noodle. It seems that they are a chain of restaurant guess something like Crystal Jade in Singapore.

The food in general was quite good. Anyway as they said a picture speaks a thousand words so I will leave with the screenshot of the dishes we had.

Lunch at Chatterbox

2007-12-21T05:51:00.000-08:00

Last week during the long holiday, my family decided to go to try the famous chicken rice that a lot of tourists rave about. It is the coffee house "the Chatterbox" in Mandarin Hotel.( Next to Taka)

Each of first ordered a main course and we also ordered an appetizer.

The below picture is the appetizer which is prawn dumpling with wasabi sauce. The prawn dumpling is very juicy and the wasabi sauce goes well with it. However it is quite expensive though. Will most probably not try it again due to cost :)

The below picture is the famous chicken rice. The rice was fluffy and fragrance. The chicken was also very tasty and juicy. The soup was full of flavour. I could see why it is so famous for their chicken rice. It has been an experience but I feel that for the price I paid I could buy a whole chicken elsewhere. Maybe come here as a very rare treat.

The below is the fish and chips. The deco looks very neat and attractive. My aunt commented that the fish is very nice.

My mum had the grilled chicken. She commented that the chicken was surprising very tender and full of flavour. She really enjoyed the meal.

In summary, the dishes in terms of taste and presentation were all of very high standard. The only downside would be in terms of the cost.

Pictures of delicious food taken in HK ( second day)

2007-12-07T19:11:00.000-08:00

The below is the second part of a picture blog of my trip to Hong Kong.

The below picture is taken in front of the restaurant where we had our breadkfast before the half day city tour.

The following photos are the dim sum items that we had during the morning.

The following pictures were taken during dinner after a tour of the Victoria Peak to take in the evening scene. Really the evening scene on the peak is really beautiful and best part the weather is cold and windy. My favourite.

Anyway we had our dinner at a local eatery in the shopping area. The first photo shows the name of the eatery.

The dish below is the fried noodle with prawns.

The next dish is the Sichuan style stirred fried prawns with crispy noodle. The taste was excellent. It had a hint of sweetness and the hotness of the dried chilli used. Personally, I always like the San Mee so this dish go down well with me.

My mum had the chicken rice and surprisingly it was very good. The flavour of the rice was very good and the chicken was tender and tasty.

The Ee Fu mee was ok. Nothing outstanding.

The last dish is the abalone fried kuay tiao. As can be seen fromn the picture, there is quite a lot of abalone. However what made the dish outstanding is the taste of the kuay teow. It may look very white but it was very well stirred fried. ( a really excellent dish)

The following photos are the porridge that we had bought for supper from the nearby stall near the hotel. We had the centuary egg porridge with lean meat, the pig organ porridge and the fish slice porridge. All were excellent.

Pictures taken on second HK visit in Nov 07 ( First day)

2007-12-05T06:43:00.001-08:00

The below is the first of a series of post from my recent trip to Hong kong. ( Really a food paradise only problem need to have good cantonese/ Chinese) ( Neither I am good in though :(

This is the place that we went for dinner once we reached the hotel in the evening. It was a sidewalk coffeeshop. The below is a screenshot of the menu.

Above: Seafood Hor Fun ( Huge Quantity)

Above: Leftover of the Suckling Pig ( too hungry so took photo after a few bits have been eaten)

Above: Famous Roast Goose ( personally do not find it outstanding too fattening)

Above: Char Siew mee ( favourite as the noodle texture is out of this world yum yum)

Opinion on the sack race in the EPL

2007-12-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

Currently the EPL is into the business part of the season as what a lot of manager term it as it is in the December and January timeframe that will make or break clubs aspiration and dreams.

However we already seen so many managers leaving the club in which they were in charge at the beginning of the season. Even now there is quite a lot of speculation with regard to Sam's reign at Newcastle, whom in my opinion is a every good manager. (See how he developed Bolton from a lower league club to a club which is established in the EPL). Till recently, there was quite a bit of supposed clamouring from the upper management of liverpool hierachy to get rid of Rafa when he requested for additional transfer funds.

In addition, the below are a few examples managers have already left their original job at the start of the season.

