Awfully Chocolate

Guess what this is?

Someone tried: "nutella with ferrero in the middle..."

Rich Chocolate Cupcake - $4.90 ea.

Excerpt from their website:

“… Soft chocolate cupcakes dressed in delicious soft dark chocolate frosting with a dollop of dark chocolate fudge…”

Sounds decadent, eh?

Yes, it's rich. Very rich. Be sure to have a glass of water on standby. You’ll need it.

Cute cutleries!

I used to collect the spoon, which I got whenever I bought their ice-cream.

However, getting a pair of this, where the fork's profile is actually cut out from the original spoon design; really takes the cake.

Shooo cute...!!!

Dark Chocolate Truffles

These are hand-cut truffles that are sold by weight - $13.00 per 100g . Reminds me a lot like the stuff from Royce'.

Honestly, I wouldn't want to compare this one here with the one from Truffs. Cos' the truffles from Truff are exquisitely on another level altogether. Their cakes, too.

Awfully Chocolate rather, seems to cater to the masses. Creating good quality chocolate confectionery at a more affordable rate so everyone can have a taste.

Anyway, their products here - nice stuff. However, it's still their ice-cream that make me wanna hunt them down. *slurp!*

Fried Fish Noodles.. :(

Can you believe that the lady at the stall actually screw up my order? Then again, I don’t blame her - at first.

She was handling 2 stalls and 3 of us made our order with different specifications for each bowl. She muddled up all the specifications, which goes like this:

"2 bee hoon, 1 yee mee. 1 bee hoon with bitter gourd, egg and milk. 1 bee hoon no bittergourd, no egg, with milk. Yee mee, no bittergourd, with egg and no milk."

But upon after carrying the bowl of piping hot soup to the table, I noticed that she missed out the milk. I’m fine with that.

When I carefully tried to dig out some fish (I don’t want to break the poached egg yolk inside) before snapping some pics, I found out that there’s NONE. Fried fish noodles with NO fish. Definitely short-changed, there. Grrr….!

So I brought the bowl back to her and informed her of the error. She took a pair of tongs and ROUGHLY dug around for the NON-EXISTENT fish pieces, thus breaking my dear egg and making a mess of my soup! My poor egg yolk!!!!

It’s bad enough that I missed out on eating my half-cooked poached egg because it got cooked thouroughly when sitting in the hot soup for too long. To have it broken?!

The messed up bowl

I’m miffed. -___-'

ps: I loved to have my egg partially-cooked, whichever way it’s done.

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

After the Charco's lunch, my colleague remarked that there's still time for desserts and brought us to his favourite dessert shop, a few blocks away.

Snow Ice

32 Degrees Fahrenheit is a small eatery selling snowflake ice/ snow ice/ sliced ice, a popular Taiwanese dessert where is the ice is shaved so finely, they come served in layers.

There are various flavours available, eg. green tea, coffee, chocolate, lavender etc. Toppings include fresh fruits like banana, mango, strawberry & even D24 durian. Non-fresh fruits toppings are like M&M's, red bean, koko crunch, oreos etc.

Milk w/ Mango & Strawberries - $5

My colleagues told us that the plain milk flavour is the best so we chose just that and we had fresh fruits to go with it for a more refreshing palate.

We had the 'standard' aka large size, which is sufficient for sharing between 2 persons. My colleague had a whole bowl to himself, though. Then again, he's... well, different.

The ice was so fine, it melts nicely on the tongue. And the milk taste wasn't that overpowering. I had thought that the mango would have been the perfect pairing for this but it came out with a flat, sweet taste. Very one-dimensional. The strawberries were nicely tart and sweet at the same time and the flavours mingle really well with the milk ice.

On the fresh fruits also have bits of aloe vera jelly in them. Really, really refreshing on a hot weather!

Their website HERE.

Location:
Block 85
#01-666
Marine Parade Central

CHARCO'S "the flaming chicken"

We're often at loss as to what have for lunch. We always made a mad gamble to head blindly to a certain location and decide on the last minute, where we'll be dining at.

Initially, we meant to head to Parkway Parade. Then a colleague decided to just dine at the Marine Parade hawker centre. After which, another colleague recalled that Charco's had just moved into this area.

Entrance...

From the multi-storey carpark, that is. Back door into the foodcourt which brings you right to Charco's stall (hence that label on the door?).

Rack of Ribs + 3 Salads - $15.10

My order.

