Snacks@Clementi

Demona: My mom and dad nagged me for looking PUI PUI "fat fat/ chubby wubby". Sniffs sniffs. Pants tight. Arms big. Face pao-ish, useful as a punching bag. All thanks to a food venturing, crazy eating, binging yet truly fun and enjoyable weekend trip in Singapore.

Besides eating outside, we also bought some "HEALTH" snacks back home to eat while snuggling under Dogma's small and thin layer of blanket, watching streamline movies, and whatever program that was showing on Mediacorp's Channel 5.



Demona: Klondike. Dogma had been eyeing on this for a long, long while. Since it was on offer, he bought a box home. Cost SGD 4, with 4 palm sized oreo cookies, sandwich-ing a chunk of oreo biscuit blended vanilla ice cream.



Demona: I was greatly disappointed. The oreo cookie was soft, soft, soft. Each bite was ... *Groans* If the cookie was harder, like normal oreo cookies, then the Klondike would be yummy. The ice cream was alright, but you can easily prepare this on your own at home. Just get a tub of vanilla ice cream, blend some oreo biscuits, pour them in and mix thoroughly. Then, slap the ice cream in between two oreo cookies.



Demona: In conjunction with Easter holiday, Dogma bought me a Lindt chocolate Easter bunny. He was a little annoyed when we saw a huge bunch of golden bunnies right next to Commonwealth's NTUC branch cashier quoting the price of SGD 5.90 for a bunny, when he bought it at SGD 8.90. Nevertheless, it was the thought that counts. A very sweet (and sinful) gesture from Dogma.

The chocolate was quite nice. Lindt always produces great products. However, we felt a little cheated when we found out that the bunny was hollow inside. It was supposed to be fully covered. A whole, chunky chocolate bunny.



Demona: My own food creation. Get a bunch of SEEDLESS grapes, make sure they're sweet because sour ones just spoil the whole thing. Then, get yourself a strawberry or blueberry flavoured yoghurt, and pour all over the grapes. YUMMYLICIOUS! You will feel full after it as well, and the best part of all... you feel HEALTHY :)



Demona: Dogma bought this chips to try out. The chips were so so only. The Dijon Mustard taste was present, but the chips were a little too oily.



Demona: This one, was quite nice. The japaleno taste was really strong and the portion was generous. We felt like we munched on them for quite a while before we finished it up. Quite a worthy buy.



Demona: The smell was so cheezy, when we popped the pack open. I never failed to enjoy eating Ruffles chips because they are chunky, giving a nice bite feeling to it, unlike others who are mostly crumbly or broken into tiny pieces. The Ruffles Sour Cream and Onions flavour is much better than this one.

Verdict: How to not get fat like this ? :(

Zui FairPrice Seafood Restaurant

2 Prawning Rods: 3 hrs: 6 prawns: 60SGD:

That is the cost of prawning for us today...

Frustrated with our poor catch today, I drove the gang to Zui Fairprice Seafood Restaurant at Upper Thompson Road for dinner after the prawning session.

We ordered the 4 pax set menu@68bucks and they steam our prawns for free..



Steamed Big Head Prawns/Tua Tao Hei: Pretty average. But we got a bit put off as teh chef did not bother to clean the prawns properly.

Steamed Live Fish: Nothing to shout about but the portion was pretty big.

Braised Tofu: Again, it was an average dish. Basically jsut braised tofu with mushrooms and vegetables.


Steamed chicken: It was nice to eat this together with the black pepper dip.
Lotus roots and Pork soup: This was quite URGH. It looks exactly like what they serve for the workers during dinner. Basically jsut pieces of lotus roots boil together with CHUNKS of PORK FAT. Yuck.
Black Pepper Dip: Not bad. Spicy with some funky Sichuan note.
Garlic Chilli: Demona's fav.. I.. neeed.... CHILLI!!!
Sweet Sour Pork: Average.

Verdict: All the dishes were average at best. We should not have ordered the set meals.....
I'll give them 1 more chance before condemning Zui Fairprice to the darkest dungeon of Foodilogy.

Chat Masala Restaurant@Upper East Coast Rd

Demona: We were driving around, and somehow rather, ended up around the Upper East Coast Road area. Dogma decided to have dinner at one of the eateries located in this area. With a palate for something flavourful, curry, gravy, spicy, our choice narrowed down to Indian food.

Chat Masala caught our eyes. It was located at the end of a row of shophouses. While walking towards it, we passed another Indian restaurant, but decided to pursue on our decision with CM because the restaurant looked overly decorated and most tables were empty.

The place was quite packed with we reached. We were quite lucky having only to wait for about 10 minutes or so because a couple just left the restaurant. One thing that we noticed was, the crowd was predominantly Caucasians. Dogma said that the main reason could probably be the location, since this area is "Upper Class". Something like a Bangsar, or a Mont Kiara of Malaysia.