Jose Mourinho (Chelsea he brought them one of their most successful preiod in their history winning 2 EPL titles as well as the FA cup and the league cup and also progress in the Champion League)
Martin Jol ( He brought stability as well as a brand of attacking football to spurs)
Billy Davies ( Derby manager who brought them from the mid table to a playoff promotion to the EPL)
Sammy lee (Bolton due to poor start of the season and players under performance)

In the case of Sam at Newcastle, the current situation he is facing is something which is a problem which has plagued Newcastle for quite sometime which is a leaky defence and the need to play attacking gung ho football.

I feel that for fans to be clamouring for his sacking so early in the season would be a mistake, as you will need time to get the players on your side as well as to have the new players brought in to adapt to the style of play required. He should be given a period of time to put his style of football into the team and not be lambasted when the team is not playing the gung ho attacking football that the fans enjoy.

For Jose, his untimely departure is even more of a waste for Chelsea. He was without doubt one of the best managers available but left when the upper echelon in the club wants to have more say in the matter of the style of football and the players to be brought in. In my opinion, the idea of having a sporting director which makes the signing is not one which seems to be working. This is because when a manager builds his team, the best person who can make judgement on the players required will still be the manager himself. When you have a second party vending through the options available, there is a likelihood that the manager first choice may not be the one brought in.

It seems that now in the league, managment and fans expectation for success is very high and once there is a slight drop in the requirement, the chances of the manager getting the boot is higher than it ever has been. This is not a healthy trend to develop as a club will not have a stable platform to work on not to mention the various compensation packages that need to be paid out when a whole team of support staff is removed when a new manager is brought in. In addition, there could be also unrest among the players as their future become unclear which could affect the performance of the players.

I believe before the end of the current season, we will be seeing at least among two sacking.

First visit to Ichiban Sushi outlet ( IMM building)

2007-11-09T17:58:00.000-08:00

This article is about my first visit to Ichiban Sushi. Previously for Japanese food, I have only tried the outlets of Sakae Sushi and Sushi Tei.

My fren decided to give me a treat for my birthday hence we went to the Ichiban Sushi outlet at IMM building in Jurong. The below is a snapshot of the menu. Actually when you look at their menu, the variety of dishes that are been offered is about the same as Sakae Sushi. The one area which it make be better that Sakae is that it allows you to choose any of their main courses and you could decide what type of sides dishes you would like to mix and match. This is unlike Sakae where you could only order a bento set. Ichiban also do offer bento set. The only thing that Ichiban do not offer is the ramen.

For this visit, we decided to each have a main course and order some side dishes.

The below is their promotion item which is the prawn handroll. The hand roll was very delicious as the prawn was very juicy and it was also quite big and it went well with the hand roll.

The next item is the cooked lobster salad sushi. This is a bit different from your normal sushi. The rice is of course wrapped up by dried seaweed but it is coated on the exterior and deep fried. The cooked lobster salad is placed on top. This is my favourite item at this place. The lobster salad goes well with the fried rice roll.

The below is the deep fried salmon skin. The outlet over here prepared the dish better than the one I had later at another outlet at woodland. Every piece was crispy and it was a joy to munch on it.

It is followed by the deep fried soft shell crab. The soft shell crab was very well prepared and it was crispy on the exterior and the meat still maintains its juiciness even though it has been deep fried.

The below is the main dish which my fren had ordered for himself. It was some sort of rice dish with some meat on top. I am unable to comment on it as did not try. My fren mention that it is not bad.

For myself, I had ordered one of the bento set. It was not bad although would have prefered more meat item for the tempura item. ( Me meat lover not vege lover). I enjoyed the salmon sashimi and the grilled fish.

It was in general a good experience and I really enjoyed the food. Many thanks to my fren for treating me there :)

Imperial Treasure Restaurant at Ngee Ann City

2007-10-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

This is a belated article from 3 months back as being too busy to write it. It is a review of one of the branch of the Imperial Treasure Restaurant group of restaurant. This particular outlet is located on level 5 of Ngee Ann City. It is next to Seoul Garden.

This outlet serves two different styles of Chinese food. They serve the Cantonese as well as Teochew style cooking.

The below is a picture of the cover page of the menu.

We decided to order some appetizers before ordering some of their main dishes to try out. For the appetizers we ordered the crispy pig ear as well as the deep fried eel as per shown in the following two pictures.

The crispy pig ear was excellent. It had a very crunchy texture and had a shiok feeling when you munch on it.

