Ben and Jerry's , X men

On a Tues when AM was clinic cover while lap choles were going on, and PM was colonic ops which ended surprisingly early, after sending short back J came by to go for dinner before X Men at 950pm. Wanted try out Roadhouse at Dempsey but despite the sign saying we're open, to the contrary its not! Disappointment ++ and it was already close to 9pm so we had to settle for Ben and Jerry's at Dempsey.

I had the Super mix and match of New York fudge, Cherry Garcia and Strawberry cheesecake. I realise its quite a fruit overdose and I really misst Dublin Mudslide loads. He had a waffle with the new Peanut Butter flavour (which he claims is not new). Waffle was too nuah for us both!

Caught X Men at the Great world city Grand - quite glad we caught it on the big screen instead of the lido small one. Solid storyline and the action is not as overwhelming as Transformers. And I finally got to try Garrett's popcorn! The cheesecorn tastes very much like atas cheezels. Picture with B1/B2 fail before a slow drive back (as compared to the rush to!).

West Coast Plaza, Crystal Jade HK, The Hurt Locker

Wow this entry dates back to 25th feb when Hurt Locker was still showing and it hasnt even won the oscar yet. How much has happened since then =P After the med eopt MCQ test (tks for picking up the osces after leaving so early from the paper, K!), I made a wrong turn towards Tuas and we ended up at West Coast Plaza whilst still trying to decide on travel plans.

We browsed around before deciding to try ou the D24 durian buns from Oishii Bakery ( West Coast Plaza). Durian paste was wonderfully potent but it'd do nicer in a puff form!

We were debating between Bread And Butter Box and Coffee Bean and chose the former. This is the Yin Yang - peanut butter and nutella and we loved how crumbly the bread was...till it was like eating air in the words of K.

Her He Bi Hiam Toast

Mine Kaya Toast...its like a thick toast with the characteristics of a crisp thin toast

We went for Prof Soo's - only half filled heh - but it was worth going for all the oeso/stomach knowledge. We were ravenous so we went to hurry get movie tickets before going to Crystal Jade Hong Kong (Orchard Central) and started with this Salted Egg and Chicken Porridge which was served in a claypot. Not quite the typical Crystal jade consistency of the porridge (a little more watery) but still very delicious as late night food.

A walk down memory lane with the very colourful and cheery menu complete with fantizi in the menu (the difficult chinese characters), loud chinese mtvs, and waitresses with HK accents. lol, even the PORRIDGE was named after a district in HK... And Kels had a nice window seat!

This is what we came for - Spring Chicken with a huge load of fries and crispy bits!!! Very freshly fried, very crisp skin, very juicy chicken... Its worth your 10 bucks - Arnold's sells this at a much steeper price but imho I think this is really really good, don't mind paying more...lol

Hot Plate has all the meats - fish fillet (very tender and nice!), Chicken (too tenderised =P), Lamb chop (yums too) and the Cheese Sausage which Kels had. We were deciding between this or the Ocean basket (but everything fried leh.....together with the spring chicken), but this was a real carnivorous grease bomb.

This is finally our last movie before MBBS (yeah and this chapter was typed before mbbs lol). But anw havent had a chance to write a review about The Hurt Locker, which we caught during the study break (when everyone scrambled home to study;P). This movie is incredible, in the sense that it was directed by a woman (the war, violence, grit was absolutely cutting). Its like, you'll never expect anything less than Carrie Brickshaw to direct Sex and the City.

And it makes you thank you every day of your life that you have such a safe environment to function in, live in, play, and have a little quiet at the end of the day. Movies like The Blind Side make you grateful for the bed you have (no matter how rich you are, you only have a bed to return to at the end of it all, aint it), and the fairness despite the unfairness in the world. Don't compare, don't complain, I'm so happy to have a chance to study what I chose and to make the people I love proud.. Is the unfairness of your situation the driving force for your work? So you can get a release from that unfairness? Is that what drives materialism?