The restaurant was filled with giant framed paintings of objects, symbolic to Indians, ceramic statues, as well as tiny little bits of Indian decoratives by the windows and ceiling tops. Even with nicely decorated Indian themes, The ambience failed to make me feel like as if I was having a meal in India because the background music playing were songs that you would probably hear on Rick Dee's Top 40Countdown. Nevertheless, I "patiently" waited to try out their signature dishes.

BTW, cool fork and spoon eh?



Demona: We ordered a plate of egg plant strips in spicy gravy. SGD 8.80. This dish was very spicy, but sadly, they mashed up the egg plants so much that you could hardly have a solid bite of an egg plant from there. Besides that, it was very oily as well. You need to eat rice or naan along with the egg plant strips to neutralize the oilyness and spicyness of the dish. Dogma ended up dumping big spoonfuls of them on my plate, forcing me to finish them up. GRRRRRRR. I would have enjoyed this dish very much more if the egg plant strips were actually.. visible, rather than totally mashed up. Definitely pricey for the portion we were getting.



Demona: We also ordered a plate of chick peas in masala sauce. The sauce was slightly spicy, and flavourful, but the chick peas were too hard. If they were much more softer, absorbing in the flavours of the sauce, this dish would have given us killer brownie worthy points. SGD 7.80. Again, I found it a little pricey.



Demona: Meateaters like us, could not just live with chick peas and egg plants. We also ordered two pieces of tandoori chicken, which the meat were in fact, quite small. Two or three bites were more than enough to finish up a piece of it. The tandoori chicken was pretty nice actually. A fairly spicy tandoori, yet the meat was tender. I was tempted to ask Dogma to indulge in another two more pieces, but SGD 6 was a little too steep for me to re-order again.



Demona: The garlic naan was a total failure. The naan layer was a little too thin, thus when we added the brinjal or chick peas on the naan, the kick from each bite was not there because you could not taste much of the naan, nor the garlic from the naan. SGD 2.50.



Demona: Here Dogma Dogma, chew the bone!



Verdict: The meal came up to SGD 27.60. I found it pretty expensive for the portion and quality that we had gotten that night. The service was good, the people in charge were friendly, always put up with a smiling face. The food however, was not that fantastic. I meal at Little India's Jaggi's was ten times more satisfying than this meal for the same amount of price that we paid for. However, it is challenging to get a filling meal in a decent Malaysian Indian restaurant for RM 30. It would probably cost another 20% more, and of course, not comparing to mamaks.

Commonwealth Market Coffee Stall

Kai suggest this place for excellent coffee + good toast at the Commonwealth hawker centre beside Queensway MRT. The shop name " White Coffee Stall" looks promising....


Hmmm, result was pretty disappointing.

Toast: The kaya was kinda factory made. Nose was bland without the natural caramel nose of egg and sugar/pandan. The bread texture was passable as well. Not holding well.

Coffee: Too much milk. too creamy. Serioulsy lacking in coffee flavor.

Rabbit Brand Seafood

It's our monthly makan session with the gang at Rabbit Brand Seafood Restaurant @ Joo Chiat Rd.

I'd brought a bottle of Yarden Valley red wine from Israel as this week is Good Friday Week (Jesus was betrayed, crucified and rose from the dead during this week)

Overall, the food and wine was soso :

Fortaleza Do Seival Pinot Noir, Campanha, Brazil: My first wine from Brazil. Open nose reminiscent of a Beaujolais. Burnt sweet gum/slight cherry on the nose. On the palate is light and chewy. Signs of young vines. I'd thought it is of Gamay varietal when tasted this blind. Not impressive or pleasant at all. Yarden Galilee Mount Hermon Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot@50SGD: A kosher wine from the famed Golan Height Winery. Initial nose of pronounced sweet licorice and red fruits/currant. In the palate was smooth and silky tannins. Not too much character but it was pleasing to drink. Most of the ladies on the table like it very much, probably due to the pronouced sweetness on the nose.

Bernard shared with me an 2006 Domain Leflaive Macon (burgundy white): It was amazingly clean and elegant. Nice notes of citrus on it... weet weet!



Pictures of the dishes that day: So so la. There are too many good restaurant around and most likely i'll not come here next time. Oh ya, I heard all the noodle/rice dish will be at half price if you dine in after 10pm.


Sri Lankan Crab in Chili Sauce: I prefer more spice and kick in the sauce!

Homemade Spinach Beacurd with Tobikko: hmm, tofu was too soft and not much structure. Taste wise leaving much to desire.

Pan-Fried Fragrant Pork Chop : This was pretty ok but nothing to shout about. Not overly sweet.