Kim's Family, Udders, Allanbakes

Today a nong nong quiz and interesting syncope videos led onto a masala thosai lunch (and marc and I getting tempted about one for one at Forlino's with Women's Weekly!!!!), before some shorts and bleeding (we were......internally =P) before I set off to collect the cake.

Kim's Family (Lorong Kilat) has got to be the find of the year! Been here with James (thank god he tolerated my nonsense when our spanish quest gg), the old CG, Kheng/Nat/Newman, and now finally with the family. And I learnt that making a reservation gets you a place in a separate room in the restaurant. Complimentary sides - whats new here is the coleslaw at the forefront (with fruits!) and this brown slices of ?taukuar which tasted more like fish cakes.

My seafood kimchi soup - plenty of squid galore.

THE AWESOME OCTOPUS FRIED RICE (which my dad thought was too sweet, but I like!!)

Brother was overwhelmed by the Spicy Beef Soup, with the massive od of vegetables and giant beansprouts. So ended up putting it in the middle to share... no guesses who was the happiest

If you like your beef soup a little sweet go for the Bulgogi stew beef (with glass noodles). Generous chunks of beef.

Mom went for the Bibimbap which was rather bland cos you had to add the sweet chilli yourself, and the variety of veg is not as awesome as the Seoul Yummy Express outlet at Food Republic at Suntec (which imho has the best, value for money Bibimbap). No kimchi either. Thats why I suggest a meaty hotplat or soup dish cos there are already so many free flow veggies in the complimentary sides.

Rice cakes are so so super chewy my brother didnt think it was meant for swallowing - still prefer those at Hanseang Korean Restaurant at Square 2 but the sauce here is still nonetheless quite good (and sweet lar, thats why I like!)

Seafood Pancake - I am a big fan of theirs.

Anyway, Udders at Lorong Kilat is doing so extremely well! Poor Frutta La Viva down the road had not a single soul....and we passed by the Korean Fried Chicken......Kels up for it yar??
We were SO FULL we could only pop by Udders to buy 2 pints back. Baileys and orange chocoloate bitters (only cos chocolate whiskey was too expensive)

Allanbakes' White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake - as creamy as ever but a mixup meant double this. Dun know where the dude is moving to after Village Square goes man.

So now I have 2 cakes and 2 pints of icecream. My fridge is so congested Its blocking the lights of the fridge.

Hatched, Coffee Nations

Morning started off with powerpacked neuros back to back from stroke to gbs to pd ( where it was too obvious why we didnt have the presentation =( ) and latest obsession with the thosai at housemen's, rounded off with insane ideas on bowel prep for buffets (irrigation and catheterization, manual bladder wash out) to laters after butterfingers and reese's about lunching getting full after suntanning (K will win hands down and I'll just wither and decompose =P). After Dr RT's pckd (poor disturbed soul) and Dr T's on his pet topic and another interesting tof and a long convos with my dad's colleague I was off to meet James, with a dead phone and troubling ppl on the way.

Anyway, I suggested either the new roast meats place by La Petit but cos James couldnt find its location online (think its ?Cluny court) but anyway the other place was Hatched (Evans Lodge, 26 Evans Road#01-06), and was somewhere in between tt, sgh, and where we live. Its next to the 24 hours The Prata Place (which was for once, closed in time for Hari Raya Haji!!). And we were wondering who actually stays at Evans Lodge. The Wine Company was next door and was quite lively, with the crowd enjoying the pre-long weekend.

Ordered Poached eggs- one with salmon and the other with corn wagyu beef. And the reason why we have one of each here is cos we requested so! =) My's with potato with onions and a big bunch of salad which James refused to eat so I had a garden to myself...

His with mash potatoes - anyway, we thought that the corn wagyu beef was a little too hard for our liking. But otherwise it was alright, not that mind-blowing- the English muffin was a little too soggy for my liking, love my bread a little more toasty. Somehow J and I always end up at Eggs places like the previous time at Choupinette (boy was it long ago, right after his eopt at tt).

Had to pick mommy (darn that dead phone gotta koop his mrsa infested phone) so after that we then first headed to be wowed by the halloween like lights before trying KPO (crowded with supercars) and trying Laurent's at Robertsons (closing - and forgot coupons !!) and then we landed at Blujazz at Haji Lane (no live music) and FINALLY The Coffee Nations (17 Haji Lane). Here at Hari Raya Haji heh, how appropriate.....ly lame. Anyway, its super happening, this little cove - had trouble squeezing in between a red Carrera and J was more concerned about it than the one behind =P Smoke pipes everywhere, the sweet aroma is real compelling.

Anyway, must say that this place is a great place to hang out till late(till 1am!) Some people were even boardgaming/carding and its really homely, with signature brews to boast. The owners source coffee beans all over the world and bring in only the best. Was supposed to chill here with K/chong but somehow think this place is a little too far flung!