Choice of salads: (clockwise from bottom) potato salad, Greek salad & Caesar's salad. The potato salad is kinda' plain, actually. But nice, nevertheless. I love the sour-y vinaigrette used in the Greek salad. Aside from the cucumbers & capsicums, there's also some chunks of feta cheese. Yum!

As soon as I know that I'm heading here, I've set my mind on ordering their ribs. Aside from the one time at Breeks, I've never really had BBQ ribs anywhere else.

However, I wasn't sure if I want the regular ribs meals, which will come with only either chips, creme potato and peas. I had seen their salad display and I KNOW I WANT them.

Only when my colleague placed his order for this, do I realise there's such an option. However, the ribs had appeared pretty large in the picture and I fear that they'll be too much.

Turns out, they already conveniently cut the ribs up upon serving so we can easily nibble or slice, piece by piece.

Rack of Ribs + 3 Salads - $15.10

My colleague had a similar order, with different varieties of salads.

Since the ribs used is from lamb meat, the 'gamey' scent is pretty much inevitable (although I personally think that using rosemary does help a bit). My colleague, the foodie was griping so much about that. And the fact that the meat was not fall-off-the-bone kind of tender.

I asked him what the usual ribs are like (read: pork). He went on to glorify the tenderness, how meaty and definitely not 'gamey'.

I told him straight on that I don't have much of a choice, have I? It's either lamb of beef. And beef ribs tend to be tough and dry. Beside, I'm fine with this scent since we do get it when we wallop the beef/bone steak anyway.

Honestly, I like the ribs here. The BBQ marinade made the meat slightly crispy at the edges and leave a somewhat sweet aftertaste. The meat is tender enough such that we don't have a tough time chewing. Makes it all the more fun to just pick up each piece with our fingers and nibble on the meat and lick the sauce off the bones.

3 salads

My colleague chose the: (clockwise from bottom) coleslaw, Caesar's salad & chicken avocado.

In the latter, it seems that the term 'avocado' only apply to the sauce used (like a guacamole??). There's also farfelle pasta in that.

The Caesar salad is worth ordering. Comes with a piece of boiled egg, some chicken bits, croutons & shredded cheddar cheese.

Gonna check out the seafood salad & creme potato the next time I'm here.

Hawaiian Meal - $8.50

Another colleague's order. Pineapple fritters, chips and 1/4 chicken.

The chicken here is the Charco's chicken, which is the one marinated with herbs. Another version would have been the Portugese chicken, which is supposedly spicy.

I didn't really try the chicken so I can't comment on its texture. Except that I got a large piece of the skin and it was crispy! However, the flavor seem a tad... mild. Maybe because this is the herb-y version. Not sure about the spicy, Portuguese one, though.

The chips here seem to be sticks cut from an actual potato, reminding me of those served with orders of 'Lamb chop' at at Indian 'mamak' stalls.

Oh, chilli, ketchup and BBQ sauce are free-flow. Whee!

Their online menu HERE.

Location:
Blk 89 Marine Parade Central
#01-750,
Island Food Junction 

They've since shifted to another location nearby:
Blk 80 Marine Parade Central
(an old coffee shop)

Arnold's Fried Chicken re-visited

Spring chicken

My colleague's order.

You read that right. 1 person. 1 whole spring chicken.

Of course he didn't finish. Then again, the chicken today is bigger than usual.
Otherwise, yes, he didn't have trouble going through the whole bird.

I can just imagine the words going though your head right now. Starts with 'G', right?

6pc chicken

The set meant for 2 persons had only 5 pcs of chicken so we added another for the 3 of us. Comes with 2 buns, coleslaw, fries & 2 soft drinks.

The chicken is really really nicely seasoned with a pretty heady smell of garlic. Eating it there enable us to enjoy them freshly fried - all crispy and juicy. Yumz!

Sides - coleslaw & fries

The fries were surprisingly good. Has a thicker cut and isn't dry. The coleslaw, well it does remind me of KFC's. Just that this taste way fresher.

Additional order - Potato Platter

Can't miss out on ordering this one. Wedges, criss-cut & chips on a platter with small tub of cheese dip.

Spring chicken again

Can't help it. The whole bird looked gorgeous!

Mon An Vietnamese Muslim Corner re-visited

UPDATE: The stall has moved to 459 Changi Road (Kassim Restaurant).

Cha Gio - $1.40 ea.

Their crispy fried spring rolls are still as awesome as ever.

Prawn Fried Bee Hoon - $3.50

My colleague ordered this again. He totally digg it. Must be the 6 big, fat prawns. We even packed some for my boss and she was like, "All these prawns for just $3.50?!"

