The ultimate food critic

Paradise Inn Lunch sets

2010-10-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

Since I always eat with my girl, it's tough for me to find quality chinese food at affordable prices. There just seems to be a lack of afforable chinese resturants that caters to two people.

Thankfully, Paradise Inn recently released an individual lunch set menu where you get to sample a little bit of everything. There are four fixed menu and you get a choice of soup.

I chose the summer menu which came with smoked duck, wasabi prawns, 3-egg chinese spinach and stirred fried HK noodles, and my soup of choice was pork ribs with sea whelk Everything on this menu was good, but the real star in this place is their double boiled soup. The soup is extremely tasty and the ribs are boiled till really tender. I think the special ingredient is dried oysters.

The girlfriend had the autumn menu as she wanted to eat something with rice. The autumn menu had seafood fried rice, sweet and sour pork, pork floss prawns and poached lettuce. her soup of choice was yellow melon. I didn't like the lettuce but everything else was good as well.

Special mention should go out to the add on drink. We had the passionfruit with lemongrass tea and it was really refreshing and a great compliment to the meal.

It's unfortunate that we forgot to take pictures as the presentation is quite elegant without looking overly chi-chi. It is real value for money for people who want to try a little of everything. 4.5/10

Changi Village: Is it worth the trouble?

2010-10-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

Without a car and living in the North, getting to Changi Village is a real pain in the neck. Add to that the stuffiness of the hawker center and the difficulty in finding seats, it culminates in an unpleasant dining experience.

The only redeeming factor is the food on offer. Everyone knows the Nasi Lemak here is very popular, but I tend to give it a miss after hearing people using the old complaint "standard drop".

My FAVOURITE FAVOURITE stall here is the Ipoh hor fun from Wing Kee Ipoh Hor Fun(Changi Village Hawker Centre Blk 2 #01-04). I cannot describe how amazing this Ipoh Hor Fun is. If you watch them prepare, nothing stands out as special. Neither does each individual ingredient. But when the char siew, mushroom, chicken, noodles and the sauce enters your mouth combined, you won't want to stop and every mouthful is a read pleasure. 4.5/10

My girlfriend bought Ngoh Hiang and Penang Char Kuay Teow from an old grandma stall (Changi Village Hawker Centre Blk 2 #01-21). I thought both were meh. The Ngoh Hiang to me was too dry and I commented that the Penang Char Kuay Teow tasted like Phad Thai with chinese sausage. Ngoh Hiang: 3/5 and Penang CKT: 3.2/5

The carrot cake had wonderful wok hei the previous time I tried it but this time it tasted extremely ordinary. I wish the hawker added more garlic and poh chai to kick it an added crunch and flavour. 3.5/5

Changi Village is so damn inaccessible! The Ipoh Hor Fun though is simply fantastic and makes the trip less torturous. I also noticed alot of people at Charlie's corner, this restaurant beside the hawker center. I remember seeing it there since I was young but never made much of it. Only now do I realise that they have a wide variety of beers and food is affordable. I would love to get comments on if it's worthy to try.

Grocery post of the week

2010-10-05T21:04:00.001-07:00

Laugh at me for being sua ku, but I only recently realised that A&W have repackaged their root beer and also introduced a new flavour, cream soda. I tried the cream soda and I felt the frothy aftertaste was pleasant, but the distinct taste of A&W root beer seems to be missing. If you have tried A&W root beer with ice cream in other countries, this is what it tastes like.

Temptations!

2010-09-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

The Katong stretch seems like a revolving door of restaurants with new restaurants coming and going. The new kid in the block now is Temptations. Opened about 3 months ago, this joint offers a range of what I would call "high-class american food", with a range of salads, pastries, sandwiches and entrees.

The decor is soothing, with its brownish hues and wooden furniture. This is a good place to bring a first date for dinner.

My girl had the pork knuckle sandwich. The bread was slightly over-roasted, but the real winner here is the filling. Pork slices cooked to perfection, this would have made a great takeaway meal. The salad was fresh and had the right amount of vinigerette dressing.

I had the Cordon Bleu chicken. I'm normally not a breaded guy, but this grew on me. The meat was nice and moist and complimented the crispy exterior very well. I like the mash potato side as well. The macaroni and cheese was a little bland.