And the service here is super attentive - they even asked if we wanted water before we started ordering - this despite the fact that the selling point is their drinks and coffee. Excellent service man. Will return to try the Beef Lovers' special (meatballs and sausages!!) and their finger food platter, and of cos their really interesting drinks (spotted some with orange , others with whiskey etc)

Affogato - vanilla in expresso with caramel sauce. It was too tiny a scoop of icecream amidst a really strong bitter brew! But J was sensitized by his whittakers dark choc so this was no challenge. I dun know why I cant power up even with my obsession with soy lattes.

Chocolate lava- this in turn, has a double serving of icecream. No lava in this, but J really liked the texture of this - he feels they got it just right, slightly moist but chocolatey nonetheless. I think I like my brownie grossly drenched in sauce, and as wet and nutty as possible..

We also ordered a signature brew - the Chocolate Rum coffee - no decaff drinks here so we just had this. J is super sensitive to coffee (tachycardia comes almost stat) so we thought the alcohol will negate the coffee effects. This was served with a cinnamon stick - and J gamely used it as a straw when I asked him to....heh. I did it with my Chilli Chocolate Mocha at Oriole previously.

Eventually I did a Macs thing (overturn my ice cream cone into my apple pie = instant Macs apple crumble - which S used to think was rather disturbing and disgusting to watch!! ), and I drenched the remaining expresso in my affogato into the cake. Then eventually I added the Chocolate Rum drink. Final straw, I crushed up the complimentary cookie with the coffee into the affogato cup, added some chocolate rum coffee and added some brownie and it sent me to Food for Thought heaven for a while - the chocolate/expresso/marshmallow brownie there is FRIGGIN AWESOME!!

Anyway, on the way back it was quite philosophical before our usual unwind and chill in the car before zooming home (not before sensible him knocked some sense into flighty self....heh. Reinforcing the lack of plans and mood swings:topics). NO WORK NO SCHOOL! =) Happy Hari Raya everyone!

Laurent Bernard Chocolatier, Playhouse

Mag, Yiks and I took off after morning rehearsals - supposed to start at 11am but nothing happened till lunch, when an insipid DeliF's smoked salmon sandwich did no justice to the day's work, and we had to scot off somewhere for some good coffee and icecream. So we packed into Yiks car and zoomed to Portsdown Road, where we had a really luxurious tea break (whilst the rest Sub-ed!) at Laurent's Cafe & Chocolate Bar ( 5B Portsdown Road #01-02 Wessex Village Square)

We loved that we started the tea break with some complimentary chocolate pieces in the cold room =) whilst Laurent the man actually came out to make conversation (or check on us =P)

Blackforest cake, really light with a thick layer of cream, and raspberry puree, with bits of chocolate lightly dusted above.

Chocolate tart - a Ferrero Rocher compressed neatly into a pastry that disappears half as fast..

Chocolate and Caramel icecream

The waitresses got the order wrong (we wanted coffee icecream) so we got a complimentary scoop of coffee icecream. Loved the thick caramel icecream here though, the chocolate and caramel melts to form a really sweet sludge that we savoured right at the end.

Coffee icecream, tasting like a frozen creamy form of the illy's double expresso that Mag ordered ie extremely bitter. Poor babe had a mini concussion after that from the chocolate and coffee od.

Plenty of overlaps from last year's playhouse with huilin as my double, my sluts getting cut off, except that this year instead of a mini fight choreography there was the zeng tambourine dance - thanks to grann and mummy for making time to come by!

And today was the day I od-ed on Macs - for supper at West Coast and for breakfast with Chongs and soft serve od too =P bad face injury made great excuses at butter, no doubt.

Big D's, Haato

Meetup with the Aussie gang at Big D's (Blk 46 Holland Drive #01-359). Many troubles finding the place till it was known that it was at the coffee shop housing the XO fishhead beehoon. But totally worth the find!

Love my eggplant lasagna - oozing with cheese all over my firmish eggplant. Super thick layers of cheese, tomatoes and eggplant, this was lip-smacking good.

Signature crabmeat linguine which indeed lives up to its name.

Anchovies Pasta - a tad salty for our liking

Snapper -the sauces here are most amazing!

Beer Battered Fish and Chips - of which my dad is a fan of. Snapper is used here.

Beef Goulash- this is really good - thick layers of beef chunks in a piquant sauce, and the consistency is almost stew like, most flavourful.

56 chicken - hey this is really really good - the sauce over baked chicken was super tasty with the rice.

Popped over to Ridgewood for haato (5 Ridgewood Close Unit G1) - parked semi-illegally outside the condo. quite a search, but luckily sat in V's car. Shared these with Rous - chocolate banana and sesame.

