Food for Thought

Stumbled upon this place quite a while ago, and have been to this place quite a few times since then, but i think i have been busy and just realised that i have not wrote about the food here. it's a small eatery, about to hold around 20 to 30 pax. had attended a birthday celebration there and it was good, warm and cozy place very a group of very friendly staffs, you will feel good dining and chatting or just lazing there.

Their signature soup, mushroom soup. one interesting thing about their soup is that although it looks creamy, no cream or milk was added to it. i dun really like the mushroom soup cos i personally dislike the taste of the chinese and the shitake mushroom. but if you are a shitake lover, i;m sure you'll love this soup. tried the broccoli soup, but i felt that it was a little bland, had to add pepper and quite an amount of salt to taste. would love to try the potato and leek but haven't had the chance.

There were quite a number of us so we decided to take the platter for many, and i love the way they serve the food, we get to eat almost everything, they serve 3 different salads, and all the different sandwich fillings, a good way to sample all their food.

Tomato lemongrass corn salad, just realised it's tlc.. interesting. chinese chicken caesar and i cannot remember the last one. the chinese caesar is really interesting, the dressing was dark soy sauce, a very new taste for salad and it's really nice.. something you never get anywhere else.

Oven-roasted steak, i find it a little tough, and tasteless, very dry with the bread. braised pork, very chinese taste, spicy with dark sauce and tofu pieces which we thought was cheese on the first glance, this is good with the bread, with the taste gravy, the bread don't seem that dry anymore.

Grilled sausage duo, slow roasted pulled pork, basil pesto chicken. the pork was heavenly, so soft and tasty, goes really well with their homemade bread. sausages were just normal, nothing special. chicken was not bad too, favourite is still the pork here!!

A place i would go again just because of the friendly staffs they have there, of course not forgetting the nice ambience, do call them if you want them to prepare food for a small gathering for you, i suggest 20 pax, more than that will get the place really heated up, unless they have upgraded their air conditioning system.

Check out their website here!!.

address: 420 North Bridge Road, North Bridge Centre, #01-06
contact: 6338 8724
ambience: 8
taste: 7
service: 8
value for money: 7
overall rating: cozy place for small gatherings, very friendly staffs

BBQ Chicken

Looking for a place for dinner before a movie and saw this new place at the basement of cineleisure, decided to give it a try since the chicken on the posters look really nice and juicy. the place is more like a cafe rather than a restaurant.
Jerk chicken, not as nice as i tot it would be, although the korean bbq sauce is not bad, a little sweet, but i still prefer the next one..
Korean charboiled chicken. this is very nice, totally recommend this. actually, if there's 2 or more person, you can order both the chicken i posted here and share them.

Their fries are very nice too, fat and crispy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside.. just like the ones you get at mos burger.

address: Cathay Cineleisure Orchard, 8 Grange Road, B1-04/05
contact: 68873638
ambience: 6
taste: 7
service: 7
value for money: 7
overall rating: Chicken and fries are quite good

Sbey Sbey Thai Food

On the recommendation of a friend, we went down to sunshine plaza for thai food. it's a cozy little restaurant tucked in a corner of this building, you gotta access it from the outside of the shopping centre. it was a good experience, not a very high class place, but very nice for a group gathering, very reasonably priced too, and the food is quite good.

Omelette, normal. nothing very fantastic about this.

Bbq pork. this one is good, a little charred on the surface and tender on the inside, we ordered bbq beef initially, but they ran out of beef, so we had this for substitute. i wonder how the bbq beef will taste like. perhaps better since it was sold out first.

Green curry, very thick, quite good but must take it with rice.

Pork with basil leaves. i like the smell and taste of basil leaves, this one is quite a nice dish too, a little spicy though, can get them to make it less spicy and you cannot take spicy stuffs.

Thai fish cake. this one is quite normal.

Pork salad. super shoik, spicy and sour, very rich taste for this salad, i dun really fancy the raw beans and veg by the side though, but the pork with the salad dressing is just fantastic!

Hmmm, i cannot remember what veg this is, but again, this one is nothing special.

Tom yum soup, chokingly spicy, we forgotten to ask them to make this less spicy, very nice rich taste in the soup, i think it will be just nice if it's a little less spicy.

