Itamae Sushi, Hong Kong

Itamae Sushi and Itacho Sushi are the Sakae Sushi and Sushi Tei chains of Hong Kong, except that they are many many many notches up in terms of freshness (especially of their shell fish!) and creativity. Everything we tried here was memorable, and for a conveyor belt restaurant (we had many off the tempting conveyor belt!) we thought the standards were excellent.

Queues form during meal times (hence the queue number display on the first picture) and us hungry girls were here at 530pm for our early dinner, taking our own sweet time polishing off plate after plate!
the L-shaped restaurant (the other segment discovered only later on)

Picked this up almost immediately when i sat down cos it had everything i liked - hotate, salmon, tamago, and roe with some rice - i especially loved the fresh tender hotate together with the crunchy roe

This was Kelly's Soya sauce salmon, Salmon with cheese.

Fatty tuna without tendon

Sweet piece it was, I savoured every bit of this. It was SGD7 a pop!

Saga Japanese Beef

I've never eaten beef sushi before but I won't mind eating raw beef again if it tastes this good... its not as raw and bloody as those rare steaks at all. Instead, the beef is tender and succulent.

Salmon spring roll

Vegetables with a small slice of salmon wrapped in rice paper makes for a refreshing treat if not for that overdosage of mayonaise!

This was Kelly's Foie gras sushi.

And her Mango Lobster Salad

Steamed egg with crab meat

The steamed egg had a fantastic stock with alot of real crab meat inside!

Check out that piece of crab meat.

We heart this Jumbo scallop. Please go and eat this if you ever eat at Itamae! Superbly fresh and melt in your mouth scallop overwhelming the rice!

This is Kelly's Roasted eel with curry salt

This is my Zaru. The shellfish here are all really fresh and zaru is particularly crunchy.

This is Kelly's Mango egg crepe. She loves the sweet salty combination and this has everything she likes, from the sweet mango puree to the crunchy roe wrapped by an egg crepe.

This is my Conch. Check out those fleshy layers - crunchy and tender-melt-in-your-mouth.

Xiang lei shun - no idea what this was (took it off the conveyor belt) but again it was super crunchy! More crunchy than squid (I don't like squid all that much but I seem to like all its relatives in Itamae).

Sea urchin with egg crepe - We really really liked this as well, its one of our tops. We're inclined to think the chefs blowtorched the uni as the top was crisp and beneath that the rest was rather wobbly and wet. The saltiness of the uni was perfect with the egg crepe and rice. This was Kelly's Tamago.
This was Kelly's Milk pudding

To the management of Itamae Sushi,

Please open an outlet in Singapore!

Missing your incredible fish,

J&K

G7 Sin Ma Live Seafood Restaurant (Cheong Chin Nam Road)

Woo hoo! if you noticed the slight difference in photo quality...that is because I just bought the LX3 for my electives! whee! but i still haven't really practised using it (focusing, food in dim light, how to adjust the flash) but im got pretty excited when I saw the food mode in the SCN mode!

Anyway, today must be my longest day ever, with morning rounds-crashed nni neuro-crashed violet's tut-the last bit of clinics-nus till 9pm and boy was i glad to finally get out and meet J for supper...

We were craving Thai food but 9pm = closing time so after not finding Emerald Thai near Brewerkz (Michelle! where is it??) we gave up and went to Cheong Chin Nam Road opposite Beauty World - we were intending to have Taiwanese or Teochew porridge - which on arrival, he told me he actually eats it often (!!) but then we chanced upon this! Yes I'm not past this porridge phase yet but today after 5 frogs i think i'm gonna stay away for awhile...

Yes there is a frog porridge place along the stretch of eateries - G7 Sin Ma Live Seafood Restaurant (5 Cheong Chin Nam Road) and on googling just now, I realised the original branch is at Geylang Lor 3 - where I think there is a saturation of frog porridge places already with Lion City Geylang Lor 9 Porridge, Eminent City. I haven't gone all the way to Geylang to try the original Lion City outlets- the most I've done was to go to its sister outlet at Peace Centre! The parking today was a breeze - it was a weekday 10pm kinda timing.

We were recommended to take the Buy 3 frogs get 2 frogs free and 1 porridge free set - $22. Not bad considering each frog was $8 and the porridge was already $3. Iced water is at 30 cents.

There were 2 styles of cooking - dried chilli or ginger. We had 3 frogs in dried chilli and 2 in plain ginger...

Dried Chilli

The dried chilli version tasted similar to Lion City's version - the frog meat was smooth and the Kung Pau sauce was really thick and flavourful - though not as spicy as Lion City's version. It tasted so damn good with the porridge.