The next dish above is the fired eel. It was very crispy and it was fried with a slightly sweet sauce to complement the flavour. It also had quite a fragrant aroma to add.

The next dish to arrive was the Peking Duck. The below picture is the wrapped up version of the Peking Duck skin after it has been skillfully been de-skinned.

The crispy skin is been wrapped in a soft and thin translucent dough wrapping and it is accompanied with a sweet sauce. The skin was very crispy.

The following dish is the Wasabi Salad Prawn. This was one of the best version of Wasabi Prawn Salad that I had. The sauce was potent. It had sufficient hotness and when you had the prawn, it caused a burning sensation in your nasal passage just like hot mustard. However it was not too strong till it overpowered the natural flavour of the prawn. Instead the sauce was a great complement with the deep fried prawns.

The next dish is the black pepper pork chop. It was well prepared but nothing outstanding.

The next dish is the Chicken with Ham. It was actually boneless chicken slices together with the Chinese Ham in a clear broth applied over it. It is a dish that is very light on the palate and it is not oily dish. A rather healthy dish. For myself personally, I would have prefered something of a stronger and richer taste.

The below dish is the homemade beancurd with seafood. The beancurd was excellent. It was very smooth and it was also meshed together with spinach which gives it the greenish surface at the base of the golden brown beancurd. It went very well with the gravy which was prepared using prawns and dried scallop.

I would recommend this dish :)

The last dish is the deep fried fish fillet. This was a really outstanding dish. The fish was very well prepared such that the external was very crispy and the salt and pepper flavouring was a perfect macth with the fish meat which was very smooth and tasty.

In summary, all the dishes were very well prepared and truth to be told, it is as good as Crystal Jade which is one of their main competitor. There is always a long queue during the weekend and it would be better to make reservation in advance.

Football related website

2007-09-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

The below is an email link which will be useful for people who are playing the online fantasy football leagues. This link is quite an updated view of players who are currently injured with their expected return date.

http://www.physioroom.com/news/english_premier_league/epl_injury_table.php

Hope it helps people who are playing the leagues available online

ManU early season crucial match with an additional sting in the tail !

2007-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

As you know, this Sunday is the first big match for Manu against the big four. The opponent is Chelsea. At any time of the season, this would have the billing of a clash of the titan game. However with the latest development at Chelsea, the mutual departure (hmmm.. or sacking) of the special one <>, it makes this match even more high profile. To be honest, the timing of the departure, is a bit of the shock. You do not sack any manager so early in the season and especially not one with the track record of Jose. Guess there could be other reasons behind the season other than a less than satisfactory start to the season.

The latest development is that Grant together with Steve Clarke will manage Chelsea. This is actually quite a surprising development. I would have expected Roman to have got a more high profile/ established manager as the team manager since the team has quite a number of strong character. Furthermore if you are getting rid of such a well-respected manager, the replacement must be at least as capable as the previous one so that the players also have faith in the new manager decision.

This change of manager could turn out to be a double edge sword for Manu. There is one school of thought that the first match under a new regime, the team will play very well as they want to impress the new boss. This will make the Manu game even tougher than usual.

To be honest, Manu has also not been playing that well and they have been grinding out result ( somthing like Chelsea previously). Hecne this game could turn out to be crucial to Manu season, a good win against Chelsea will build up the belief and confidence in the team which will carry Manu through the season.

A bad performance and people will start to question Fergi as they will be playing an under-strength Chelsea without Lampard and Drogba.

This should be a tense game and I believe that a single goal will settle the game.

Hope it will be a win for Manu :)

Visit to Thai Village

2007-09-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

The following review is about Thai Village which is quite similar in concept as Rama Thai which was an earlier posting. It specialise in Shark Fin and Abalone.

They have a few outlet. This particular outlet is located near the Goodwood park Hotel.

The below is the picture taken outside the restaurant.

My family went there for lunch a few weeks back. We had ordered a few items to try out. The below are the pictures that was taken during the meal. We had ordered their shark fin to try out. The following pictures are for the shark fin in claypot.

Shark Fin pipping hot from the kitchen without any garnish.

Shark fin with the typical garnish already added.

