Free ice cream!@Malaysian Airlines Platinum Suite Lounge, KLIA

Going off to Barcelona for work!

Catching up with my colleague here at the lounge.. while indulging in some Haagen Daz ice cream.... for freeeeeeeeeeeee..... (Adam Sandler style)

Can I steal this fridge home?

Junkfood@Incheon International Airport, Seoul

Time to bid Korea goodbye. It was a fruitful 10 day journey. Spiritually blessed.. and physically too! Phew. We arrived at the airport few hours earlier than needed, thus had plenty of time to kill.

One last bite on a local ice cream cone. Walls Cornetto still rawked. What I really liked about the airport was that most of the goods sold here were not priced higher than normal. Unlike our nice-to-look-at but inconvenient KLIA, FnB items here cost a good 20-30% higher than normal. Rubbish! Those shopaholics who insist that they have not bought enough, can still do a final round of shopping in Incheon, without having to feel like they are ripped off. In KLIA, you will feel otherwise.

Eating in a local MCD has always been something habitual for me. Especially, trying out items that are not sold in Malaysia. This was a double beef patty with a slice of pork bacon burger, drizzled over with BBQ sauce. If my big toes would bend 90 degrees from other toes, like my thumb and fingers, I'd do 4 thumbs-toes up!

The taste of the fries differed also. I strongly suspect it was due to the pork frying in the oil. They had a moderate hint of lard taste. SINFUL.

After a filling MCD meal, we still had 3 hours to kill before having to check-in the boarding area. We found a spa at B1, and decided to take an expensive and long shower for Rm45, and it was totally worth it! It takes a while getting used to not being embarrassed of being naked around others.

I grabbed all the free samples given from Skinfood purchases. DYI facial while soaking naked in the hot tub, with lady strangers. I'd thought that I would be a little too shy for comfort but after soaking for a while, I forgotten how quickly I started to enjoy myself chilling out by the hot waters, cold waters, sauna, and then hot waters again.

Repeated this: 10 times.

It felt really good just lying down, resting and not thinking of anything. They even provided us loose clothes to change into. You can laze in the common living room area with cozy couches and TV for a short nap, read a book, have a drink. We came out, feeling like a clean sheet of linen. Happy and clean.

The only slack part about the airport was that, most places are closed after 9 pm. We started feeling hungry again after the spa experience, but most shops were closed. The only shop that was packed with patrons was a bar. All drinking to sleep when they board the plane. We bought a bottle of soju, and ate the chips that we bought to tapao back home. This pack of chips cost only abour RM2-3, humble, crunchy, salty. Pretty enjoyable. They started selling these in Korean marts at Hartamas now, for RM6-7. Phew.

Well.. one pack ain't enough for few tummies. We opened another pack, and this one was my favourite. Spicy, crunchy, delicious and for some reason, the picture of the sunflower made me feel that the chips was slightly healthier than normal chips. Thumbs up!

They also sell these in the Korean marts in Hartamas now. Yeah, for double the price too.

Goodbye PyungKang-Cheil, goodbye Sr Pastor Abraham Park, goodbye Seoul, goodbye great foodie. We will be back, hopefully May/October this year!

Local ice cream cone@journey back to Seoul

I did a final hike up the top of the Yeoju mountain before departing this wonderful place. Sure ain't easy climbing up, especially in long sleeve clothing. But *thumbs up* I made it! A snapshot view from the top.

An ice cream cone to cool down.. bought from a nearby local sundry shop. Vanilla and cookie flavoured ice cream.

Hmmm.. the taste was average. Walls cornetto chocolate ice cream still rawks! Talking about it.. I'm craving a Magnum now.

Red Mango@Myung Dong, Seoul

This gem is hidden in the 3rd floor of one of the shoplots in the busy and packed Myung Dong shopping district. We took almost 30 minutes hunting for this shop, trying our best to spot a possible signage that says "Red Mango" but it was terribly difficult. Almost every shop kiasu-ly protrude out a shop signage to compete visibility with the others. Many were brightly coloured neon lights, and that made the search worse. We asked a few locals too, however language barrier made it challenging for us to explain to them that we were looking for a famous ice cream shop (amongst plenty of ice cream parlors found here).

But finally... WE FOUND IT! It didn't have an obvious signage, and the shop co-shares with a chocolate parlor too. The environment was really cozy, with wooden furniture designs, lights dimly lited and peculiar quirky looking lanterns dangling from the ceiling wall. Each chair had a cushioned pillow to immediately get you comfortable. What I loved most was that they had pretty squarish clothed boxes by each table, for shoppes/ladies with big handbags to put them in, rather than taking up space on the table or having to hang them behind your chairs.

