Wednesday 19 December 2007

Five Star Chicken Rice

They have quite a number of branches, can google for the addresses of the other branch, i went to the one at river valley and 3 of us ordered half a chicken and 2 side dishes.. i find the food so so only... nothing fantastic

Half a chicken, i felt that it wasn't tender enough, the savory sasame and suy sauce they had over the chicken was nice and salty.. goes well with the cucumber.
Baby kailan.. not bad. but nothing special.
Deep fried tofu thai style. the tofu was soft and smooth, the thai style sauce is the same everywhere, nothing special.

This meal costs us around $30, the price was fine for a clean and comfortable dining environment, food was decent. maybe i need to try boon tong kee soon, so i can compare these 2.


address: 417 River Valley Rd
contact: 62356760
ambience: 6
taste: 6
service: 7
value for money: 7
overall rating: not very expensive, but food also not that great

Saturday 8 December 2007

Cold Rock

Heard about this ice cream cafe when it opened up at holland village, but never got the chance to try it out until now. the cafe has got limited seats in side, most of the seats are outside, without air con.. decor is very refreshing, mainly white, quite a wide selection of ice cream flavours and crunches/toppings.

The main speciality is that you can choose your ice cream flavours, and then choose the crunches or candies like mars bar, snickers bar, fudge etc etc, and they'll mix everything up before serving the ice cream to you.
Chocolate with marshmellows and i forgotten what it was which was crunchy. the ice cream itself wasn't very good, the only thing i like is that i can choose the crunches i can have in the ice cream.
Honeycomb ice cream with violet crumble and cookie dough. the cookie dough taste very raw, very floury. should have gotten fudge instead. again ice cream was just so so, the crunchy violet crumble made it much nicer.

Generally speaking, i feel that it was not worth the price, but if you have never tried ice cream with additional items added in like that, you might wanna go take a look, i forgotten to take photos of the staff mixing the stuffs on the cold plate.

address: 24A Lorong Mambong, Holland Village
contact: 67631323
ambience: 7
taste: 4
service: 6
value for money: 4
overall rating: not that fantastic, quite expensive

Friday 7 December 2007

Kazu Sumiyaki

This place was recommended by nuanda after he read my post on gyu kaku a while back. A small cozy, but a little cramp restaurant in cuppage plaza. as the name suggest, their speciality is grilled items, mostly on skewers, or many of us know them as satay sticks. they have a very comprehensive selection of bbq items, and the boss himself is at the kitchen grilling the food. nuanda thinks that the boss looks like a japanese surfer. so if you see someone fitting this description, that's the boss.


Brown tea is served free, unlimited refill, but if you order the cold brown tea, which is exactly the same thing except that it's chilled, it's $1 per glass.. just a note in case you feel that $1 for tea is too expensive. but since you are there, be prepared to spend. The restaurant has small tables and chairs and you sit very closely to the people on the neighbouring table, very typical of japanese restaurant. but the good food will definitely make up for the squeeze.

Lots of photos.. click on the photo to see a larger version of it.
Asparagus with bacon, australian wagyu beef, bacon with golden mushroom, japanese shitake mushroom, sausages. sausage seems a little out of place although it tasted well, not very jap. i prefer the beef at gyu kaku, the rest of the items above were very good. oh couldn;t comment on shitake mushroom, cos i'm not a mushroom fan.

Chicken skin, quail's eggs and chicken ball (tsukune), foie gras, scallops with prawns, lamb chop. crispy part of the chicken skin was good, but i dun really like to soft part cos it feels very fatty, foie gras was quite good, not very oily, and the taste wasn't too strong, at $6.50 for a stick like that, i think it's worth it, i do not eat foie gras often to know whether this is high quality or not. lamb chop was absolutely delicious.

Squid with bacon, chicken wings, chicken with apple, tako ball with mayonnaise, cod fish. chicken wings were crispy on the outside, warm and tender on the inside. chicken with apple is really very good, you can taste the sweetness from the apple in the chicken cubes, tako balls were unlike the ones we have at pasar malam ot food courts, this one is filled with meat, like a huge delicious meat ball.

Raw cabbage, garlic rice, pot rice (kamameshi), tofu with unagi, cold cha soba. cabbage is served before the food, you eat it raw with the miso sauce provided, squeeze some lemon into the sauce so that it's doesn't taste that salty. 5 of us finished 3 bowls of cabbage! the pot of rice was quite expensive, $22, a little like chinese claypot rice, i dun really fancy this dish. tofu was good esp with the eel.

Containers like this are provided for you to place the "satay sticks" after eating the food. the more sticks you see in there, the more satisfying it feels, but i means a longer and bigger bill.

When we were there, this staff by the name of yingjie was serving us, and i just have to commend on her service, full marks!! explaining the individual items, explaining all the dessert so that we know which one to choose, telling us about the boss, and a little on the history of the restaurant, giving us a feww cabbage cos we really liked it. btw this place has been around for 14 years. so if you happen to be there, you might wanna ask for her, actually the other staffs should be equally good i guess.
We were looking at this funny cutlery places on out table, there was one for each person, and even after thinking for a while, we couldn't figure out with it's for, so we just had to ask. it's for you to remove the items from the skewers without using your bare hands, wah it was quite cool, you can remove the meat and place them on your plate before eating them with a pair of chopsticks.
Finally, it was time for dessert, and we chose the grilled mochi with ice cream. fantastic choice, the presentation was astonishing!! look at it!! it's like an artpiece, the moshi was really soft and chwey with the skin a little charred from the grilling, but inside it the ice cream remains cold and together with the sweet dressing, it was fabulous.. must try..

address: 5 Koek Road #04-05 Cuppage Plaza
contact: 67342492
ambience: 7
taste: 9
service: 9
value for money: 8
overall rating: Wonderful food with equally wonderful service.

Monday 3 December 2007

Crystal Jade Restaurant (Airport Branch)

Crystal jade is a chain of restaurants that we are quite familiar with, and i have always have good impression of their food, from crystal jade kitchen to crystal jade la mian xiao long bao. but this time round, this one at the airport was really disappointing. the best dish we had for the whole of dinner was the plate of peanuts with ikan bilis.

Deep fried squid with pepper and salt. it seems as if it was fried quite some time before it was served, not crispy at all, the one at crystal jade kitchen is much better.
Steam chicken with ham. quite an expensive item, $20+, ham is very salty and chicken is very tough, feels like chicken that we usually cannot finish , leave it in the fridge and reheat it the next day.
Briased beancurd with vegetable, ok this dish was passable.

Something else to note, plain porridge is very very salty, never order that... hhmm i think better don't visit that place at all... the above items came out to be nearly $80 for 4 person, and we left still feeling hungry.



address: Changi Airport Terminal 2, Viewing Mall North # 036-084
contact: 6214 1488
ambience: 8
taste: 4
service: 6
value for money: 3
overall rating: Very bad food, dun waste your money