Beef Fried Bee Hoon - $4.00

My order. The beef version of the above.

I finally had an idea as to how this seemed to be prepared. The beef is stir-fried, them mixed together with bee hoon, bean sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, chilli with some sweet vinegar mix. Done just like a salad actually.

Talk about salad, I can never get enough of those greens served on the side. Regular mint, Vietnames mint (daun kesum) & Thai basil. The beef goes really well with them!

Love it! But the portion may seem a tad small if you're very hungry.

Thai-Style Fried Beef - $5.00

My colleague felt like having a side dish, so we made a special request (he left it to me to negotiate). They were surprised to know that he just want to eat the beef just like that.

So the proprietress cum cook decide to prepare Thai-style stir fried beef.

Given that the beef slices were pretty thin, some of the meat got a little over-cooked. However, the seasoning was really appetizing. Again, the basil really made this dish work.

Beef + basil = awesome!

I’m already missing their pho…

Oh, I finally got may hands on their Goi Cuon! The ubiquituos summer roll, where the rice paper is filled with bee hoon, some greens & prawns.

I blogged about this once, when I bought some from the Vietnamese restaurant, Orange Lantern. You can never go wrong with this. Naturally, since the fillings are similar, they taste alike.

Admittedly, the veggie-lover in me love this version more than the fried one. :P

Breeks @ Changi Airport T2

Came down here with my close gal pals for dinner. Initial choice had been Swensens but I'm glad we came here. Ambiance was better, more cosy.

Too bad service was pretty lacking, what with the very much inexperienced staff. Totally adored the manager's initiative though, in making our table more 'baby-friendly', like placing the cutlery away from my baby's (very) quick hands.

Hot hazelnut chocolate - $4.80

Sounds good? Here's the best part, my friend actually ordered the Hazelnut Cappuccino ($4.30).

So I got to have a taste of this when she asked me to verify if this had been more of a chocolate drink than coffee.

They eventually replaced this with her actual order. This one wasn't that bad, actually!

Classic Avocado - $6.90

This is oh-so-awesome! Came highly recommended by my friend.

Avocado with milk AND vanilla ice-cream. My friend was griping that there was less mocha syrup than the previous time that she was there.

But it already taste sooo good!

There's actually a 'Rainforest' version that comes with crushed chocolate chips. Yum-zeh!

Side salad

Comes with every mains.

This may be a simple bowl of greens but I tell you, the vinaigrette totally rocks! I wonder if it's the 'honey-lime' sauce that seem prevalent in most of their salad dishes.

Waffle fries w/ cheese & sour cream toppings - $4.90

I can't believe this cost only that. Makes me wanna go back there and just order this. Especially when these came piping hot. *drools*

Baked seafood pasta New Orleans - $15.90

The picture and description on the menu looks really enticing. Was really excited to see that there was a chockful of seafood items in that bowl.

Just too bad the sauce was a lil'... bland. As someone who is not used to sprinkling salt into her food, I just bear with the slight tastelessness. What a waste. The sauce was almost good.
--------------------------

The menu here seemed to have shrunk somewhat. Maybe they re-vamped it. Missing some dishes that I've had before. Like the 'Honey something-something Ribs'. Hmm...

Botak Jones Favourites re-visited

Also within the Tang Tea House premise, this popular American foodstall was also sought after by my 2 cousins.

Told them there's an outlet at Bukit Batok, very near their Jurong neighbourhood (yes, they travel THAT far); yet they insist on coming here cos' they wanna have both western food AND dim sums under 1 roof. Anything for good food, aite...? ;P

Again most of the stuff here were repeat orders. Read more on my previous entry.

Whoopass Chili Cheese Fries (S) - $7.50

Stuffed Jalapenos ~$7.00

200gm Ribeye Steak - $16.70

1 of my cousin's order. Sides chosen were: coleslaw & double-baked cheese potato

That sure is a large slab of meat! She actually had trouble finishing. Should have recommended her the "Ribeye Lady's Cut", like what my mum had previously.

Cajun Chicken

Another cousin's order. Grilled marinated chicken breast topped with cheese & Cajun sauce. Sounds delightful enough. Sides chosen were: butter-boiled sweet corn and foccacia bread.

She actually ordered the large portion. With bread. Wow.

I told her to just sandwich the chicken in between the foccacia bread and eat like a sandwich. She cleaned out her plate eventually.

Sirloin Steak

Hubby's order. Sirloin steak is wayy smaller that the rib-eye. In fact, the size seem similar to the Lady's cut.