Rockmelon, Greentea and red bean.

We relived Aussie days with stacko again! and laters to my house to collate photos and mj.

Botak Jones and 4 Fingers Bonchon Chicken, courtesy of K's iPhone

This post is courtesy of Kel's iPhone...most of my thoughts are in the previous post.

It was a cloudy day (threatening to rain) when Kels and J went to get tickets to 2012 and I met them at Botak Jones (Youth Park, Orchard). Plenty of birds flying around Youth Park, sometimes swooping damn near us, but still quite breezy and pleasant to have a meal. Will try the Philipino food next door the next time round! The meats look damn awesome.

Massive with 4 slices of cheese. With potato salad and cheese mash.
Fish and Chips =)
J's favourite Cajun chicken. Pasta salad, fries.

Free chocolate cake courtesy of Jeremy's loyalty card... Will only eat if it's free.

Anyway, the sides here are of quite miserable proportions, compared to the Clementi branch. The workers at the next table though, had towering proportions (upsized?) and left so much pasta behind!! So much that it was probably the same amout we got before we started eating.

Met Marc at level 4 and the disaster started cos we first got the venue mixed up, and then we lost the tickets to 2012! First step to recovery was when we found 4 tickets at the counter but they were not ours, and the second was J ran down to find them.... but i think even if you lose them, you can still let them know and they might let you in (i think absent minded me had such an incident before). My thoughts on the show in the previous post.

Mad shopping frenzy buying shoes and bag for mommy and highlight of the day as below...

Presenting the 4 Fingers Bonchon Chicken (Ion Orchard, Basement 4) !!! 3 Soy garlic and 3 Hot and Spicy ($9.95 combo set)- drumlets or wings of your choice. This is the 6 piece combo set. The hot and spicy has much more kick to it, and the skin in phwoah! most crisp, tasty to the bone.
Calamari and Prawn combo set. ($6.95 Combo set)The batter went better with the chicken though.

The fries are really awesome! The straight cut fries with some seasoning sprinkled atop, freshly fried on order. Sauces were self service- there was the thai chilli sauce and a ?mustard.

And according to their official website (according to Kelly, stat), your fingers are not supposed to be sticky cos the sauce adheres to the chicken skin damn well!

Botak Jones, Frolick, Provence

Marc, Jeremy, Kelly and I the biggest eaters in our group went for the 5 - for -4 offer at Botak Jones (Clementi). Massive.

Anyway, decided to dig up these photos of Botak (I think during Paeds! Why was I so busy then doing what??) cos we went again TODAY (Monday of week 2, gen med..only a ccf lect in the morning with some otot neuros) ! but no more 5 for 4 cos Marc wasn't around went to meet his dear ortho boss and lunched with his parents at the place I missed out. And I didn't bring my camera!!! So part 2 of Botak madness at Youth Park is gonna be sponsored by Kelly's iPhone. We had the same 3 dishes as the top 3 ones in this entry.

Fish and Chips - the breaded fish was most crisp

Cajun Chicken is Jeremy's favourite

Smoked Turkey Sandwich is a new favourite for me! More slabs of meat than the Cold Cut Trio at Subway, defos.

Steak.

The rojak at the stall next to Botak at Clementi's just your regular ones, if you need a rojak fix (we were greedy =P)

One of the boys drove so they headed straight to school to sleep so Kels and I continued over at Frolick (Holland V) where Kelly had her first taste of it...WE LOVE THE ZOUK ONE FOR ONE! Peach and Original - $1.80 with the zouk card.

Need to kuai kuai go collect my new one so we can max it out at the Cineleisure branch of Frolick! Sure very thirsty after all that popcorn

All our breads at Provence (Holland Village) for the CTS lecture later - Hazel and Chris were in front of us and were most amused....Kaya Wassant, Brazilian Cheese, Chocolate, Milk Pan.

Part 2 of Botak Madness - at Youth Park this time - coming up!

Watched 2012 today too...Makes us ponder if indeed there are contingency plans that governments are planning to save humanity in case of a calamity - and the issue of eugenics in saving who within mankind. Do we forget the many other species sharing this planet?

This kinda corelates to my reading of Thomas Friedman's (Cool surname!) Hot Flat and Crowded and it is amazing how many species are getting extinct every day... and each loss is a tragedy, a loss of a relative to mankind. Take for example, the mammal, the baiji Yangtze dolphin - one of the few freshwater dolphins in the world and are not longer in the waters of the Yangtze River (bless my ignorance, I didn't know dolphins swam in rivers!) Are we gonna do a Joan of Arc feat when calamity strikes, when we cant even save our own kind?