Close up view of the Shark Fin

The shark fin was excellent. If you are asking my opinion, I find that the soup over at Thai Village is much more tasty. With regard to the amount of shark fin given, I find that it is about the same. Hence in terms of quality the Thai Village slightly edge ahead of Rama Thai.

The next item is the Sea Cucumber cooked with Abalone Mushroom. I wonder why it is called abalone mushroom, guess must be due to its size. Anyway this dish was ok, nothing really outstanding I feel that gives it the extra edge over other places.

The below picture is the Prawns cooked with Tang Hoon. For this dish, it was generally disappointing. I felt the dish was much better prepared over at Rama Thai. The Tang Hoon lack the necessary distinctive taste. Felt a bit disappointed.

The below is chicken dish. Forgot what it was but this dish was good as my mom like this dish. The chicken was very tender and it was tasty.

The last dish was the tofu coated with bread crumb and deep fried. Very filling dish as one block of tofu is very big and filling. I only liked the exterior, the interior was actually normal tofu. It would have been better if the size of the item was more bite size in nature.

In general, I only found the Shark Fin which they are famous for to be excellent. For the majority of the dishes, there was nothing much outstanding. Maybe come here for the soup only . Hmm...

Favourite Chicken Rice stall

2007-08-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

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:

Make it your own
Everything matters
Surprise and delight
Embrace resistance
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.

Favourite Roast Meat Outlet

2007-07-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

This article is about a roast meat outlet which my family has patronise over the years. It was originally located at Old Paya Lebar Road but has since moved due to the road improvement works carried out over that area.

Last week, we went there for lunch. The below photos were taken at the coffee shop. We had ordered a soup and then a plate of roast duck, Char Siew and Roast Pork for three person to share.

The first photo is the setting of the table. There are three sauces provided as per seen below. One is the chill sauce. The other one is a sweet ausce which goes well with the duck and the darkish sauce is a thick sauce which is applied over your rice.

The next picture is the soup with spare rib and vegetable. I forgot the vegetable name.

The following photos are showing the plate of the various roast meats. In the foreground on the left, is the Char Siew. The roast meat are on the right of the photo and in the background is the roast duck.

The below is a close up pictur e of the Char Siew. The meat was very flavourful and tasty and the meat was very tender.

The below is a close up picture of the roast duck. The skin was very crispy and the meat was also tender and it was not dry and the flavour of the duck is also excellent.

Overall, the roast meat items are very good as usual and it is a good place to visit if you want to go for some roast meat items.

Currently they are located at No. 125 Upper Paya Lebar Road S(534838). The below is a picture of their current location.

They even have a website : kayleeroastmeatjoint.com

First impression of Wan Hao

2007-07-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

This is another review on a place I had gone for lunch quite a while back. I think two to three months back.

The name of the restaurant is called Wan Hao and it is located on the third floor of the Marriott. The following two photos show the entrance as well as the setting in the dining area.

This was my first visit to the place and since it was during the lunch hour when we went we decided to try a few of the dim sum items as well as some of their main dishes. We decided to order three steamed dim sum item and three deep fried item.

The following three pictures are the three steamed dim sum items. The first one was the steamed seafood dumpling. The base of the dumpling is prawns and scallop and they are been wrapped with a very clear flour skin. After which it is toppled with shark fin and then crab roe. This item was absolutely delicious. The prawn was very fresh and juicy and they wrapped it so well that the the item was not too dry. The flavour of the crab roe gave this item a complementing flavour. The second item I forgot its name already so cannot comment on it. ( Problem of delaying writing till forgot the name of the dish as well as the taste unless it is something very unique or excellent in taste) The third item was the Siew Mai. It was also a dish quite well prepared. It was very juicy and the filling was sufficient and the flavour is embodied in the individual Siew Mai. A very satisfying item.

The below picture shows the three fried dim sum items that we ordered. From the forefront is the char siew puff which is supposed to be one of their more highly recommended item. It was very good in general but my mum who does not like butter stuff did not really appreciate it.

The next two items are the more interesting items.

The first one is honeydew wrapped in Parmesan Ham. The ham was wrapped around the honeydew and then the ham was coated with something and then deep fried. It was quite a unique creation. In spite of it been deep fried the honey dew within managed to maintain its original flavour and moisture and the ham gave it a bit of salty taste. Hence when you ate it you taste the salty flavour of the ham followed by the sweetness of the honeydew. Quite an interesting flavour.