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, Fish and Co Express

Second day of Ortho was an early one - actually not that bad now, minus rounds - with 9am by leehc, neck injury/hall valg/the subtle foot drop for me/amp and the 3 requisites for prothesis by jeremy. We had breakie at qiji (lontong cheecheongfan is the first for me) and tried to hunt for the spine cases, and ended up seeing cvs stuff.

Kels and I decided the east was just making us too tired, so we decided to take a break to go even further east to Downtown East.

She was paying bill so we were longingly eyeing WWW =P

We zoomed down to watch the 445pm, and just made it in time to The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

The movie has enchanting escapades with equally beautiful people, with the extremely lovely Lily Cole. Diving into the mirror brings you into your wildest dreams, and this always comes with a price. A lil disjointed segments (esp the character morphing from Heath to Jude to Colin!) but nonetheless it is like an amusement theme park ride. I enjoyed the ride =)

And for such a suburban cinema, the thickly coated sweet popcorn was of extremely high standards!!

We explored Downtown East after the movie, and spied on Mr Chicken Rice and the yam fries at Old Chang Kee but decided to head to Fish and Co Express (Downtown East) to try the burgers.

Fish Chowder is one of the yummiest cheaper soups I've had, and you'll like it if you like chunky creamy soups.

Sambal fish burger is very delicious and is one of the most ingenious burgers I've eaten. Its everything in a nasi lemak with out the rice. The sambal chilli has ikan bilis within, laden in between sliced cucumber and a fried fish fillet. With a forewarning from the server that it is gonna be hot, this is a very enjoyable burger for those who like spicy food.

The Teriyaki Salmon burger is what Kelly had and its a piece of grilled Salmon between buns, made more delicious with my sambal chilli, the free flow chilli, and the mayonaise!

Calamari was extremely thickly coated with seasoned batter and I realise the grilled pepper ones I'm used to in the Seafood Platter is very different from these.
Extremely skinny fries to share, upsized =) It was a set with hot milo for each of us.

Had an interesting ride to Kels', and the 70kmh KPE channel lol.

Up, Victor's Kitchen

Met up with Kelly on Thursday (Sorry Jeremy it rained out and its like, first day of THE month!) and we caught Up at the Cathay. Awesome show it was, for once I actually liked an animation (didnt't like Ice Age nor Wall.E). As much as it revolves around couple-y moments (Elly really reminded me of our Sunflower, Marc) and family themes, the suspense and vulnerability of a floating house, and the very vulnerable characters of a grouchy widower slowly opening up his barriers to lead the adventure he never got a chance to with his married life, was absolutely touching.

I like today's popcorn. Thickly coated +++ I think Cathy comes in a close second after cine's popcorn (must go to the one near the level four box office)- must go and try the one at Shaw Leisure Towers as recommended by Nat. and the very yummy sourlicious jalepeno and sour cream crackers (on offer at $3.50) that we got from Marks and Spencer's. All the crunchy shapes made it very interesting for our palate as we were totally consumed by the movie.

Just before the movie browsed at a bazaar ouside SMU (happened to pass by cos I missed Mr Bean's icecream too much) and I found a gorgeous Japanese inspired top for $15 ! Shall go to all the flea markets from now on. Shenzhen has spoilt me way too much.

We walked to Victor's Kitchen (91 Bencoolen Street #01-21 Sunshine Plaza ) for dim sum after the movie. The best item on the dim sum menu is this You tiao Chee Cheong Fan - the youtiao within remained crispy and chewy and sandwiched between layers of silky cheong fan with soya sauce the contrast was fantastic.
I had the steamed prawn and vegetables dim sum but found the skin a little too thick. Otherwise the ingredients within was fresh and delicious.

The custard buns weren't the runny type that we were craving for - instead it was like a custard paste within, and a salted egg yolk right in the middle.

I had the wala-wala porridge - there's a multitude of ingredients within: cuttlefish, fish, peanuts - but the porridge itself was really too bland ! Ah Chiang's at Tiong Bahru and Zhen Zhen at Maxwell has spoilt me.