 Good stuff don't come cheap. Like how Moo Cow and Tutti Frutti are charged, each swirl cost around RM4. The scoops above with 2 toppings given, almond slices and sugar coated walnuts cost nearly RM20. However, handsdown.. they were by far the best yoghurt ice cream that I've ever tasted. Moo Cow and Tutti are nothing compared to that. It melts in your mouth, creamy and sweet, but gives a slight sour bitter taste at the end palate. My Singaporean friend who was there with me told me that there is a franchise opened in one of the malls in Orchard, however those sold there tasted different from those served here. People suspect that it was due to the difference in the milk and the yeast content (Stringent food QC to enter into Singapore).

 The other 4 swirls had fruit toppints, strawberries and blueberries. The yoghurt ice cream was blueberry flavoured too. Quite nice as well, but the original flavoured ones are the best in my opinion.

I haven't seen this in a long, long while. Found this hanging outside one of the dining places in the church area. Insect trapper plant.. coolio!

Japanese Ice Creams@Ishikari

While chilling out at the Sri Hartamas Shopping Centre after a few hours of house hunting around the area, we bumped into a japanese junk grocery store and got ourselves some japanese ice cream to kill off the heat...

You gotta pay kudos to the guys from the Land of the Sun, who scored A++ in marketing and packaging their products.
The vanilla / chocolate ice cream waffle was half as good as the packaging..thou extremely creamy, i prefer my ice cream to pack a solid bite feel.





The green tea ice cream basically saves the day... Demona knew that i was a die hard green tea fanatic all the while and she was "pandai" in choosing the creamy, thick green tea flavoured ice cream for me...The ice cream had a nice texture, while packing a full bus load of green tea flavour.. MM MMM Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Tom's Palate

Besides pastry , Ice cream would be one of Demona's many weak spots.. Give her a spoonful of kick-ass ice cream and she would be jolly jumping for the rest of the day.

and Tom's Palate's ice -cream do kick ass!

After a tiring meeting on a Saturday morning, I decided to bring Demona to Tom's Palate to reward her.

This is her second visit to Tom's palate and they did not dissapoint.
Strawberry flavour: Thick solid texture with generous portion of frozen strawberry. This is lovely. not overly sweet with a good acidity and sourness on the palate. Very natural flavor.
Double Combo of Butter pecan and Cheese Cake: Can't remmeber much as demona was hogging the spoon. Will let her post her review soon.

Tom's Palate contact:
Jeng Jeng: Demona's art work paste on the wall.



My suggestion for Tom's new creation: Mature bordeaux ice cream: Smokey nose of vanilla and blackberry + tangy palate with chocolate and mocha flavour.


Verdict: After visiting a couple of the ice cream parlour in Singapore. Here are our rankings of them.

1) Tom's Palate: Solid, natural thick ice cream
2) Daily's Scoop: It was solid and thick ice cream on our first visit. But the second trip was too sweet to our liking
3) Swirl:
4) Island Cremery: I dun really enjoy this as the flavour was tad watered down or too sweet.

Gelato treat@Swirl Gelateria, Crown Centre

Demona: Ice cream treats are a definite MUST in our food venturing guidelines. In Singapore, we had tried Daily Scoop, Island Cremery, Tom's Palate and some gelateria stalls in shopping malls.. and this time around, we made our way to Swirl Gelateria, located in Crown Centre.

We reached at around 11 am that day, and Swirl just opened its door to customers a short while before we arrived. The gelatos were still nicely stored in the fridge. We gave the lady owner some time to prepare and read newspapers and the available magazines lying around.



Demona: I took the honour of selecting the flavours this time. Somehow I was colour biased that day: Brown (Peanut butter, chocolate and coffee). The champion flavour went to the peanut butter. Its taste was intense and powerful, with chewy little chunks of peanuts in between.

All three flavours were very creamy. The chocolate and coffee flavoured gelatos were quite average though. Besides the creamy texture, the flavour of both were just slightly above average compared to the commercialized ones.

I did try other flavours before selecting these 3, but many of them tasted a too funky for my liking.

Verdict: It cost below 10 sgd for 3 flavours. There were a drawer full of board games by the door. After slurping down the last bit of melted gelato, we played a game of "sticks" and "Taboo" while the gelatos in our tummies gradually digested away. Needless to say, Demona was the champion-ness of Taboo!