THe book moves on to talk about how humans built a really inefficient environment with the greatest efficiency ever known to man. What will we trade for convenience, connection with our other fellow human beings, and globalisation? It is ironic that we are as estranged to each other more than ever (not to mention other species), resorting to technology for solace. When was the last time you ever saw an eco-system in its entirety, something that is not planned or planted by your government (haha). And to power this race, all our power sources from below the ground- or 'hell' - like coal, fossil fuels are all polluting Mother Earth, and irrenewable, whereas the future should be towards energy sources from 'heavens' - from above ground - clean, renewable sources such as hydroelectric and solar power, and biomass.

Enough about the environment and natural calamities already, Marc and J left us and I walked with Kels to the Prologue - the new Popular at Ion (most surprised in my Chinese books phase), and before that we were rather depressed cos NO MORE A&W ROOT BEAR CREAM SODA !! SCREAMS WHO WIPED IT OUT!!!

Checked out shoes at Cole Han and the other crazy headache inducing shoe shop before we ate the BEST MINI FRIED CHICKENS EVER!! 4 Fingers Bon Bon Chicken, you are my new crave. Laters!

Quiznos

Quiznos has opened in Square 2 and is reason for cheer, siping at ttsh =)

Cheese steak with Kelly. The parmesan bread is damn awesome.

Smoked turkey with ranch. This meal was with Sharlene, and my old CG mates Jon Chris and KS. Love the meat in this sandwich.

Had the honey buorbon chicken sandwich and this is -_- compared to the rockin top two. This was with Peiyun and Mark and Sharl, along with all the other hos whom we were separated from. Had this only cos it was on 50 % off but I'd stay far away from any chicken sandwich normally, and this just reinforces it.

Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, Aroy-Dee

Met Pam for the 3 D movie, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs at Cathy (where she watched 2 or 3 other movies cos it was the French Festival). it was friggin $13.50 to watch a 3D show on a weekend! And our dreams of having meatballs and icecream cones raining on us was totally dashed cos the screen still seemed far away, very unlike the 3 D effects in the shows you get in Disneyland, where its a true treat for the senses - I remember one of the A Bug's Life rides in the Magic Tree, you could actually feel the scurrying off the ends and the flatus of the bug..awesome possum.

Met Carol at Plaza Sing where she left her car and in our search for food around that area I always seem to land up in the Bencoolen area, and eventually at Sunshine Plaza (where I've tried Victor's Kitchen, O Divino and the Thai Cafe) - Aroy-Dee 91 Bencoolen Street #01-12 Sunshine Plaza. This is the second Thai place in Sunshine Plaza - for Thai food. Recognise it by its super green signboard. But anyway, we almost wanted to walk all the way to First Thai behind Raffles Hotel.

Mango salad topped up with crisp fried garlic.

Clear Tom yum soup but with a layer of chilli oil..

Basil leaf beef. A tad salty but the minced beef was great with rice
I particularly loved the pandan aroma from the green curry..creamy and delicious. Shall return to this place to try the Phad Thai with Kelly sometime!

Magic Wok, Udders

It was a super long day - void of changes cos the entire afternoon was occupied by ho teaching (with pizza, no less), V's tutorial on jaundice, then J Tan's feedback (with again, free tea time snacks of scones and cakes) and lastly the lumps and bumps which killed us all ending at 7pm. Took along Jacob who was just nua-ing with me in the kopitiam with kevin,jiabin and lynn...so us three, Kels, Jacob and I went around Novena to search for dinner.

Was deciding between the Hong Kong restaurant, the Peranakan place, or chicken rice when we stumbled into Magic Wok (275 Thomson Road #01-08 Novena Ville) - this place is along the eateries just at the turnoff from Newton. So far I've tried the chicken rice at Wee Nam Kee and the steamboat buffet with my rj class. I always see the branch of Magic Wok at Stamford House next to the City Hall bus stop but never got a chance to try it there.

Mango salad was yums but drenched in sweet sauce.

Tom Yum Seafood was quite milky looking unlike the usual clear/oily soups we are accustomed to. Chunks of fish and squid to go around.

Another super milky green curry which had plenty of eggplant and green tomatoes in it.
The red chilli chicken was good too, though it could do with a greater spicy kick.
What was best was the pineapple rice with plenty of wok hei and a dose of chicken floss to top it all.

Sadly the noodle dishes were not as flavourful - Phad Thai. This was most bland even after vigorous mixing of the chilli powder and the peanuts.

another thicker Phad thai (which tasted almost similar)

At first we were considering the Nasi Padang at Gold hill Plaza (cos Udders was next door to it) but then we went in the opposite direction instead, towards the Hong Kong kitchen. But we still ended up here ! Met Geri whilst we were at Udders (Goldhill Plaza). The flavour I never fail to get: Chocolate Whiskey Java, and Tiramisu.

Kelly's favourite in the other cup - lime umeshu and Mao shan wang. Uber sour!