Ditto for Kelly's century egg and fish porridge..

Ditto my comments for Kelly's king prawn dim sum (famous and was featured in the Top 100 snacks list some time ago) again the skin was a little too thick..

And the uncle cheated our money about this yam spring roll ! Again rather out of the mill..

We were trying (very hard) to relive our Hong Kong experience so I had my hot yuang yang and Kelly had her iced summer tea - both were really really thick. What was unique was that the iced tea had the ice around the cup instead of within, so as not to dilute the tea. Quite thoughtful!

The only other item worth trying here (other than the youtiao chee cheong fan which is rather hard to find in Singapore) is this steamed milk custard. It is served piping hot (gotta wait 15 minutes), and that's the best way to have it cos it preserves the original milk flavour, just like how powdered hot milk taste like, but in a custard form.

After that we wanted a second round of desserts (despite being very full from all the junk) at the new icecream shop at Sunshine Plaza (which I'll blog about soon) but it didnt have the very interesting flavours we saw on its list...like Kaya Toast! We'll keep coming back till we manage to try those flavours.

We then walked over to the National Library (and not getting good karma crossing numerous roads cos we were laughing too much too hard at someone) and I managed to borrow Wally Lamb's latest novel which i've been wanting to read for a long time. We...managed to resist a trip to Tom's - and the rain !! Oh boy the rain. Drats....Night cycling for another time then!

Saybons, Marutama Ramen (Liang Court), Meidi-ya Supermarket(Tsuru Tsuru Tei)

I went out with my sister to catch Suspect X - if you noticed, I've been watching many many Japanese films - Suspect X, Departures, Detroit Metal City and it seems that only Golden Village has the exclusive rights to these Japanese films so it looks like I'm stuck with stale popcorn until I bump out of my Jap film phase.

Suspect X was an average film, not as clever as I thought it might be. We trace the steps of how the murderer (revealed at the start) plays hide and seek with the police and an intelligent physicist - and I felt the twist was spoilt when he eventually turned himself in. Nonetheless my sister thoroughly enjoyed the film and is into watching the drama now.

Tomato Soup

She wanted to have the Burger King all day long croissant sandwich but I managed to convince her to try Saybons (B1, Plaza Singapura) - she liked the tomato soup though I felt it tasted like the pasta sauce sans the pasta =P

Strawberry Crepe with Valrhona white chocolate

I tried a dessert crepe at Saybons before - the nutella crepe was really nutty and good. But the Strawberry crepe was rather plain - the white chocolate melted into the crepe and didn't taste of much, plus the strawberries weren't particularly sweet, so it turned out rather bland.

We took a train to Clarke Quay after that cos I had a craving for ramen and have been wanting to try the chicken based stock at Marutama Ramen for the longest time.

We havent been to Liang Court since it was newly renovated so we decided to browse there first. Chanced upon this interesting furniture shop.

We like food based products...

a huge couch!

We found a Marutama Ramen (level 2, Liang Court) in Liang Court so it saved us the walk back to Central

There were only 3 types of ramen with various toppings you can add..

Aka-ramen

7 kinds of nuts mixture in chicken soup ramen

We found this ramen to be really quite oily but I think this is the authentic Japanese style. The noodles were doused in the layer of oil as we scooped up the noodles and was delicious with the crunchy vegetables and chicken meatballs.

Nama Karashi Ramen
Spicy chicken soup ramen with toppings

Contrary to its description, this ramen is not spicy at all. It has a more chickeny taste than my soup but everything else was similar.

Actually before that we went to Meidiya Supermarket (basement, Liang Court) to recee the place and found the food court there worth a try especially the udon stall -Tsuru Tsuru Tei. Well, after that 2 bowls of ramen, we decided to go for another 2 more bowls of udon. Yes you got me right, 4 bowls of noodles for dinner for 2 girls.