Sides chosen were: fries and coleslaw. As a fan of coleslaw, I was surprised to see him rejecting this version. He said that the one here taste "different". Pfft.

As always, the steak here is done according to what is requested. In fact, the server will ask us to cut a part of the steak to see if we agree to the done-ness before retreating. Nice!

Tang Tea House Hong Kong Cafe re-visited

2 of my cousins were totally enticed by my previous blog entry on this place and insist that I bring them here one day (you guys know who you are!).

You may notice that my orders are pretty much what I've had before. Can't help it, they were safe choices and they were good!

I don't bother to elaborate much on these (similar) dim sum dishes. You can hop over to my previous entry to read on them.

Teh Tarik

Anyway, as we know Hong Kong is pretty known for their milk tea. In the receipt this was stated as: 'Tea in HK Style'.

We asked for big cups. This one here is HUGE! Almost pint-sized.

Siew Mai

Har Gow

Xiaolong Bao

Crispy prawn dumpling

Inside the crispy prawn dumpling

Oh before I forgot, there's this chinese rojak stall inside here and their Yuotiao (Char Kway) Rojak is awesome!

Totally crispy and flavoursome, just that it ain't spicy. In fact, my mum said that it seem like it's done the traditional way. The youtiao was supposedly dipped in this chilli & syrup mix prior to being grilled. That's what gave another dimension to the flavour of this simple dish.

A-must-try!

Mon An Vietnamese Muslim Corner

UPDATE: The stall has moved to 459 Changi Road (Kassim Restaurant).

Despite this being a Halal food corner, their food is popular with non-muslims as well.

The proprietress comes across as Vietnamese (not just her features, she seem to converse in Vietnamese with her staff as well) so I guess the food served here are more or less authentic. Also, they’re made to order so you gotta wait a lil’ bit for food served freshly off the wok.

Cha Gio ~$1.40 ea.

Love their crispy fried spring rolls. The first batch were already pretty good and I was eager to order more but there were none left. Later on, my colleague saw that they were just done with cooking another batch and ordered more… They were piping hot! Yumz!

Too bad they’re out of the Gui Cuon -their fresh veggie springroll. I would love to get my hands on those…

Pho Bo ~$5

Their Beef Soup Noodle may come off as a tad pricey but it was well worth it. They were pretty generous with the fresh & really tender slices of beef. The hearty bowl of soup is topped with veggies like bean sprouts, mint, basil and raw onions, making it all the more delish.

I wonder what that dark blob of sauce on top is... Hae Ko, like those used in Penang Laksa?

A Slice of 'Bo'

Look at that beautiful slice of beef! The beef was supposedly raw, prior to the hot soup being poured over it in the bowl.

Mi Xao Gia Vi ~$3.50

When I saw someone ordering this, I thought that this was a plate of vermicelli salad, for it reminded me of the one I had at Koh Nangkam.

Turns out my colleague ordered it and it's actually fried bee hoon. Will you just look at the generous serving of those big prawns?

He remarked that it's just like a plate of disintegrated Gui Cuon (the vegetable spring roll) but with less greens.

Oh well, since he was disappointed that he can't get his spring rolls, this turn out to be a nice replacement!

the stallIt's located at the corner of this Chinese coffee shop at Jalan Masjid, right behind Kembangan Plaza. Warning: Crowded during lunch hours & closed on Sundays.

ASLI Village revisited

Came back here, with the in-laws this time. Considering we all live a mere 10mins away, yet we have not really checked out most of their food.

The seafood stall at the corner

Hubby thought of ordering various dishes with rice from the seafood stall and share amongst us.

BBQ Stingray w/ chinchalok

One of the dish ordered from there was the BBQ stingray was was grilled just the way I like it. The meat was tender yet the thin edges were so crispy that I ate those part together with the crunchy bones.

The sambal was heavily infused with belachan and they were quite generous with the chinchalok on the side.

Other orders were fried rice (so-so only), crispy chicken wings (reminds me of har cheong kai), omelette (for the kids), kangkong belachan (little chilli, too much belachan!) and cereal prawns. The latter was pretty nice, actually. Quite high on my list of favourites for cereal prawns. If only the prawns were bigger, then it can contend with the ones from Adimann.

This stall was flanked with so many orders on that Saturday night, so service was pretty slow.

Thai Mix-Beef

My MIL on the other hand, refused to have rice and insist on ordering something else for herself.

First she ventured to the stall selling 'opeh' noodles (at my recommendation) but changed her mind after seeing the long queue.