With some cooling sugary treats in a fairly cozy corner, some interesting boardgames and fashion/tabloid magazinesis, Swirl is definitely quite pleasant if you are looking for a hang out place to spend time with your friends, in your sleeping shorts, messy hair, ungroomed look on a lazy weekend evening.

Daily Scoop Take 2@Clementi Arcade

Demona: I usually join Dogma on a few jogging sessions everytime I'm here in Singapore. Dogma lives nearby Daily Scoop. On our first visit here, we jogged our way to Clementi Arcade, sweating off all the calories only waiting to pile them back on with some icey, creamy sugary scoops of DS's home made gourmet ice cream. The experience was great, therefore we vowed to return for round 2.

Since Dogma's Jazz is on hands now, we did not jog here on our second visit. Bad girl, bad boy. Despite the heavy downpour that day, getting chills and clothings wet did not stop us from proceeding on with our plan.

(Accidentally scooped up part of Dogma's head and specs as well. Oopsie)



Demona: We ordered a waffle topped with two scoops of ice cream, green tea and red bean flavour (Dogma's choice) and hazelnut flavour (my choice). Cost was SGD 8.10.
The waffle was drizzled with Hershey's chocolate syrup and icing sugar was sprinkled all over it. It took quite a long while for the waffle to arrive on our table. At first we thought that each waffle was freshly made, but Dogma caught a glimpse of a waffle placed into a microwave oven. Hmmmmmmmm...

Everyone around us seemed to be waiting for the waffles as well. Must be DS's X-factor.



Demona: The green tea ice cream tasted alright. The grassy, herbal green tea flavour was definitely present. Small chunks of red bean were incorporated in between the green coloured ice cream. However, its taste did not match with the waffle. It's better off eaten on its own.

The hazelnut ice cream was also so so. The hazelnut flavour was locked in it, the texture was smooth, however something felt lacking to give this ice cream a big UMPH to it. Maybe additions of chopped hazelnuts would be nicer.

The waffle was not as great as I thought it would be. Its layer was a bit thin, thus when you eat it with the ice cream, you can't get a nice, solid, hearty crunch of the waffle. The buttery sweet taste of the waffle was quite nice, but if its texture was harder and it had a thicker layer, this dessert would have been an A scorer.

Verdict: The ice cream that we had on our first trip here was much better. I think one of it was the chocolate ice cream. If I remembered correctly, it was smoothly dark brown in colour, with a smooth, sweet, chocolatey taste locked in it. The flavour was not there on our second visit there.

The ice creams at DS are fairly nice, but it hasn't gotten me hooked on with an ugly craving of wanting to have more, and more, and more, and more from here yet. However, I believe that we will make our third visit here sometime in the near future.

P/s: Any great flavours to recommend us to try at DS?

Island Creamery@Serene Centre

Demona: There were only 2 hours left before I had to board the bus back home. A week of foodventuring had come to an end. We wanted to have the last tummy growling bite at the Daily Scoop, unfortunately, the shop was closed on New Year's Day. We hopped on a cab and headed to Serene Centre for an ice cream treat at Island Creamery instead.



Demona: The parlour was designed in such a way that you would feel very much at home, lazing on a couch, with a television remote control on one hand and a tub of ice cream on the other. The place was pretty packed, both with dining in people as well as those who bought and went. TONS of polaroid pictures of people who had visited this place were all glued on one big side of the wall, adding smiles and a warm welcome into the parlour.

We had to queue up for a pretty long while before it got to our turn to try out their flavours for the day. Guess what, we bumped into the ice cream maker of Daily Scoop here as well! She queued up for ice cream too. ( No wonder she was closed for the day. Either enjoying the ice cream here or busy studying competitor's activities!)

We decided to indulge in a 3 scoop ice cream portion and a hot cup of flat white.



Demona: Sadly, there were not many flavours presented which caught our attention that day. Maybe we had arrived late, and the popular flavoured ice creams were already sold out. We ended up choosing, Kahlua, Pulut Hitam and Nutella.

The Kahlua was too mild, we barely tasted it in the ice cream. It did not win brownie points from us. The pulut hitam however, was pretty delicious! You could taste the intensity of the flavour with only a small mouthful of it. The Nutella, was pretty average. I remembered that it was extremely sweet, with a strong hazelnut taste, definitely over powering the other two flavours.

My sugar high tolerance level was three times more than Dogma's, thus I ended up finishing most of it (as usual).



Demona: We took a pict of ourselves with the polaroid picts decorated wall and printed it out using the printer by the ice cream counter. We left this message (as above) on the pict and guys out there, you might catch a glimpse of us at one of the corners on the wall somewhere!