The menu..

Wakame Udon - Udon with seaweed

I asked for more seaweed to slurp with the soup and voila he planted a farm in my noodles!!!! this photo depicts a small part of it lol but he was way generous with that seaweed and young shoots!! It tasted oh so good and crunchy with the clear miso soup. My sister loves her clear soup so she drank every drop of this. She really didnt like the oily soup at Marutama - she's too used to clear miso broths.

We love the service here though they don't have service charge (Compared to the heck-you attitude at Marutama Ramen hmphs). They gave us an extra bowl when we asked for extra chopsticks (We were intending to share this after the dinner at Marutama Ramen). And we were the last to go and the guy didnt complain even though he had to wait for us to finish. All the places closed shop and packed for the day already and he was still hanging around waiting for us but not even putting pressure or staring at us to finish.

But of cos we didn't end up stopping at this udon.

We went on to the cold version.

Mentaiko Cold Udon

To me, this udon suffered an overdose of mayonaise but when we mixed around the spicy cod roe , the coldberg lettuce and the seaweed - it turned out to be a really tasty noodle salad. The udon was firm and chewy and went well with the crunchy veggies. My sister really liked this - but I still think there's too much mayo! Aye but a dallop of mayo does make food tastier.

Skip the fried chicken it was rather blah.

Popped by the supermarket to get this Jap hard fruit candy - ate it at Sheryl's place during the potluck and I really liked it!
Michelle will like this...
And her pumpkin pretz...

Margarita's (Dempsey)

Fly, Cel, Chong and I met at Margarita's ( Blk 11 Dempsey Road #01-19 Tanglin Village) for dinner, and our original plan was to catch He's not that into you after that (which we didn't cos we chatted all the way till after 11pm!!). I've been wanting to check out this place (and made many many unfulfilled bookings cos somehow the dinners always got cancelled) and finally I made it here! It is always very full, and a reservation is a must.

Nachos

with Guacomole, Cheese, Chiles, Sour Cream, Refried Beans

Its one of the most colourful looking nachos I have eaten, but the tortilla chips were rather soggy, unfortunately!! I'd much prefer the ones at Cafe Iguana.

Quesadillas with Beef

Cheese Turnovers with Light Sour Cream and Guacomole

The quesadillas were nothing much to shout about - its a classic, simple, thin tortilla wrap with cheese and beef stuffing.

Baked Crab Enchilidas $34

topped with Chile Chipotle and cheese

This was our favourite dish of the night- the roll was rather small though (compared to the kitchen sink burrito) but was chokeful of real crab meat. The cheese topping was divine, when eaten with the sauce the enchilidas was fantastic.

And everyone liked it also partly cos...

The beans sauce was served with the rice on another plate! No one was a fan of the beans, except me.

Kitchen Sink Burrito

Chicken, Beef, Refried beans, Rice in Large Flour Tortillas

Topped with Salsa, Guacomole, Cheese and Sour Cream

I liked this - quite a carbo overload cos of the tortillas and the rice stuffing inside but there was a generous serving of chicken and beef inside the roll also.. This was really rich and hearty cos of all the sauces and it was a HUGE roll. But I liked it enough to also eat Cel's share. And I like my food in big portions.

After awhile, we realise Mexican food revolves around the same makings: the rice inside the roll is similar to the one served with the crab enchilidas, the beef in the kitchen sink burrito was similar to the one in the quesadillas. And there's cheese, salsa, guacomole, sour cream and (to everyone's horror) refried beans in almost every dish. I prefer Cafe Iguana over Magarita's though.

Kahlau Tiramisu $12

Don't order the overtly dry tiramisu. We should have gone for the Mexican bread and butter pudding instead.And the talk during dinner all about arcade games led to Chong and I having a sudden craving to go play air hockey - I beat her FLAT! Her reflexes are sho shlow! Haha. But the ergonomics of that air hockey table was terrible - it was too low for us tall creatures and the table was not smooth and the ?saucer always got stuck halfway in the hole.