Grocery post of the week

2010-09-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd share some of the stuff I couldn't resist from supermarkets. The first one would be Swiss Miss hot chocolate ($4.80, Cold Storage). In a box are a combined 10 packets of rich chocolate, hot chocolate and hot chocolate with marshmellows. They were particularly enjoyable on a cold night, especially the marshmellows. Do note though to not use boiling water but warm water for the marshmellows packet as boiling water will melt the marshmellows.

2010-09-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

I was craving some Indian, and decided to explore this stretch of popular Indian restaurants. I decided to try Sakunthala's (66 Race Course Road).

The interior was brightly lit and nicely decorated. If you're looking for a place to bring a date, this would be the one of the best places for Indian food.

Appetisers were complimentary papadum. It's always a good thing when you have something to munch on while waiting for the rest of the food to be served, and these were done quite well.

This was the customary vegetable dish to at least make us feel less guilty. This is cauliflower and potatoes cooked in curry also known as Aloo Gobi ($5). Pretty decent.

Mango fish in the foreground and briyani rice ($2.50) in the background. The Mango fish was good value at ($5), but the essence of the mango was not brought out.

The butter chicken ($8) is delicious! I might not be the best person to gauge since this is my first time having it, but I thought the rendition here was perfect. The gravy came with yogurt on top and after mixing it, it was rich, creamy and spicy. I would be happy just having the gravy. I wish there were more chicken bits though.

This is probably not the best food along this stretch but it's definately the most value for money as the prices are the cheapest for restaurant-esque places along this stretch. They also have a selection of chinese food so this would make a good place to bring overseas friends. The fish head curry ($18) looks delectable as well and I would consider coming back here to try it.

P.S My apologies for the unsatisfactory photos. I haven't eaten anything for the whole day and just couldn't wait to dig in.

2010-09-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

For the past year or so, I've found many food places that I would have blogged about but was just too lazy. I've since decided I shall drag my butt up and share these places with the people who bother to read.

The girlfrend and I was pondering what places to try and she suggested wings, and as
I was foodblog surfing, chanced upon this place (B1 - 17/32/33, United Square)

Grandma's Kitchen serves chinese food in a nice restaurant atmosphere that would make a good place for occasions or dates. We've found that there is very few places with good chinese food and a soothing ambience at the same time, so when I read how this place has both, decided to bring her to try.

This rendition of the beef rendang ($9) was marvelously done. The beef was soft and the sauce coating it was bursting with flavours. I wish it was coated with more gravy though.

This is their version of fried chicken wings. I was expecting more but alas, it was nothing special. It comes piping hot and had a tinge of lemongrass, but it lacked the infusion of flavours into the flesh of the chicken that I would have prefered.

They also have very good beer promotions. I had an Erdinger for $5, which is next to impossible to find in a restaurant.

There are hits and misses here. The service was extremely friendly and helpful, and I like the quiet environment, so I'll probably be willing to give it a second chance. The more popular dishes here were the fish head curry and the chicken curry, and I'll come to try it again.

2008-10-17T06:30:00.000-07:00

This update has been long overdue and I finally got down to doing it. Went with Alec to White Dog Cafe at vivocity. I think what attracted us was the fact that they advertised their set meal as 10.90++, which was relatively cheap in my opinion.

Their basic chicken consumme soup. You can top up money to upgrade it. We chose not to. I thought it was ok. Good for a chicken soup, but for a set meal, maybe we should have had something better.

The two main courses. I can't remember the name after it being so long ago, but they were both chicken. Basically their meals usually come with rice and the salad. I thought this, quite simply put, sucked. The chicken tastes like it's just been defrosted, and the rice seems to be jus plain rice and the salad, as you can see from the picture, is incredibly plain.

We decided to add 3.50 and get a slice of cake. We both chose blueberry cheesecake. I thought the cake was quite good. I like how cheesy it tasted. I'll say it's quite similar to the one at secret recipe, which is highly rated by many, so that has to be a compliment.

Overall though, a little disappointed with the food. Price came up to 17 dollars per person, which is reasonable, but I rather go to a chain restuarant like Jack's place or Swensens in the future.

Geyland Claypot rice, Geyland Lorong 33.

