Kee Ling Garden Steamboat BBQ

It's a buffet style kinda steamboat.

Soup base (8/10)

The ingredients are pretty standard, so the ratings are for the soup base.

You get to choose from Chicken, Tonic Chicken and Tom Yam for the soup base. My hub asked me which soup base I would like to have, but I already knew that he wanted the Tonic Chicken, so I went along with him and told the man that we wanted that.

Tonic soup are usually not my cup of 'soup'. Surprisingly, I can make do with this one. Sure, it had the bitter tonic taste that I dislike, but the 'chicken' flavour in the soup seemed to conceal the bitterness. Well, a little. As more ingredients were added to the soup, it got more and more addictive.

I believe that a lot of msg was added to the soup because hours after the meal, I still feel thirsty. :P

Price

$12 for adults and $6 for kids. For a eat-all-you-can, I thought this was quite reasonably priced.

Place

Blk 722 AMK Ave 6 (The same coffeeshop as Tip Top Curry Puff)

I still prefer steamboat at Parkway Parade :P

Erich's Wuerstelstand

We've been wanting to buy food from this Austrian guy since we got to know him from the media (and that's many years ago!). Like many others, we were more intrigued by the man, rather than the food. :P



Combo set - includes Chicken, Regular pork and spicy pork (8/10)



The different sausages, although each with its own distinctive taste, are equally delicious. I've always liked sausages but due to health reasons, I try not to take too much of these processed meat. Being able to try so many different types of sausages at one go was pure indulgence.

Price
$3 (hmm.. that's rather ex considering it's only a few pieces of sausages. I don't even want to compare it with the hotdog bun meal at ikea... :P )

Place
3 Trengganu Street
Chinatown

Hong Kong Chit Chat Cafe

Seafood Fried Nissin Noodles (8/10)



I like it so much, I gobbled the noodles up within 5 mins. :P My hub find it so-so only.

Ice Cream - Milk Tea (5/10)



They claimed that they only have 3 left for the day. I thought it's a must try. Looks like the traditional chocolate flavour is still the safer bet.

Ice Cream - Chocolate (8/10)



Still not rich enough to be considered my favourite.

Price
$18 nett for 2 meals which includes the fried noodles, an ice cream and a glass of orange juice each.

Place
267 New Bridge Road

Blogging less...

Geez.. this is not an easy decision to make, but I need to focus on something important for a few months.

During this period, I will still be blogging and putting up photos like before, but it may not be as frequent. The content will also be substantially reduced to mere ratings and brief descriptions to save time.

Thank you to all my readers out there for your support all these while. :) Do come back for more photos / reviews and pardon me if I am not able to respond to your comments as promptly as I would like to.

Have a great weekend!

Grains 稻香馆

This restaurant is reputated to serve healthy and nutritious food without compromising on the quality. I thought it would be a good idea to bring my mother to this restaurant, since she is getting more health conscious now. Indeed, it is.

This restaurant is divided into the two parts by a public walkway. When we arrived, many seats were still available so we managed to get one whole corner to ourselves, without exposing ourselves (and our food) to the people who walked by. :P

Home-made Barley (6/10)



Nutritional ABC Soup - consists of huaishan, carrot, corn and spare ribs (8/10)

This soup was pretty light, yet addictive. Throughout the meal, we kept helping ourselves to the soup, one bowl after another!



Spinach Tofu with Shimeiji Mushroom and scallops (9/10)



I love the mushrooms that were briefly fried (me thinks) before it was drenched in this savoury sauce. The soft, smooth tofu was nice too.

Grains fried rice (9/10)

This is their signature dish, I suppose. What's special about this fried rice is, instead of the usual white rice, they are using the more nutritional brown rice counterparts. I usually frown at the thought of brown rice because the ones I had before were coarse and rather hard to chew on. However, I am glad that I gave this dish a chance. The brown rice was nothing like I have imagined it to be. It was soft and not oily. Together with the scallops, wolfberries and other ingredients, it made a very tasty and filling staple for our meal. Tasty as it is, I still prefer my fried rice at Thai Lemongrass. :P



Spinach in chicken stock and wolfberries (8/10)



Light but nice!

