Dessert found in a You Char Kway Stall!

After reading the post on nice YCK in this food centre, I have always craved to try it out. But i decided that the YCK was a bit too big. So i decided to try the just out of wok banana fritters!(4 for $1)

Imagine eating on this bench, enjoying the breeze and watching people queue up for their dinner while you are enjoying dessert(cheap and nice!) Enjoyment!

The auntie wearing goggles (those found in chemistry labs) looked very cute. She even allowed me to order only 2 though she looked mildly surprised. I only understood the reason bejind her surprised look after trying the fritters out(known as banana balls to them)

I would have preferred to call them banana bombs. So cute!

The outside is very crispy. And the inside is very soft. Not too sweet. Hmm. Just nice. Tasted like heaven to me. This can easily cost 3 to 4 times its price when served in a restaurant.

After eating the fritters aka bombs aka balls, i thought i could do with another 2. And i fought hard to resist the temptation of going back to order a yck. But i couldn't help smelling the empty plastic wrapper while making my way back. 4/5

Must try the YCK sometime soon.

Forgot the name of the stall, Might be some Zao3 Shi4 thingy

Margaret Drive Food Centre #01-558

Hakka Yong Tou Foo

I dont often like to eat at crowded places, even if the place serves very famous food, simply because a noisy environment disturb my perception of taste. This hawker centre at Magaret Drive is between Redhill and Commonwealth mrt. If you enjoy a short walk, walk down along the mrt tracks at either one of the stations. It is especially peaceful in the evening.



Many foodies usually recommend Hai Kee Char Kway Teow, which is located on the 1st floor. I tried it a few weeks before and it wasn't up to my taste and i waited for like one hour for a plate of ckt that i didn't like. So today, I decided to walk around and just try something else that hasn't been rated before.




As i walked towards the centre, i found that there is actually a 2nd floor to this food centre. So i walked around and found this hakka yong tou fu stall. Since I havent tried buying hakka yong tou fu before, i decided to try it out.

Hakka yong tou fu is not the type of food you eat to convince yourself that you are eating healthily. Look at that! Almost everything is fried! I ordered the set ($4) and changed the rice to more liao4(The lady promised). Luckily, the soup looks a bit healthier. Consists of carrots,celery(celery has negative calories i heard),soya beans and bits of chicken.

The set is an upgrade from a plate of liao4 to a set consisting of soup,rice and a plate of watermelon. I think you can just order the liao4 to try out the food.

The fried food is placed in a plate of soya sauce which tastes like those that you get in japanese food. And i liked the way she mixed her sweet sauce and chilli sauce in such an attractive manner. She used the type of chilli sauce that you get in chicken rice. I especially liked her brinjal. I am not exactly a brinjal lover. In fact, I really hated brinjals. But this one tasted quite nice. Very soft and you won't get reminded of brinjals if you close your eyes and eat the brinjal dipped in her sauce.

I kind of liked the mushroom as well. She put a lot of pepper on the meat. Peppery and can taste the fragrance of the mushroom.

Err.. did i mention anything about the soup? The soup just tasted like soup. Maybe this explains why its free flow.

All in all, this place is a nice place for peaceful eating, unlike the oily one below where the queue never seems to end and you wonder whether uncle works like 24 hours a day. There are really very few people on the 2nd storey. Sit near the auntie and you get restaurant style service. One to one! A bit stuffy though. 3/5

Now i shall explain why i didn't want the rice. I saved some room for dessert:)
Read on to find out more.

Po's hakka recipe
Margaret Drive Food Centre #02-556

Wei Xiang Yuan:Hmm.. Is smell more important than taste?

My friend who studied in a school near Anchorpoint mentioned that this dessert place is quite good. Having a fetish for sweet food, I couldn't resist coming for a treat after OT today. The outside and the environment really looks quite enticing,so the food should be nice,right?

......Wrong.

Perhaps I had too much hope in it. Maybe i was too hungry after OT. But it didn't give me the satisfaction that I expected from an all-sweet dinner.