The next one is the sea perch wrapped with vegetable. The internal of the roll was the sea perch and the vege wrapped in the centre and it was wrapped in a layer of skin. It was one of the best dim sum I had. The sea perch was very tasty and the accompanying vege in it accentuate the flavour of the fish with it. The skin was really very crispy.

The below dish is the spare ribs with almond. It is the best spare ribs that I had. It was very flavourful and the sauce that was fried with it was very good. ( A bit on the sweet side though)

It is a dish which will go very well with rice or even on its own.

The below is the San Bei Chicken. This was the best version that I had. The sauce was very good and will be excellent to eat with rice. The sauce very rich of the flavour of the chicken as well as the ingredients which were used in the preparation of the dish. The chicken pieces was also very tender. My mum really loved this item. Highly recommended!

The below is the tofu cooked with scallop. This was a dish which was a bit bland in terms of flavour. It was not so rich in flavour as the previous two dishes. It had a more soothing taste and was light on the taste. Personally I found it ok but my relatives did not find it so outstanding.

The last of the main dish is the braised Ee Fu Mee with two types of mushroom. This has to rank as one of the very best I had. Every strain of noodle was tasteful and the noodle was not overcooked till it loses its "Dan Xing". You could taste the richness of the mushroom in the dish.

The below was the desert that my aunt had. It was coconut presented in three styles. You had the sea coconut. The translucent thing cannot remember what it was. The white base was super concentrated coconut juice which was very rich in flavour and very sweet. My aunt commented that it was too sweet for her liking. However you have to admit the presentation looks quite nice :)

Overall the quality of the food was very high and the ambience was aso very quite and elegant. A very good place for business lunch/dinner. One of the later article that I will be writing would be about the meal I had more recently over here when they had the 60's promotion.

Opinion on Manchester United signing in the off season

2007-07-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

In the off season, Manchester United was the first team among the top four teams in the EPL to have made some very significant signings. To summarise they have signed Nani from Sporting, Anderson from Porto, Owen Hargreaves from Bayern Munich and confirmed the signing of the on-loan keeper from West Brom Tomasz Kuszczak. Currently they are trying to pursue the signing of Carlos Tevez from West Ham.

With regard to Tomasz Kuszczak, from the few occasions that I have seen him play when he was on loan last season as well as during his time at West Brom, he looks a good shot stopper. One of his potential weakness is that he does not seem to be able to handle crosses very well. In addition, he is not that dominating in the air when he comes to collect crosses. Overall, I think he is ok as a deputy.

With regard to the long awaited signing of Owen Hargreaves, I think that it is a good move in general. Ever since Roy Keane left Manu, Manu has lost a key focal point in the centre of the midfield. There has been no one one has been able to perform consistently as the covering person for the back four.

The purpose of such a position is to be the holding midfielder to protect the back four and to distribute the ball to the more flair players in the attacking portion of the field. Fergi has tried so many players in that position. Alan Smith, Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes to name a few of the players who have tried to fill up this position. It seem that Paul Scholes was the closest to filling this role as he was mainly used in this position last season. However there are two main downsides to using him in that position. Firstly his timing of tackle is quite bad to be honest. ( The only skill he seem to be unable to really improve) Secondly, playing him in the withdrawn role will mean that you will lose his attacking foray around the penalty box which is one of his better ability.

With the signing of Owen Hargreaves who has been playing in this withdrawn role for both Bayern Munich and as well as for England, it will free Paul Scholes to go back to his more favoured attacking position. It will allow Manu to have someone who can compete in the centre of the midfield in terms of control of the centre of midfield as last season, there were a few games in Manu were overpowered in the centre of the midfield. The best example was against AC milan where Gattuso dominated the midfield and was one of the key reason why Milan was able to beat Manu. In addition, all the top teams in European football have a dominating ball winner in the centre of the park. For example, Gilberto for Arsenal, Essien or Claude Makelele for Chelsea, Gattuso for AC Milan, Mohamed Sissoko for Liverpool and Mahamadou Diarra for Real Madrid.

For the signing of Nani, to be honest I have only watched him in action once or twice in the Portugal international games. From the few matches, it is noticeable that his style of play is very similar to Cristiano Ronaldo. Like his compatriot, he is a player who likes to hug the touchline and to take on defenders and then to cut in to take a shot or pass. I believe that Fergi will use him as an impact player for his first season in Manu while he tried to help him to cope to the physical nature of the English game. In the long term, he should be the replacement for Giggs on the left of the mid-field. Hence this signing is more in mind of the future and should be a good move in general.