Service

The waitresses were very friendly, attentive and prompt, but my mother and I were interrupted quite a few times because the waitress came over to check what else we need and to clear the plates. That, imo, was rather irritating.

Before we left, they passed us a 'feedback' form which had no fields like 'ways to improve'. Besides asking you to choose among an unhappy, neutral and happy face, all other things were to their favour. Like, who has the best service, what we like about their service, words of encouragement. I wanted to comment that they shouldn't check on the customers so often, but found absolutely no place to write.

To top things off, the waitress said this as she passed the form to me. "If you write well, you will get vouchers from us" Sounds so conditional. :P

Price
$53+ after 10% OCBC discount

Place
The Central
#02-72

Xiao Xuan Feng

Kungfu Chilli Chicken (1/10)



I don't think I have given such a low review before, but I think this dish deserves just this. I don't really know what that 1 point is for, actually. We can hardly find any chicken on this dish. It was full of chilli (very strange ones because it is as hard as the shell of a crab!)

And it's supposed to be their signature dish! Very disappointing indeed.

Durian Puff (8/10)



Not too bad. It's their signature dessert. Crispy (but a little oily) crust with smooth and sweet durian fillings. I've never eaten anything like this before, so it was considered quite a good experience.

Price

$26.95 (after a 10% discount for NTUC Link) - also includes Stir-Fried long beans, 2 rice and Jasmine tea for two too.

Other details here

Billy Bombers

All star (Beef) - their signature



Grilled Cajun Fish Meal (5/10)



The fish wasn't fresh. The sauce on it was so terrible, I had to scrape it off. My only consolation came from the side dishes - salad and the salad potato. This meal includes Chicken Soup (7/10), drinks and a brownie dessert (7/10)

I only managed to take a photo of the main course as I was too engaged in a conversation with my hub's friend. :P Learnt so much on design stuff from him. :)
I didn't know that Hip Diner USA was linked to Billy Bombers, not until I received the vouchers from them.

Price

$18.90 (before ++) for the whole course

Place

The Central
#02-78

Petit Provence 2

Thanks to Ice (I don't have his/her link), I got to know that they actually have another outlet at The Central.

It wasn't a deliberate trip down to The Central, but I am glad that I was there. I wasn't expecting to see any wassants as it was already evening when I reached. Still, I decided to drop by to see what other goodies I can spot.



I saw chocolate wassants. Not the usual raved cream wassants, but yea, chocholate ones. Still a wassant! So I have decided to buy 2 to try.

Chocolate Wassants (10/10)



hmmmm.... It was sooooo good. Soft and fluffy, sweet and tasty, as described in its website. It's not drying at all. I can actually do without water after consuming it without getting an irritated throat. This is usually not the case when I take bread/pastry.

Immediately after I have popped one into my mouth, I had a craving for another! If we weren't heading for a group dinner, I could have bought 2 more to have for dinner! :P

I am going to get more of it this week and on every subsequent visit to The Central. hehz!

Service
Unfriendly and impatient girl at the counter.

Price
Only 50 cents for 1 tasty wassant! Grab liao lor. ^_^

Place
The Central
#B1-29

Disney Naturally!

First visit
I wanted to dine in this restaurant almost immediately after I spotted the Disney theme. There were not many customers then but my hub refused to enter as it was too 'kiddish' and it was for family 'with kids'. I am an old adult with no children to bring in as excuse, so too bad for me lor. :P

Second visit
Maybe my hub dotes on me too much. Maybe he just doesn't want me to keep pestering him like an over-aged kid. :P He finally succumbed to dining at Disney Naturally with me. But it's not like you-want-you-get. The restaurant was full when we reached there. So my hub quickly put his name down to reserve a place for the next day

Third visit
Finally, we managed to get a seat on our third visit. Ironically, there were only two other groups at that time. No need for reservations at all. :P

Before we get to our table, we were shown to the cashier. I was feeling so sheepish when the waitress introduced their system to us.