We then went to watch Let The Right One In...It is actually a Swedish romantic horror film adapted from a novel and was highly acclaimed in last year's film festivals. It was a rather creepy show though- the child actors were brilliant. The movie explores how the young boy and girl (vampire) seek solace in their friendship and eventual relationship as they were alienated and lonely from their peers - human-human (in the case of the boy who was bullied) and human-vampire (for obvious reasons). The violence and the survival instincts of vampire hunting was juxtaposed with the equal instinct for companionship and acceptance. The cinematography was gorgeous.

The amazing thing was that I went to read Wiki about the movie and they cut off some subplots from the show - spoiler alert - that the girl was actually a boy castrated (hinted extremely subtly when she repeatedly said she was not a girl and we all thought she meant she was a vampire and in a brief dressing scene), and the part about she eventually killing the older man who collected blood for her and he becoming undead and evil, and his sick attraction to her from the start. Yes you can sense the disturbing nature of this show - the horror is not the full-fledged gruesome kind you'd expect in a horor film, but was beautifully depicted and relished on afterthought.

The most interesting part of the movie though, was that for the first time, we got popcorn delivered to us. Why? Cos we had their new Shaker Popcorn ($4.80 - only one size its a small packet) - there were different shaker seasoning - Cajun, Pizza, and Nacho Cheese. We chose the latter. What truly puzzled us was why they took SO LONG to deliver our Shaker Popcorn, and the queer thing was, it arrived unshaken - the shaker seasoning cheese powder was in a ziplock packet - they took so long and they did not even bother to shake it up for us???? Couldnt they anticipate the STARES we would get, shaking our popcorn in that paper bag in the middle of a movie?? We had to wait for a vampire attack for our vigorous shaking - but of cos we didn't get much of a chance (remember its a CHILDHOOD SWEETHEART ROMANCE, even the vampire attacks were sudden, short and sweet) so there was too much seasoning on the top most popcorn - even the savoury fan Chong couldnt take it.

Thank god we ordered another Large sweet popcorn combo ($7.80) with drinks. I ate so much popcorn (esp the shaker one it got quite addictive like Mammie can be) I was really thirsty later on.

We went on to Zouk after that and the dj was awesome and he was so whacky he had this funky gigantic panda-faced, blinking multi coloured eyed- headgear, giving us ideas for Halloween. A fellow wannabe too, with rainbow coloured stripesy shirt and rice-bowl hairdo, Chong will remember this.

Four Christmases, Noodle House Ken

Of late, best friend time spent with Kels has always revolved around movie+junk food extravaganza. Arming ourselves with the largest size of popcorn (trust me, its never enough) and other savoury snacks, the movie is never the same without the junk food.

this is the largest sized popcorn from Cathay Cineleisure and costs $7.80 with a drink (extra top up of 60 cents for iced lemon tea). Cinemas here are a total ripoff when it comes to popcorn and nachos but its like the only place we ever eat popcorn (k and i are huge fans of popcorn) and it does seem strange if we go shopping munching on popcorn.

There are many counters scattered around the 4th to 6th floor of the cineplex selling popcorn but obviously the nicest, warmest, freshest popcorn comes from the counter with the highest turnover ie the one at the 4th floor - but there was only once when the popcorn was really freshly popped and the sweet clusters were clumped together by the hot caramel and it was really warm and crispy, thickly coated with sugar! But ever since then all our popcorn encounters were less than stellar. Looks like we must observe when the popcorn is made and quickly chiong to buy the freshly made batch. Haha..we must be the only insane ones to watch the movie to get our popcorn fix.

This time we tried the nachos too. Again another ripoff at $4.80 with a drink...that can buy me a whole pack of tortillas (oh the one with a hint of lime is superb) and the cheese today is quite diluted according to kels who is particularly about her sauces. Seems pretty good to me still, possibly because I was ravenous.