Later on, I saw her in front on the Flamingo Thai food stall. She told me that she still had fond memories of the Thaksin Beef noodles that my BIL bought for her a few days back so she wanna try their version.

This mixed version had thinly sliced fresh meat, stewed meat and meat balls all together in the same bowl. The soup is not as robust and not as heavily infused with spices as Thaksin's version. Aside from the bean sprouts, there weren't really any greens. They do top the soup with a dollop of minced garlic, though (I LOVE garlic!).

Satay

As it is know, ASLI Village is managed by the people behind 'Jumain Satay', so they are really the main stall is this food court.

I'm pretty reluctant to say this but... I've definitely had (much) better satays.

That night I ordered the 'tender' version of their satays because I had my MIL in mind. I asked them regarding the difference between the 'original & tender' versions. The tender version is less sweet and supposedly more palatable for the elderly.

The meat looked like they've been minced before made into little lumps and skewered.

The sauce... well, seriously lacked some ingredients or something. It's just lacked the oomph!

PS: For my favourite satay stalls, you can view my previous 'random food' entry; towards the end.

Smoothy de Cafe re-visited

Mi Rebus

My mum told me that someone had informed her of a certain stall within Singapore Post shopping centre that served pretty good Mi Rebus.

When she told me that, my thought flew first to the food court at basement 2. Then again, I recalled just how dismal the food there is so I almost told her that she might have got the building wrong.

That's when I recalled this Malay food stall on basement 1, somewhere along the same row as McDonald's. Many times I've passed and seen office folks relishing their bowl of Mi Rebus.

I've patronised that stall a few times since then. However, it's only now that I finally tried a bowl of this. That little something on top is a fried chicken cutlet that I can't resist ordering.

And oh yeah. That Mi Rebus is really something. No wonder people talked about it. I'm impressed.

Waffle!

Who would have thought that the Malay food stall shared the same (tiny) premise as this bubble tea stall which happens to sell one of the best waffle around?

And their namesake, the smoothie is pretty good, too.

MY own waffle...

Of course I can't resist getting one of those for myself! Chocolate waffle please.

Thought of saving it for later (tea break, maybe?) but seeing it all piping hot and crispy, I took a bite.

Of course that one bite lead to another AND another... O_o'

random eats... again

Mui Fun

It was pretty balmy that day. I was thinking of having something hearty, warm and soothing. This is the closest I can get to my idea of comfort food; without ordering porridge. Rice topped with really egg-y, seafood gravy loaded with some greens.

The really ‘egg-y’ part is what I’m after. I love my eggs!

Nasi Lemak (set)

I know that some places tint their coconut-infused fragrant rice green to accentuate the ‘pandan’ look. Like the Nasi Lemak served at Qi Ji.

But THIS Nasi Lemak I had for lunch that day had an eerie-looking green tint that looks wayyy too unnatural. Looks almost turquoise to me. I think they overdid the colouring a wee bit.

Could be that this is the first time that I had nyonya achar served as a set with my Nasi Lemak. Not that I mind. The sambal here was pretty good too. As with the fried chicken wing. Just too bad that crispy wing was a weeny bit undercooked inside (prolly cooked with too-high heat).

Fish burger & potato wedges

It really is refreshing to order something like this from someplace other than a ‘branded’ fast food outlet.

Burger is simple patty + lettuce + mayo ($2.20). Potato wedges comes with oodles of mayo ($2.00).

Colleague asked why didn’t I ask for cheese wedges instead? The mayo already did me in. Having the cheese would have been an overkill.

Maggi goreng

These are usually available at those stalls manned by Indian-Muslim hawkers, whose style of cooking usually having some red/orange coulouring added into their ketchup, which they use to season when frying.

The bright colour can put-off those who aren’t used to it but locals here are pretty much lackadaisical. That’s why also, we try to cut down on intake of food consumed from these stalls.

Too much food coulouring ain’t good for you.

But I gotta add that this stall at Changi Village food centre (the market side, right beside the Chinese drinks stall) also serve some pretty mean satay. Both the chicken and beef meat are marinated (and also grilled) nicely. And the sauce totally sum up all that goodness. It's pretty good, overall.

No wonder almost everyone have a plate of satay on their table (this was the only stall serving satay, that night).

My family, being the fussy Javanese they are, are always on the hunt for good Javanese eats (eg. Mi Rebus, Rawon, Satay...). Another of my family's favourite satay are those sold at East Coast Lagoon Food Centre, the one in front of Musa Barbecue Seafood.