The last of the confirmed signing is the signing of Anderson from Porto. According to the news report he is supposed to be the next Ronaldinho but to be honest he has not been that high profile last season due to a broken leg suffered last season. He is a bit of the unknown quality and hopefully he is able to adapt to the English game as actually there has been quite a few South American who has not been able to adapt to the English game. A few high profile names come to mind. Players like Veron, Forlan, Silvinho formerlt from Arsenal and even Gilberto Silva took more than a season to adapt to the English game. He is someone who can be a big success or become another high profile failure. Like Nani, he will only be used sparingly as Paul Scholes and Carrick are currently playing the attacking midfield position

The last potential signing could be Carlos Tevez. As of now, West ham has not agreed to sell him to Manu and FIFA is going to be called in to push through the transfer. It is qute a messy affair at the moment and the end does not seem to be in sight. However from his last season performance for West Ham, he will be a valuable signing for Manu. However whether he is what Manu require for a striker is something that needs further examining.

Lunch at Thai Express (Marina Square outlet)

2007-07-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

This is really a very delayed entry. This actually happen about a month back. My friend wanted to buy a Manu jersey to celebrate them winning the EPL title. We spend the afternoon scouring the nearby shopping areas for the jersey but to no avail. It seem that the jersey for that season was a one off and there will be a new design this coming season. ( In my opinion, the jersey design is changing too often, guess to capitalise on the spending power of today's fans)

Anyway after a futile search we decided to proceed to Marina Square for dinner. As expected it was so crowded on a Saturday so we decided to find the place where there is no need to queue. To be frank, we just needed a place to rest and a decent meal so that is how we landed at Thai Express.

We decided that we shall each order a side dish and a main dish each. Hence we decided to order the fried squid in Thai style and the soft shell crab as the side orders. I had my usual pineapple rice and my fren had the Thai style fried kuey Teow. The below are the pictures of the dishes which came quite fast.

The above is the fried soft shell crab. In terms of taste, it is nothing outstanding. what I liked is that they placed a generous serving of the fried garlic. It accentuate the flavour of the dish which made it quite ok. The fragrance of fried garlic is really wonderful.

The next dish is the deep fired squid in Thai style. This was a dish that I really enjoyed. The squid was coated with a flour and some seasoning then deep fried to a golden brown before the sauce was applied on it. The sauce as per typical Thai dish is quite sweet. It was really quite delicious.

My fren had the fried Kuey Teow in Thai style. The Thai style fried Kuey Teow is cooked very differently from the Penang or Singapore style Char Kuey Teow. The Singapore style char kuey teow is cooked with a sweet sauce whereas the Penang char kuey teow is really very different. I do not know how to describe it in English. Anyway according to my fren, the fried kuey teow was not bad it had a sweet taste which is the norm for Thai food and as per seen from the photo the serving was also quite a lot.

The above is the pineapple rice that I had. I liked the idea of fried rice with raisin. The raisin gives a lingering sweet after taste which help to make the dish unique in my opinion. However one of the minus point was that is was not salty enough and the rice did not really bring out the flavour of pineapple rice. Overall I was disappointed by this dish.

Anyway it was a good experience to try something different.

Empire of Debt

2007-07-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

This is the first my book reviews which I had planned to write sometimes back but due to various reasons have not gotten to writing it till now.

The first book I will be reviewing is titled the Empire of Debt ( The rise of an Epic Financial Crisis) It is a book which is co-written by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin. William Bonner is the president and CEO of Agora Inc which is a financial newsletter company and Addison is the Editorial Director and publisher of the Daily Reckoning.

The below is the screenshot of the cover of the book.

Anyway, I do not know who is these two persons to be honest. I picked up this book to read was due to the interesting title and also the first chapter was able to capture my attention.

This book is primarily about the US economy in the past 100 years and a look into the future based on the policy and decisions that had been made over the last 20 years. It is quite an insightful book. It starts from talking about the present US economy. It looks at the decisions made in the early years which lead to the current US economy. In the opinion of the writers, the current US economy is run like an empire.