I ordered the chestnut gao1. It is basically 3 pieces of agar agar with pieces of chestnut inside going for $2. I should have given in to my inner instincts to order the pumpkin gao1 instead.

I also ordered tang yuan($2.50) as i really had a craving for them. Ordered a mixture of peanut and sesame. They gave me 5-3 sesame & 2 peanut. I would have preferred an opposite sequence:( The peanuts in the soup were not soft, rather a bit crunchy. The tang yuan was quite normal as well. Well, at least they are not too sweet.Again, i should have given in to my inner instincts and ordered the walnut paste.

Well, i looked on the bright side. At least there were few people in the whole mall and it was kind of relaxing to eat in such an air-conditioned environment with okay and cheap desserts, so dont hesitate to pass by if you happen to be nearby. Maybe it would have turned out good if I had listened to auntie and ordered her recommended dessert. 3/5

Wei Xiang Yuan

Anchorpoint

Coffee machines in a company:Well-deserved break!

Being a workaholic, I never fail to use the holidays to earn some keep so that I can relax during term time. This however means that I can get very bored of working as I usually work in the administrative side in the financial departments. It can get really boring when you have little to do and maybe even more when you have a lot to rush. (Doing more does not get you more pay. Paid by the hour)

Nevertheless, above are no reasons for me not to do my very best.

Hence, I do need to give myself a well-deserved break even during office hours, right? (This is a rhetorical question)

But I also do not want to spend loads of money on a sumptous lunch as this will mean that i am spending one hour(or more) in office just for that lunch.

But what can you get from not spending some $$?

I found the solution in my office!

Lot of such machines can be found in MNCs with service centres where they need to provide customers with decent drinks. Examples are Borneo Motors showroom and Sony. And the drinks that are produced by such drinks machines are especially nice! A few of my friends agreed with me as well:)

No no dont get me wrong. There are no exotic drinks. The selection includes normal drinks such as Nescafe coffee,teh tarik, milo, deluxe tea, and green tea and CAFE MOCHA.

The must-try drinks are the mocha and deluxe tea. Perks you up after a day of getting bullied and arrowed by sour pruned faced aunties!

However, I just found out that some of these machines are actually not that clean if there are no attendent aunties servicing it. They can get very dirty and the taste of the coffee is.. blearghh!(My colleague even asked me whether I had ants in my drink when I mentioned this problem of the machine to her)

Just look at how you can sit back and relax! So if you happen to pass by such a place where they have such machines, sit by the table and relax, its FREE!!!

PS: Do pretend that you have so money for the companies to siphon, or you will be ousted even before you read finish this post. I also cannot give a rating as the standards do differ.

Coffee Club - More than coffee???

Coffee Club, true to its word, offers more than just coffee. If you compare other coffee outlets such as tcc,spinelli, coffee bean and starbucks with them, no doubt the menu is the widest. However this might mean sacrificing their standards of coffee.

The one that I went to, The Central at Eu Tong Sen Street has good service. Ordered a peach smoothie,strawberry smoothie, iced tiramisu latte and fresh fruit fondue.

Didnt take photos of the smoothies as I was too thirsty. I am not sure whether I was too thirsty to judge the smoothie. The peach one was better than the strawberry one though. Rich taste of yogurt and pieces of peach could be tasted.


The iced tiramisu latte wasn't good though. I am not sure whether it is supposed to be like that. But it was more like warm tiramisu latte even though there was ice and ice-cream and we left it alone to cool for quite some time.






The fondue was quite normal. I think you can do d-i-y at home. But it does keep you very happy with the rich taste of the sweet melted chocalate coating on your fruits. Strawberries and kiwis are sour though it doesn't affect the taste of your fondue.



Not the best coffee place that you can get. Tcc or coffee bean is much better. 3/5

Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant

I have always wanted to try this restaurant since secondary school days. Finally stepped into it and fulfilled my secondary sch dreams! And it wasn't disappointing at all.

