First visit to Ichiban Sushi outlet ( IMM building)

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

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

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 !

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Opinion on Manchester United stuttering start to the season

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

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

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

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

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

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

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