The main reason for their viewpoint is listed below

Before the world war started in the first half of the 20th century, US was more inward looking and more focus on building new things and producing new stuffs. However after World War 2, US took more interest in foreign policy and this interest got more intensified during the Cold war. After the fall of the Soviet Union, US became the only super power left and started to impose themselves on a number of other countries affair. Something similar to how the Roman grow their empire in the past. Except the Roman conquered the other countries whereas US is trying to control the other countries through policy, money and diplomacy.

In the book, they talked about how the present US economy is running close to a collapse.

They talk about the lack of productive things coming out of the US. Almost everything that is consumed in the US are made in Asia.
About the high mortgage of property in US to generate more cash for current consumption but it place a burden on the next generation. The key assumption is that property price will not fall. However if you think from an economics point of view, the concept of ever raising property price is never true. This is because a property is only as valuable as what the market demand is. It will reach a point when the prices are too high till there is much less demand which will cause the prices of property to fall. Then it will cause those people that has placed a mortgage to be unable to afford the property and their gamble fail. This will cause bad debt and people to go bankrupt which will affect consumption. This will be the start of a vicious cycle.
There is also a low rate of saving in the US which means there is very little for people to fallback when the economy go pear-shaped.
The US is borrowing a lot of money to fund its current consumption and the lenders are the Asian country. A good example would be Japan and China. They sell so much things to the US and then they accept US treasury bonds which is like the US owing money to these countries.

In my opinion, this is quite an interesting read as some of the points raised in the book will make you think about the current situation and evaluate the point raised in the book. Overall, it is quite a well-written book which managed to capture a lot of the key points and in a way it is like an X-ray on the current US economy.

The only drawback is that the wordings are a bit small and can be quite tiring to the eyes when you read too many pages.

Japanese version of curry !

2007-05-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

All my life, when I think of curry I would think of all sort of curry but not Japanese curry. Although I have heard of it but I had no real inclination to try it out.

Therefore when my friend told me we are going to a restaurant for Japanese curry, I was to be honest not very keen. Anyway just to give it a try we went to the place that he recommended. The place is located near the City Hall MRT. The name of the place if I recalled correctly was "Curry flavour"

Since this place's speciality is supposed to be the curry, we decided to have their pork curry rice. All their curry rice comes included with a complementary miso soup or a vegetable salad. As I am not a soup person, I decided to have the vegetable salad shown below.

With regard to taste, (ehh.... ) it is just vegetable that has been placed together and tossed with a soy sauce type of dressing. As I am also not keen on vegetable, this salad was not really to my liking.

My frens and I decided to order two side dishes to try out. We ordered the fried mushroom and the soft shell crab which are shown in the following two pictures.

Both dishes were very good in terms of the taste. The fried mushroom was very crispy on the exterior but it was still able to maintain the mushroom flavour and moisture. For the crab, it was one of the best soft shell crab that I had in a while. The only downside is not the taste or quality but in terms of the price. It is a bit expensive.

The following two pictures are showing the main course which is the pork curry rice. The first picture shows how the dish was presented to the guest.

With regard to the taste test for the curry rice:

Firstly, the most important which was the fried pork and the curry. The fried pork was really excellent. For the curry, as it is the first time i am having the Japanese version of curry, I am not able to do a comparison. What I could say is that the curry had a strong and pleasant aroma and it is not really spicy which is unlike the curry you usually can find easily in Southeast Asia.

For the rice that came together, it was not the local version of rice. The rice was rather sticky which reminds me more of the rice used to make Sushi. To me I would have preferred normal rice but this is a matter of preference so actually the rice was quite ok.

Overall it was quite a good experience to sample another way of preparation of curry from another culture.

Lunch at Crystal Jade Palace

2007-04-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

Last month, my friend and I decided we need to reward ourself after a hard week at work and it so happen to be pay day therefore we decided to go for a dim sum lunch at Crystal Jade Palace at Ngee Ann City level 4.

We decided to order the appetizer roast pork first while we ponder our choice of dim sum. The roast pork which is shown below was excellent. The skin was very crispy and the meat below was very tender. In addition, with the mustard sauce giving it the burning sensation which gives the roast pork extra flavour.

We decided to order some typical dim sum items and two small dishes to try out. The dishes in general arrive quite quickly. All the items arrive about the same time.