When this outlet initially opened, i think it created a stir in the xiao long bao industry locally as the origins of the shanghai xlb has come to fight with established din tai fung. But i guess it died after a while though i already have in mind who won the war. Just look at how many people there are in these restaurants during the weekends.

There were hardly a few people on that day. However, this makes it really good for eating dim sum and relaxing and chatting on a lazy saturday afternoon.

Whats more, the dim sum is quite good. Pleasing to the eye, okay for the taste, creates a smaller hole to your pocket compared to dtf. I think it will make a good place to bring picky,traditional mothers to.

We ordered the king-sized steam bun,some sticky cake (known as gui hua gao in chinese),pumpkin pasty and crab roe and shark's fin filled xlb. For a really rich afternoon tea, I guess aound $37 is not that expensive.

The gui hua gao was first to be served. And its really very very VERY sticky! I could hardly pick it up with my chopsticks as it stuck like glue to the plates. But it has quite a good chew, like chinese mochi. Good for people with strong teeth. And not too sweet as well.

Next up was the king-sized steamed bun with crab roe fillings. It is unwise to share it between 2 people as we did. But it seems really quite impractical to stick a straw out of the bun for drinking as it will scald your tongue. And as the ST reporter rightly puts it, the skin for the bun seems thicker. But i guess it really is subject to individual's liking. Personally i like it thinner. But this steamed da long bao is really not a good dim sum to order because it is a selfish dish(cant share you see) and it seems to be too filling for one, though it is impressive on the first sight. You don't want to pay to be impressed. Just see whether you are lucky such that the people sitting around you order or be satisfied with the pictures provided in the restaurant.

The 3rd dish that we ordered was the pumpkin pasty. Feels quite filling and it comes in servings for 2.As you can see, the surface is very thin, and the pumpkin fillings is so hot that it condensed my camera. Not too oily, has a better chew than gui hua gao but not too much taste to it. No omphh to it, only burps.

Ta-da! the richest dish! Xlb with crab-roe and sharks-fins! Yes, Sharks-fins!$12.60 for 4 xlb, not that hot a burn for your pocket. The picture in the middle shows a fin sticking out. I think it is better to jus taste it as it is, without the ginger, but maybe a little vinegar. I think the sharks fins in the xlb makes it taste just like a bowl of sharks fins soup, but i find the xlb a tad too dry. The fillings are a lot though.If you want to feel like a rich tai-tai, try this.

Overall, i give this a 3.75/5. It is quite relaxing yam cha-ing in this restaurant and service was alright, maybe because there were hardly any people. Taste wise, hmm, maybe the original xlbs are not as good until it arrived to Singapore.

200 Victoria Street

#02-53 Bugis Junction

Singapore 188024

Tel:65-6835 7577

Madam Saigon

Went to Madam Saigon yesterday. The 1st look at the menu is that the menu has a really limited selection, even for its dinner menu. There ain't many people in the restaurant, considering it is a weekend. Well to be exact, there were only us in the restaurant, 3 waiters(to be elaborated on later), and 2 or 3 others who were surfing Youtube on a laptop. Hence you can see that it is like 3:1 ratio of waiters cum bosses VS customers.

Decided to try this Authentic Vietnamese restaurant because of some of its features on newspapers. However, there was really a limited selection, so we ordered only a mango salad.
The mango salad is really not too bad. Sourish, with plenty of nuts sprinkled on top and really nice decoration.3.75/5 However, we didn't really eat much of their stuff to comment any more. Costs around $6 to $7, as with all the other items on their menu.

More to comment on was the weird dining exeperience that we had. The waiter was very girlish, and they kept staring over at our table with unfriendly looks. It makes it extremely uncomfortable for me as i was facing them.

Perhaps it might be better to dine in the evening when there are more people. Not too bad a place for you to try Authentic Vietnamese food but i seriously think a better place can easily be found near bugis.

30 Liang Seah Street (S)189051
Bugis District