Generally, i would recommend this place if you want to have some nice thai food with a group of friends, remember to inform them before hand if you cannot take spicy food well. oh and if i'm not wrong, they open till late everyday, around 1 to 1:30am in the morning.


address: 91 Bencoolen Street, #01-14/22 Sunshine Plaza
contact: 90143218
ambience: 6
taste: 7
service: 7
value for money: 8
overall rating: Go try it.

Ice3 Cafe

A small dessert cafe at serangoon gardens, it's opposite serangoon gardens country club. other than getting ice cream in scoops, they have mudpies, crepes and waffles too. they also serve food, but i have yet to check that out, tried the ice cream, crepes and mudpies.
Interior of the cafe is cool, table with blue light in side, giving the cafe a nice cool feeling, although the place is not big, it's a nice place or a few friends to have a chat over some dessert. ok, here's the dessert we ordered.

A scoop of peanut butter ice cream. peanut butter taste is not too rich, the ice cream is just nice in terms of sweetness. if you like very rich and sweet ice cream, this is not for you.

Oreo mudpie. i like this one. very nice, not as sweet as the mudpies you get elsewhere, finishing up the whole thing won't give you a sugar rush, this is a good item from the menu to be ordered for sharing.

Crepe with chocolate coated sunflower seeds, whipped cream and i forgotten what ice cream.. the crepes are served with your choice of item to be wrapped inside, topping and ice cream. and on tuesdays, crepes are on half price!! don't choose sunflower seeds, it has a yucky oily taste, not fresh at all. the crepe itself isn't fantastic in term of texture and taste. but if you mix with the right side, it might be ok.

Crepe with brownies, peanut, strawberry cheesecake ice cream and caramel. this combi is much better the first one.

Check out their website here. They do have another branch in tampines.

address: 11 Kensington Park Road, Serangoon Garden Estate
contact: 62828126
ambience: 8
taste: 6
service: 6
value for money: 7
overall rating: nice ambience, dessert so so.

Borshch Steakhouse

A friend was asking if i wanted to join him and some friends for dinner, they were going to try this russian food at serangoon gardens. hmmmmm, russian food, something interesting, go i tagged along... the place looks normal from the outside, seems like it has been around for quite a while, should be quite good then. upon stepping in, the place had a very funny smell, not a pleasant one, i cannot describe it, but i got used to it after being inside for a while. we got the set dinner which comes with appetizer, soup, mains and dessert. $22+ and we ordered a dozen of escargot ($24) to share.
Carpetbed steak. the special part about this is that they stuff an oyster in the middle of the steak, and it's really in the middle, you have to cut the meat to see the oyster, but it's a mini oyster.. haha, according to those who had this, it wasn't fantastic.

Shashlik of fillet. medium rare. i had this and i find this quite good, portion i really small , but the meat was tender and juicy. served with a side salad and some grilled onions. did not regret choosing this one.

Cannot remember this. i think it was lamb cooked on a skewer like kebabs. forgotten to ask about the taste of this item.

Escargot, i feel that there isn't enough garlic, didn't have the shoikness i was hoping for.

Borshch soup, mushroom soup, shrimp salad. very disappointing. the borshch soup tasted like something anyone can whip out at home. mushroom soup was worse. shrimp salad was more like haybee salad.

Banana pancake and peach ice cream. very disappointing again. serving was so small, ice cream didn't even fill up half the cup. pancake was soggy and banana taste was for too artificial..

Taking the set was a wrong choice, should have ordered ala carte. oh yes, the drink that came with the set was in such a small cup, i think you need 4 cups to fill up a macdonalds small size drink. not going back anymore..

address: 58 Serangoon Garden Way
contact: 63834069
ambience: 3
taste: 4
service: 6
value for money: 3
overall rating: quite run down, food not very nice, quite expensive

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

Va Va Voom Cafe

A small but cosy cafe serving vietnamese food along seah street right opposite raffles hotel. the place is suitable for a gathering of small groups cos the place is not very big, they have sofa low seating areas too.

I didn't really look at the menu cos i always order beef soup noodle when i'm having viet food, here are the food we ordered

Morning glory salad with chicken. i'm not sure if the green stuff is raw kangkong, the dressing is quite sour and taste a little like plum sauce, a very interesting salad and it taste very good.