"Ok, because this is catered mostly to kids..." - Alright, I am not a kid. And thanks. :P

"We want to encourage kids to order food for their parents. So what you have to do is to pay upfront for a card with a $2 deposit (we recommend $30 for a start) and place your order with this menu and the card."



"Go and order", urged my hub, after we have ticked on the menu. "You are supposed to be the kid."

"..." What can I say? I was indeed the 'kid' who wanted to dine in a Disney environment. So I obediently bring the card and menu to the counter to order. We wanted Fairy God Mother's drink, but because they ran out of this 'most popular' drink, we have to settle for the second 'most popular'. This.

Price Charming's Kiss! - fruit blends of strawberry and mango (5/10)



It looks 'strawberry' enough but I thought I was only slurping ice. Unevenly crushed and tasteless ice, that is. :P Is that how Prince Charming's kiss is supposed to be? Poor Snow White. hee! So moral of the story is, 'we should settle for nothing but the best?'

Snow White's Pot - Daily Special: Beef Goulash



Ratatouille's Recipe - Daily Special : Clam Chowder (9/10)



Clam's chowder has always been a no-no for me. Never liked clam. But I made it an exception to order this as I have read good recommendations on the soup online. It was indeed good and so was the bread that came along with it! Yums! The taste of the clam became so overwhelming towards the end though, so I didn't really finish it. I can imagine how tasty their chicken or mushroom soup would be (if they had one!) :)~~

Mickey's Classic Pizza - Tomatoa and Mozzarella Cheese (7/10)



I wanted to order the pizza with cajun chicken. Somehow, we ended up with this - only tomato and mozarella cheese. My hub kept telling me that it's good that we keep the pizza plain as it is, instead of having too much meat. He's right too.

Oppps. I didn't wash my hands. Mickey's not around to catch me, is he? :P

We get to watch disney cartoons when enjoying the meal. Kids get to surf internet at one corner too (forgot to take photographs of it). I saw one Daddy seated on the mini stool to surf net. LOL.

Kids and child-like adults will like this place!

Price
$36.60 (we had to top up another minimum of $10 because we only had $30 in the card. Very troublesome lor, if you ask me. After the whole meal, we still have to do a refund at the counter to get the change of $3.40 and $2 deposit back). Why can't they do the direct and straightforward way? Oh yea, the kids. Dang. :P

Place
Anchor Point
#01-04

Fig & Olive

We were going round Vivocity in circles in search for a place to have lunch.

I wanted so much to have a Ripper from Superdog. What could be better than to start the day (or rather, the year) with my favourite food?

'No. We are not going to have that. It's not good to take processed meat', said Hub. Now, that sounded so familiar... Oh. I said that to him pretty often. :P

So we decided to have it in Fig & Olive. I have always wanted to try the food there, but my hub always said no, without taking a second look at the restaurant. This time, I tried to convince him with the 'Singapore's top 100 signature dish award' title that they have placed outside and it worked! :P



Both of us was eyeing this dish. Although it is rather 'risky' to have the same dish (in case it didn't turn out nice), neither of us are willing to budge by choosing another. :P

Figo Marinara Oglio (9/10)



Thanks to our refusal to budge, we both get to enjoy a very tasty meal! I love the fried dory fish. It was the best fried fish I have ever tasted. It has a light crunch with a smooth and tender fish meat beneath the crust. Ai yoh, I still yearn to have a bite of it now. :P

The salad tasted ordinarily good, but the sphagetti was too 'fat'. I guess it was overcooked.

The broccoli and carrot was pretty hard and raw, not to my liking as I belong to the '吃软不吃硬' group. My hub love it though.

'Can you cook like this next time?'

Ok lor... less work for me ah. :P

Service
The waiters were not exactly friendly - no smiles at all. (Maybe it doesn't feel good to work on a New Year's day. :P ) But that's ok, our food were served rather promptly.

Price
$36.64 (including 2 cups of green tea)
(after OCBC credit card 10% discount)

Place
Vivocity
#02-116