Peperoni Pizzeria, Greenwood Fish Market& Bistro, Shimbaishi Soba, Dessert Story, Madam Saigon, Ah Chew Desserts

Yeah I am alive, and what better proving in than another long food trail...all in a day again.. exams are finally OVER!! Out to lunch with the CG and eventually it was down to bestie and me again.

Peperoni's is part of the Les Amis group of restaurants specialising in pizzas..existed since a long long time ago in year one ancient days when no cars meant out of the way places like this means more calories burnt getting to the place than indulgence calories so heh obvious economically this inaccessible place doesn't make sense. Ok, I was lazy.

Post Patho warrants something comforting though and pizzas are the best junk food to indulge in. AND! the ride all the way into greenwood was so exciting there was this friggin gorgeous grey Lamboghini Murcielago in between kok's car and mine and i was so happy it turned into the road towards Raffles Girls Primary (at first we thought he was gonna pick up some lucky daughter from school) then he turned into greenwood! hai but he didnt bother parallel parking next to the ex ex restaurant he was gonna dine at...went into some upslope culdesac and obviously the other 2 guys in my cg who drove drifted off to park near him =P

i didn't, i parked right in front of peperoni's. I rather walk less than see more.

Peperoni Pizzeria (6 Greenwood Avenue Hillcrest Park) promotes grafitti: pick up from the numerous crayons and just doodle away on the paper covering the table...protects your table, provides entertainment, screams child friendly - what am i doing here?!

pathology never fails to haunt us down...check it out

mind boggling variety of flavours.You can choose to have 2 flavours in one pizza. We chose 3 large pizzas. I was tempted to try the 4 Formaggi but i was afraid Jason might migrate to an adjacent table so I didn't attempt that..

Frutti Di Mare

Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Prawns, Mussels, Squid Rings

We ordered a whole seafood pizza. This was very unique, because I haven't tried seafood on a pizza before- its always beef, sausage. The seafood aroma was quite strong - and fresh too, the prawns were quite crunchy. The crust was really thin as well and has the crackling effect when you bite into it.

But I still prefer my pizza more buffed up - like the ones over at Rocky's. More crust and more ingredients, please.

Left: Suprema: Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Shiitake Mushrooms,Chicken Sausage, Onions and red chilli

Right: Manzo: Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Sliced Beef, Garlic and Bell Peppers

The pizzas were generally quite flavourful although i wished there was more sausages and sliced beef around. They seemed to have downplayed the mozzarella too Im surprised the waitress was quite sharp to eavesdrop to find out that one of us couldnt stand cheese and offered to have half of the pizza do without (well at least the restaurant saves too). Maybe thats why the cheese was not overwhelming..not a bad thing.

Left: Salmon: Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Sliced smoked Salmon, Caramel Onion and Capers
Right: Funghi: Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Mixed Mushroom (Porcini, Shitake, Button)

For salmon, i doubt that its smoked - it looks boiled inside out. Not the salted smoked ones for sure, but it adds a certain sweetness to the pizza. The mushroom pizza was rather....vegeterian! Meat in pizzas do make quite alot of difference.

Well we were still hungry as we filed out of Peperoni's...i think we could do a large pizza each, because the pizzas weren't too heavy going.

Cafe Iguana is actually opening at Greenwood!! That area is undergoing some major tenant shuffle. Sebastian's are no longer there and I don't recall Shiro stilll being there.

But i guess certain establishments will never disappear like Lana's and Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro( 34 Greenwood Avenue Hillcrest Park) which we settled for..

We actually came on an oyster day (every tuesdays the oysters are a dollar each) but it is only for dine in. We were intending to takeaway 2 seafood baskets to my house.

Not really photo friendly, I was told no photography allowed so I managed a couple..

The fish here is rather fresh..you can choose to buy any of these and add $6 (cooking price) and you have take away food right away.

or else there is a takeaway menu that you can order from and all the prices displayed are nett.

Seafood Basket ($15)

6 people shared 2 seafood baskets and it filled us up after our pizza lunch. There were 2 large King prawns, scallops, fish and calamari. Being freshly fried, everything was very tasty and the seafood fresh and crunchy. But if you leave it to sit a bit too long the batter tends to become soggy. Fries were average (nothing beats the freshness of Yella Fellas but thats a class of its own)

Fish and Chips $9.50

I bought 2 sets of Fish and Chips for the siblings and they liked it. The fish portion was rather generous and they use New Zealand white fish. You can actually choose your own fish (like Haddock, etc) and again top up six bucks for the cooking for your fish and chips.