The first dish was the shark fin dumpling shown above. As can be seen above, it is a huge dumpling filled with stuff and cooked in a clear soup. The dumpling was filled with fish maw, shark fin and some oher stuff. It was quite good and quite filling.

The next one is the char siew pao. This was good as expected but nothing outstanding about it. The filling was juicy and the skin of the pao was fluffy.

The next dish is the mango and prawn deep fried roll. This was a disappointment. The sesame seeds which was coated on the skin was too much as a result , the flavour of the dish instead of being the mango and prawn filling was overpowered by the taste of the sesame seeds. My opinion is that the sesame seeds was supposed to complement the main filling.

The prawn cheong fun came next. This item was quite good as it was wrapped with sufficicent prawns and the skin was very smooth. The sauce which was applied over the dish complements well with the fillings. A typical Hong Kong standard prawn cheong fun.

The above was the siew mai. It was another dish which was very satisfying. It was wrapped with the right proportion of pork and prawn so as to achieve a great flavour and the right texture for the dish.

The following two dishes came about the same time. The first one was the deep fried fish in sweet and sour sauce. The other dish was the deep fried pig intestine. Firstly, the fish was excellent. The fish was deep fried in a way in which the fish meat was able to maintain its mositure in the interior but the outside was very crispy. The sweet and sour sauce was also well prepared. It was not too sweet and it complements well with the fish.

The deep fried pig intestine is more of an acquired taste. I guess when some people hear about it, they will not even to try it. It is really very good to eat and if you like crispy dishes, you will definetly like this dish. It is deep fried to a crisp and it still is quite soft in the inside.

After the meal, my friend decided to try one of the more unusual desert items. He ordered the pear in Ginseng soup. He told me that it was very smoothing and that is a faint taste of the pears and lemon which were used to complement the flavour. It was a refreshing desert.

It was really good to be ablle to meet up with friends and talk about anything but work and have an enjoyable lunch. It would have been even better if it was not so expensive! Hehehe

Opinion on the awarding of the EPL player and team of the year award

2007-04-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

The result of the EPL annual end of season is shown below:

PFA Player and Young Player of the Year 2007 - Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)

PFA Premier League Team of the Year 2007 - Edwin van der Sar, Gary Neville, Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra (all Man Utd); Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo (all Man Utd) & Steven Gerrard (Liverpool); Didier Drogba (Chelsea) & Dimitar Berbatov (Tottenham)

With regard to these awards I have a few opinions. Firstly, I wonder why is this award given before the end of the season since these awards are supposed to encapsulate the best overall consistent performance for the season.

Secondly, from my understanding these voting are carried out in the month of January by the PFA Representative. If that is the case, how accurate would the assessment be at that time if you are talking about the whole season. You would only be voting for the players which have been performing well up to that stage of the season. A more accurate gauge would be if the voting exercise were carried out in April or May instead and the award ceremony in late May or June.

With regard to the player of the year and the young player of the year, I guess that there is not much of a complaint as Ronaldo has been by far the most exciting player to watch this season. He has shown maturity in his player and there are more end products following his fanciful trickery. He also seem to have gain an upper body strength which was not apparent when he first arrived in Manu.

With regard to the team of the year, I felt that there are too many players from the same team and if you noticed all the players are from the big teams of England.

For the centre back position, I think that Jamie Carragher would have been more appropriate than Rio. Jamie has been a pillar at the back for Liverpool for the last two seasons. He may not be as skillful but his reading of the game and his commitment is plain for all to see.

For the left back position, I feel that Matthew Taylor would have been a more worthy contender as he has been quite solid at the back and when he go forward to attack, no defence should leave him unmarked as he has one of the most lethal left foot in the league. His goals inadvertently are spectacular in nature.

For the goal keeper position, I feel that there are a few other keeper that could have been in that position. Players for example Shay Given and Tim Howard would have been potential players if there were in the bigger clubs.

For midfield, the only one I disagree with would be the addition of Gerrard. He has not been that outstanding in the middle of the part as he has been played out right for some parts of the season. I felt that Fabregas is more deserving a place in the centre of midfield as he has at times carried Arsenal in the absence of Henry this season.

Anyway that is about slightly more than a month left in the season. It will be a nail-biting end of the season for the title. So far it has been one great ride and long may it continue!!