Stirfried beef noodles, it's a dry noodle that comes with this sour sauce, that i suspect is similar to the one they have on the salad, you decided for yourself how much of the sauce you wanna put in or maybe you'll prefer it without the sauce. interesting item, i have never tried something like that.

Beef soup noodle. the usual pho that you get at viet restaurants. the beef here is really nice and tender, gotta be the best pho i had as long as i can remember. love the mint leaves together with the soup and the noodle. wonderful..
Lemongrass chicken rice. the chicken is fried with with crushed lemongrass, again it's a taste that i never tried before, the taste was good, but i felt that the chicken is a little dry and tough.

It's a nice place with good food, definitely worth going down for a meal.. do check it out.

address: 36 Seah Street
contact: 63361248
ambience: 7
taste: 7
service: 6
value for money: 7
overall rating: quite good food, nice cosy cafe

Wong Kok Char Chan Teng

You might have noticed a new hong kong style cafe at bugis junction called wong kok char chan teng. so one of the evenings, we decided to go check it out, the place was quite pack on a weekday evening at around 7pm. environment is roughly the same as most of the hk cafes in singapore, decor is generally the same too. they do have some special items on their menu though.

Baked rice with portugus sauce (i thin it's portuguese sauce, i wonder why they spell it that way) it taste a little like curry sauce but not that spicy. the sauce is quite nice. baked rice and the cheese not that good though. we tried the tomato sauce too, not a good choice, stick to portugus..

Chinese pan cake with sausage, dun order this, it's not good at all, very plain and tasteless pancake.

Cannot remember the name, it's some xo roll thing, this is a must try, it;s really good, it has pork floss and omelette in it, the egg is fragrant, the roll is a little savory with some sweetness from the pork floss.

Some tea, i cannot remember, i didn't try this

Instant noodle with luncheon meat and egg.

Snow cat, it's a drink with yougurt in it, if you like yougurt drinks, you might like this.

Things worth trying out is the xo roll and the bake rice with portugus sauce, the rest of the items are generally the same as other hk cafe.







address: Bugis Junction #02-50
contact:
ambience: 6
taste: 6
service: 5
value for money: 6
overall rating: Gotta order the right items, they have good and bad items on the menu

Barracks @ House

You might have seen this old building which has been painted green at dempsey hill with a huge "house" printed on the wall. house is actually consist of a spa on the second level and a cafe/restaurant and bar on the ground floor, quite a different concept to mix spa and eatery. check out their website, it's quite nicely done up.

They called the cafe barracks, and it's made to look like an army camp, and the staff wears something that looks like uniform. look at the menu, they used the figurines that we used to play when we were kids, so cool..

They have very interesting teas in their menu, so since there were 5 of us, we decided to have 5 pots of tea.

Ordered this one called the jungle julip, supposed to taste of spearmint, when i took the first sip, i recalled the spearmint chewing gum that i used to like, and without sugar it taste like gum after you chew it for hours. and when sugar is added to the tea, it taste like fresh gum again. buddha blend taste like oolong tea. spa esprit smells like some aroma oil but taste like plain warm water.. not impressed with the tea at all.

Carrot cake, quite nice except for the rasins, i happen to not like rasins, but other than the rasins, it's a nice cake.

Strawberry shortcake, this one is good, rich taste and it has different textures in the cake, there's something crispy in it and the strawberry taste really good. must try.

The place is set up wonderfully, very good place for a chat, if you want privacy, they have a few private rooms which you can book, as long as you spend $300, there's no extra cost for the rooms (if i did not hear wrongly), the best room in my opinion should be the green house, it seems that you are dining in a green house with all the glas walls and ceiling and the green plants that put in the room. thumbs up for the decor!!

Some of the staffs are wearing uniform and a few were wearing own clothes, i would presume those are the owners or the managers.. but generally, it's the uniform ones who smiled more and were more polite, the better dressed ones were very stucked up.. maybe we don't have the rich men look, so they didn't bother about us, except this one called desmond, he was really patient with us when we asked him about the things in the menu, and he could even joke with us. The reason why we might go back to this place is definitely because of him, plus the ambience..

address: 8D Dempsey Road
contact: 6479 0070
ambience: 8
taste: 6
service: 5 (general) 8 (this person called desmond)
value for money: 7
overall rating: This place is more for ambience. food so so.. service not that good