The CG eventually dispersed to their own afternoon agenda leaving me and Kelly. So when there is 2 of us left obviously we'd go on our movie date again and this time it was to catch Milk.

But of cos we needed our sweet tooth fix - the fried food and pizzas totally killed our throat!!- and popcorn will be the last stab so of cos we needed something cooling so we found our way to Shimbaishi Soba(B1-41, Paragon), M's favourite teatime dessert place in town.

For 6 bucks you can choose any of the above desserts and a drink. for the more calculative folks out there obviously you'd choose the more ex desserts to get more bang for your buck.

Funwari Matcha Cheesecake

Green tea cheesecake with fruits, red bean and vanilla icecream

This is our favourite of the two desserts that we ordered. I guess we prefer richer denser desserts. The green tea aroma was rather strong, yet not compromising on the cheesy after taste. Even better when matched with the red bean and vanilla icecream - which I thought tasted rather milkpowderish.

Matcha Tofu Jelly
Green tea tofu with fruits, red bean and vanilla icecream. Served with fried soba

This came across rather flat as compared to the cheesecake. I guess its tofu..how flavourful can it be? But I really couldnt detect any green tea in this. Eating it together with the red bean and vanilla icecream totally overwhelms everything else. BUT! we found the best way to enjoy both desserts - take a bit of the cheesecake, a bit of the tofu jelly, some red bean paste and then the icecream and voila! a very interesting dense cake cum jelly like concotion of desserts. Really interesting.

The fried soba was not too bad - Kelly said it reminded her of the pok-pok for yusheng.

We kinda hurried through desserts cos we arrived at paragon at 410pm and our show at cineleisure was at 440pm and we havent even bought tickets yet!

by the time we scurried to cineleisure it was already 450pm so no time to queue for our mandatory popcorn and by the time we settled in it was just nice - they changed the reel for the film to start. Our mouths felt damnnn empty but perhaps it was good that we didnt crunch and munch on popcorn for it was a damn small cinema and we'd annoy many dudes with our snacks.

Milk didn't move me as much as I thought it would. Basically its just the rise of a gay politician campaigning for his rights and being instrumental to converting San Francisco into a state which embraces homosexuality. And on the way up he made out with random partners (even fans, gosh), and in the end he was assasinated by a fellow politician along with the mayor. I guess I am rather desensitised towards the action (thanks to zoukout) but my friend was rather grossed out. An interesting survey of the cinema audience after that made up for the rather bland film.

I needed to collect a library book (the Snowball) from the National Lib at Bugis - but it was 7pm and gotta pass through 2 ERP gantries on the way there (making the government charges more expensive than the parking) so we hung around town before 8pm (802pm, to be exact - 2 minutes late man that stupid gantry timing) and we stumbled into the new basement at Heeren.

Heeren is trying to market itself as a food haven with it converting the Annex into a food area and now even its basement too - Macs is gonna plant itself there soon, and Shokudo and Subway has already opened.

Everytime we pass by a new dessert place we cannot resist stopping to try something and of cos we couldnt pass on Dessert Story(Basement, Heeren). Kelly actually tried the outlet near her place and she says the mango dessert and herbal jelly is very good.

We wanna try the durian and black sesame shaved ice next.

Green Tea with red bean $3.80

See how finely threaded the ice is! and the thing is that it doesnt melt much! unlike the uncontrollable rates of how icekachang disinegrates..maybe thats one advanatage of eating this in a deep deep bowl so it doesnt collapse on you.

The ice has a very faint green tea taste and the sweetness comes almost solely from the red bean paste. But it is very refreshing, perfect for our tortured throats.

We lingered around the damn Taka gantry till 802pm then zoomed in as soon as the lights went out. After collecting my book we zoomed down to Liang Seah Street where my dear friend has her virgin forray into Vietnamese food.
been wanting to try Madam Saigon (30 Liang Seah Street) for some time but never did...this is my third try of Viet food after Vavavoom (at Purvis Street) and Pho House (at Suntec). I still think Vavavoom is the best of the lot.
Many variations of Pho - in terms of the type of meat you want in your soup - tendon, brisket, beefballs. There is also 2 types of broth - the normal beef one or the Hue style - which is the spicy version. They add the Chef's special sauce which consists of fish paste, belachan etc.

We were convinced to order the fresh rice rolls with prawns even though we wanted to try the Vietnamese pancake but since this is Kelly's first time trying Viet food I think she ought to try this very traditional dish. The minty taste of the leaves with the vermicelli and chewy rice wrap made the roll very raw indeed - so the sauce becomes very important. The second sweet and sour sauce tasted much better than the first dense cheecheongfun-like sweet sauce with peanuts.