As for 4 Christmases (which is a movie by the way, just in case), it had many subtle references to maternity which was uncannily relevant to what we are studying now (and an ominous reminder to STUDY) and the movie had us thinking about commitment and motherhood (and osces). It was okay-funny but some of the scenes tried too hard with their blunt and crude humour it vaguely reminded me of Stepbrothers. Definitely not Love Actually standards, where the interplay of relationships were much more interesting (and more eye candy too), this is more like a Meet the Fockers kinda movie. We were planning to catch Cape No 7 but the timing clashed with tea and tea was more important (we wanted to go Jones the grocer or Freshly Baked at Kiliney) plus Cape might have marked the start of a dreary weekend so we thought a comedy like 4 Christmases will be good.

We wanted to have dinner at Freshly Baked but to our disappointment they ran out of the sandwiches when we reached there about 7pm after our movie (they close at 8) so we adjourned to nearby Noodle House Ken at Orchard Plaza for dinner. I have been wanting to try this place for ages.

Orchard Plaza and the Cuppage Plaza houses a treasure cove of eats and this is one of them. Unpretentious place it is, compared to the nearby newly renovated glamourised/expatriate-fied Cuppage Terrace.

Noodle House Ken occupies 2 shop units, and there are also some tables outside where you can sit alfresco. The shop unit nearer the road houses the kitchen as well, and there are only bar seats inside. But it was a hot day and the steaming kitchen was just too uncomfortable for us so we moved to the next shop unit, which was equally small (minus the kitchen, of course) and was nicely air conditioned. We sat at the bar counter.
This was where we sat at. There are shelves of manga (all in Japanese though - really inspires me to take up Japanese so I can read these!) and Japanese magazines in both shop units.

I found the Japanese poster very retro and I really don't know whats up with the Chinese New Year lantern up there. Strange.

The nicely comfortable air conditioned second seating area. Don't be misled, this place was packed around 730pm and there were people waiting outside, but we took our time with our food and we discussed some questions (well we were supposed to be studying) and time flew by, leaving us the last to leave this restaurant. The background music was actually pleasant chill out type, and it was actually quite a nice place to catch up when there are less people around.

The menu was only a page long and consisted of some simple starters and ramen. Their ramen soup is double boiled for 8 hours and there is no MSG. They do not offer any desserts - I guess places like this, being a ramen specialist they offer only what they do best in, not like those generic places which try to be the jack of all trades and master of none. This place is like super Japanese friendly - the reverse side had the same menu but all in Japanese characters.

Cold Noodle $12

I requested a change of meat to sweet corn. This dish was really good! The noodles were really firm to bite and chewy, and the sauce was tasty and had a subtle sour twang to it - it is actually a sesame sauce. The vegetables added a crunch - and I particularly liked the bamboo. There was also some crabmeat which was rather generic yong-taufu type, and some strips of tamago. Oh the yellow mustard by the corner was really potent.

I love sesame seeds and when I found the sesame seed container I didn't even bother grinding it and just sprinkled the whole seeds on my noodles. (Okay at first I didn't know how to operate the grinder =p). The aroma was wonderful!

And when the noodles ran out, I liked the sauce so much I didn't want to waste it so I emptied most of the sesame seeds from the container so I could mop up whatever sauce left with copious amounts of sesame seeds - it is like sauce-coated sesame seeds and tastes of the sesame ahbaling interior..yummy!

Stewed Boiled Egg Ramen, $12

Kels really enjoyed her bowl of ramen especially the soup, which she said was really tasty. and....

the stewed egg! do you see the layers of yolk and egg white? she says it is really different from the other eggs she has eaten. And a huge one at that!

We spied the chef reading his manga on our way back. Haha! now we know that the shelves of manga are the source of entertainment for the chefs! This place closes late and will be a wonderful supper place for comfort food yay.

Noodle House Ken

150 Orchard Road#01-17/18 Orchard Plaza

Tel: 6235 5540

Mon-Sat: 12-2pm, 6pm-2am