2008-09-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

Dropped by Geylang Lorong 33 this evening for a dinner with the family. My dad's been raving about the claypot rice here for a long time and decided to bring us there. The place is like a typical quaint little classic coffeeshop. It's called Geyland Claypot Rice. They have a website as well. http://www.geylangclaypot.com/.

The claypot rice. We called in to order, since it would take 30 minutes to prepare and we didn't want to wait. The number is 67444574 or 67443619. It was one of the nicest claypot rice I've eaten. One thing I really like about it is the chicken cubes. In many of the ones I've tried before, the chicken becomes too dry and tasteless. Not in this one. The chicken was slightly juicy and had a subtle saltiness to it.

There have also various zhi char like dishes to go along with your rice, but they're definately not your run-of-the-mill kind. This is quite simply, hand made tofu with prawn. I really like this dish. The tofu was soft and fragant, and when you bite into it, it crumbles into pieces. Very very nice. And the prawn was of a decent size, and very juicy. One of the gripes I have about prawns in such dishes is that they sometimes lose their flavour because they are overcooked. Not in this case. It came out perfectly. The gravy is like something from Mui Fan or Hor Fan in zhi char stalls, but somehow they made it really delicious. This is a must-try if you eat here.

This dish is known as Assam Tomyum Fish. I thought the assam was way too overpowering. So much so that the fish and the tom yam loses its significance in this dish. I wouldn't order it again.

The remains of their soup of the day. I took it after we drank all the soup. Oops! It changes everyday. My mum commented that they had watercress soup the last time and it was very good, so we tried this soup. Even my parents were stumped because they had never heard of this soup before, pronouced Fei Hua soup I think. You can see the Szechuan Veg looking thing inside. I think that's the thingy that they were talking about. The soup tasted abit like lotus root soup, although it had a little bitter taste. According to the waitress, it has medicinal properties. Not too bad, not too good either. But you can taste that they have been cooking the soup for very long, from the taste and the color. I'm sure if it was something else like old cucumber or lotus root, their soup would taste great.

45 dollars in total. It was an OK price, I guess. I was a little disappointed with the soup and the fish, but the rice and tofu were really good. I wouldn't mind coming back again.

2008-09-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well, with this, the official food review blog by yours truly, the gerald, is officially launched.

The first place I'm going to talk about, is going to be Dracula Romanian Food. With the name itself, you would probably envision in your mind a dark scary castle atmosphere type restaurant, I know I did. But it was not to be. Maybe the image stuck in my mind hindered me from properly looking for this place, and I had to comb the area before I found it, tucked away in what seemed like just another of those normal kopitiams.

The prices of the food is relatively decent. We ordered the Romanian steak ($10) and the Romanian sour meatbal soup ($4).

I was relatively disappointed with the soup. I expected a soup bursting with flavours, sort of like the Tokyo chicken stew from soup spoon, which happens to be one of my favourite joints. But more on that some other time. The soup came with a few large chunks of meatballs, potatoes and carrots. The soup didn't pack any of that punch I would have expected, and to be honest was kind of bland. The meatball, despite it being big, isn't big on flavour. Grains of rice were inside the meatball to make it that big. With four slices of bread accompanying the soup, along with the large meatballs and the potatoes in the soup, this just makes me think of some poor Romanian family having this soup for dinner. Not something I'll recommend you to order.

The romanian cheese steak was next. An average sized steak, with the cheese sauce and sauteed mushrooms on top, accompanied by two slices of bread with a spread that looks like cooked onions of some form and a salad with, potatoes and olives amongst others. With the bread, and the potatoes again, it seems like they refuse to let you leave hungry. The steak was decent. I personally liked the mushrooms on top. They have a smoked taste and I felt went really well with the steak. I didn't like the bread though. Maybe it was my Singaporean instinct where bread should always go with kaya, but the cold foul smelling spread did not appeal to me. It's hard to describe, but I doubt it's a taste many Singaporeans will like. The potato salad was ok, nothing special. Overall a decent dish, and I think the steak alone would have been worth that money.

I left feeling very full, but not really very satisfied. I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody. You have to be adventourous about your food to like what's being offered at this place.

P.S Future reviews shall come with photos. I forgot to take some!