Special Beef Noodle Soup $8.80

Hue Style (Spicy) Additional $1

I wanted both the special AND the spicy soup so i had to top up 1 buck. Cos if its just the spicy beef vermicelli hue style there won't be any beef balls and I wanted to try them!

The spiciness of this soup is rather unique - there was a belachan kick to it. The chilli oil kinda overwhelmed the beef broth though so I couldn't really appreciate the beefiness of the broth.

The noodles are not as smooth as Vavavoom's and the beef balls taste alright. Brisket rather tender too, though the slices are realllly thin!

Beef Ball noodle soup $7.80

They really section the dish quite nicely - the beef balls to one side and noodles the other - even sectioning the beef ball into quarters too-does this cook the beef balls more evenly or is this to facilitate eating?

But anyway, the soup was rather robust, the stock was rather good. But i still prefer Vavavoom's version of the Pho, must go back there and revise and do a post on it. Hopefully it was as good as I remembered - cos that was the first time I tried Viet and I never looked back - perhaps the first will always be more memorable?shrugs.

We wanted to leave stomach space for Ah Chew Desserts (and actually, if possible, Ji De Chi also) so we didn't try the Vietnamese pancake but I suppose that can be for another day...

A perpetual long queue is always sighted at Ah Chew Desserts. I realise its also cos of the long preparation time and some of them are just waiting for their orders - but this means sitting along those corridors can be quite an awful experience, unless you don't mind ppl staring at your desserts or eyeing your seats.

So of cos we got the inside seats and it was not that stuffy. Eyeballed the list and decided on the steam egg and a paste...pay at counter and wait. and wait.

Ginger Fresh Milk Steam Egg(Cold) $3

The ginger juice here is really potent, if you suck in too fast at one go, its really quite unpleasant. We should have tried the plain steamed egg, on retrospect because we weren't ginger fans. But the ginger does give that extra edge, gives the naturally sweet goodness of the steamed egg an extra dimension. But must remember to drain the ginger juice with each scoop of egg, if not......phwoah ginger overload! The egg custard is really good though, really smooth. I won't really feel like a tauhuay after this haha.

We were talking about tastebuds anatomy over this dessert because we were trying to classify its taste. Kelly was saying wasabi belongs to an entire taste classification on its own..its amazing how our taste buds can decipher the different types and levels of intensity of the flavours right? Like..in intensively rich dishes, do the neurons fire more frequently? how do they tell from rich to bland, sweet to sour? its really quite amazing how they do it(when do these primitive cells mature?do they become more specialised as we grow up and become more exposed to more types of food?is it a matter of nature of nurture?how do humans ever evolutionise to appreciate durian and cheese?), and how these neurons fire SO FAST. Most importantly, there is a fine balance between the satisfaction that come with filling full (with the mechanical stretch receptors in your stomach) and truly appreciating the taste of the food. Divides the world into buffet supporters and antagonists, i suppose.

And we were talking about potential drugs which can work on hyperstimulation pathways to trick the neuronal pathways. I mean, if something bland (with less sugar and calories) looks deceptively good and we can invent some drug that hyperstimulates our taste buds to prime them to think we're eating super sweet we'd be BILLIONAIRES!!!!Maybe thats where the artificial sweeteners come in. But I guess its a give and take. Aspartame kills your liver : all you zero coke lovers out there and fellow cg mates : health alert (not like my blog endorses healthy living but.... just in case) And food is an experience for me now, all the senses are truly important: sight smell taste texture makes all the difference.

I dun know how I went into a lengthy discussion over such a simple dessert. Simply good dessert that is. I guess certain dishes have the potential to trigger off certain (eg childhood) memories or certain thought trains that can make rather entertaining banter. Choose your gastronomic partners carefully..Not only all of the listed above senses are important: the company makes the most difference to me! Appreciating food together and discovering something new and good with someone is always exciting with the right company! I missed missed all these crazy food outings very much and every day of my study break I was craving for a day like this with you, Kelly!

Almond and Sesame Paste, Large $2.50

Now onto another simple yinyang dessert of Almond paste and Sesame paste. Yinyang (the symbol)simply reminds me of SCGS. The sesame paste here is very good. Its a different type of sesame base from the Amoy Street one, but we find this much richer and smoother. The almond essence aroma was quite prominent indeed but it went very well with sesame. We ordered a large size and it can get quite monotonous with one flavour so 2 is definitely more interesting....

cos we can doodle more! Looks like we didn't doodle enough at Peperoni's... Patho is over!