Ginger

This tasted similar to the dried chilli one minus the pieces of dried chilli.

The porridge was rather grainy and not as smooth as the Lion City's version.

Well I guess this is a good alternative for supper since it is open from 3pm to 3am when I don't feel like travelling to town or Geylang for my porridge fix!

Toa Payoh Lor7, Snow Frost, The Soup Spoon

After picking up my sis from school we decided to venture into the unknown Toa Payoh/AMK territory to try some food we've been reading about from Makansutra....first up is this famous Hai Nan Xing Zhou Beef Noodles (Toa Payoh Lor 7 Hawker Centre).

It was mid afternoon and the hawker centre was rather empty..the way we like it!

My sister had the dry version with beef slices..the gravy was rather slightly watered down - not that dry in that sense. The uncle was super generous with the beef slices...there seems to be more beef than noodles actually...

The meat:noodle ratio is similarly skewed here (not like we're complaining cos the beef slices were really tender). I took the soup version and found the soup to be great - it is superbly beefy and not all that saltish, and has a herby aftertaste.

Ah Chuan Fried Oyster Omelette (Toa Payoh Lor 7) is another Makansutra legend...

The omelette has lots of crisp edges and was really tasty with the tangy chilli sauce. Portion is a little small though..

We then went to Snowfrost (AMK Hub) cos i remembered it from M's blog, and we discovered another shopping wonderland there...

Strawberry snow ice

Sheets of silky strawberry ice with real strawberry slices and puree makes for a superbly refreshing treat!

Peach Milk ice

The ice was really milk-powederish tasting, and rather bland except for the parts with the peach syrup. Doh I should have tried the peanut version.

I realised there are alot of shaved ice places springing up now...Dessert Story at Heeren is one I've tried many times.

Pumpkin Soup

We then decided to head to town and dropped by The Soup Spoon (Basement, Paragon) for dinner. I had the pumpkin soup - it was so thick that I felt like I was having a pumpkin puree.

Beef Goulash

My sister's one was nicer, with chunks of meat and lots of stewed vegetables. We both really liked this, its one of the best non-creamy soups we've tried.

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...

House, Ben & Jerry's (Dempsey)

After a long day at a Saturday lect, Chong and I decided to go for a goooood dinner at Dempsey - after getting intimidated at Jumbo Seafood Restaurant (the sets were for many many people and so were the tables), we decided to head to Tippling Club.

But then we realised they only had set menus and all of them came with drinks! So we went to the sister restaurant, House (Dempsey) instead.. Tippling Club will be for another day during lunch.

We wanted to sit outside (we were still thawing from the lecture) but its damn silly cos the smoking and non-smoking area was demarcated with a line - the smokers nearer the forest side, but the smoke will still drift over - you will know what I mean when you dine there so we went back inside. Definitely more crowded inside. The area outside blasts music from the DJ console.

this is my second time at House but Chong's first, so she was pretty amused by some of the eccentric decor of House

Squid ink paella with seafood $28

Oh this was so darn good. The rice grains were more on the risotto side, tight rice grains bursting to release squid ink juices - it was divine when eaten when the crunchy capsicums and sundried tomatoes, topped with a crust and parmesan cheese. The seafood itself was fresh - prawns were uber crunchy.

Old fashioned American Sliders - truffle with aioli $22

topped up with truffle fries and sweet potato fries

Oh the fries were particularly memorable. There was so much truffle oil in the fries Chong was burping truffle oil hours after our supper - but I preferred the sweet potato fries much more - thick sweet potato chunks deep fried and coated with sugar bits, this was fantastic when it came piping hot. Savoury Chong and Sweet for me.

The burgers themselves were alright I guess, the meat patty rather dense and thick and full of meat jus. But a sliver of cheese would have upped the wow factor =)

Burgers are more fun to eat when the fillings are thicker than the bread!

you might not want to know where I took this..

Brownie Cheesecake, Chunky Monkey, New York Super Fudge Crunch, $12

Went to an extremely crowded Ben and Jerry's at Dempsey and over paid for our ice cream treat =P a triple scoop is so friggin expensive!!

We had a failed movie outing (I cant believe Chong just watched Confessions of a Shopaholic the day before!!) cos we both didn't want to watch the Clint Eastwood movie in the middle of the night and neither did I wanna watch Unborn and subsequently another failed night out....doh, but somehow we felt the day was darn fruitful cos we actually learnt many things in the day! Miss you Chong!