Sake-To-Me Indulgence

It was Mfluder’s birthday and the inimitable Tricia, together with Mr and Mrs Sailorboy, put together an amazing dinner at then-new Kiraku. (Sorry Mfluder for posting this late, happy birthday plus 8 weeks!) Almost 20 of us took up the centre of the restaurant (not enough space in the private room) for Mfluder’s Sake-To-Me Night of Indulgence and made enough noise for 40! Mrs Sailorboy arranged for a special menu and the restaurant graciously gave us, among other things,  little bites to start the meal. The first little bite was fish liver. It tasted like rather fishy foie gras, not too bad but I probably wouldn’t want more than the few morsels in the bowl.

Then they probably ran out of fish liver because the rest of the late ones streaming in got this rather nice unagi starter. Boy were Hypodermically and I pleased that we got there early as we got two types of nice bites!

Because Hypodermically and I couldn’t wait for the rest to arrive so dinner proper could start, we ordered a very competent sashimi salad that was very fresh and left us hankering for more.

The first dish was the star of the entire dinner: oyster chawanmushi like nothing we’d tasted before. This truly brought chawanmushi to a new level. The uber-soft egg custard lay under half an inch of clear broth. Taking an exploratory spoonful of the broth, I tasted dashi broth and ginger. Dipping my spoon gently into the custard, I got ready for the egg part. And the silky yielding custard was an epiphany of oyster. I don’t know how they got it so soft and how they got the oyster bits just cooked without tasting at all fishy, but this is top of my list in chawanmushi. It’s the best one I’ve had. Ever.

Next came assorted sashimi, which was fresh, though not astoundingly fresh like on lucky days when you intercept the shipment straight from Japan. I liked it even more when Hypodermically agreed to swap her maguro for my salmon. The sweet prawn was quite nice…

… but even nicer was Mrs Sailorboy making sure that everyone surrendered their prawn heads for frying. Now these deep-fried prawn heads made for an ideal snack to go along with sake…

… which by now everyone was downing. The owner gave us what seemed like a free flow of very good, very smooth sake that kept coming. I don’t remember very much what it tasted like because DC didn’t let me take more than a few sips. Before you think he was being evil (though he normally is, heheh), he didn’t want me to repeat a Smokin’ Frogz. We also shared a small bottle of very lovely (even better than the free flow stuff!) sake between the four or five of us in the vicinity.

Next up was the tempura, nice and crisp. Good standard, though not particularly special.

But the sushi was very good. Somehow the rice was done perfect: balanced perfectly on the edge of hard and flavoured with just the right amount of vinegar. The three here beat my Singapore gold standard of Isetan supermarket sushi (go try it for yourself before you scoff). Excellent.

Emboldened by the excellent sushi, we rather paradoxically ordered more sashimi. The otoro was amazing. Having not been to Tsukiji market, I obviously don’t know what otoro is supposed to be like, but this one was another epiphany. Even DC was uncharacteristically uncharitable: we had to split the last piece. Being on the more despotic side of the relationship, I obviously got the slightly bigger and therefore better half.

It was a pity that my favourite ikura gunkan didn’t fare as well. Here, they soak the salmon roe in sake which gives it a rather interesting alcoholic edge. I prefer it done the normal way where you can really taste the fish oil. It didn’t help that the sacs were quite thick, so the ikura wasn’t as bursty as I like.

Everyone else oohed and aahed and loved the oyster sashimi. It was so big that it had to be served cut into little bits. I felt that it was a competent and fresh enough oyster. However, it just doesn’t beat oysters in the half-shell that still taste of the sea. This one somehow didn’t. It felt more like it belonged in a (very) high-class or luak.

The savoury courses finally came to an end with sukiyaki and shabu shabu.

True to form, ours wasn’t any old sukiyaki or shabu shabu. It came with wagyu beef…

… and kurobuta pork.

No pictures of the cooked product because we were busy squabbling and fighting over who was hogging (pun intended) the beef and the pork. All’s fair in love, war and eating. Amen.

Now the last course was something off-menu. Even the owner only tasted it the night before when the chef had finished the cake. It was a lovely strawberry cheesecake, very rich and homey tasting. It was unanimous, everyone wanted it to be put on the menu.

Kiraku
55 Market Street
#B1-01
Tel: 6438 6428

TCM at Imperial

Having been discharged from A&E without incident, DC decided that we needed a second opinion and he took me to Imperial Herbal Restaurant at Vivocity to see the sinseh. For $10, the Chinese physician told me that my body was weak and I needed to eat more red meat and green vegetables, and that I needed to drink tonic soup. Nothing that my mother couldn’t tell me.

Nonetheless, we got me some soup and I had the cordycep soup which was rather tasty. It was good soup done the right way and my inner Cantonese girl thoroughly approved the strong broth and pleasant herbal flavour.

Now what I liked even more was the herbal menthol tea that the doctor provided for my persistent dry cough. The menthol was so strong that my nose cleared immediately and I had to close my eyes to avoid the fumes. It soothed my throat nicely, like a cough drop in liquid form.

Imperial Herbal Restaurant
#03-08, Lobby G VivoCity
Tel: 6337 0491

A Very Dramatic Meal

It was the end of a very long work week. I’d just recovered from one of those nasty bugs that was percolating round and round that sick building I work at. It was late and DC suggested we go for burger and beer at Smokin Frogz. That place was so packed we almost had to stand. We were lucky to get a table after a short wait.

The burgers were very good though: meaty and juicy. Although mine was a mushroom burger, the mushrooms hardly registered. Such a pity since the rest of the burger was good. There was soft bun and thoroughly melted cheese to top it all off.

We were delighted to spot some harder to find beers on the menu. DC went for the Chimay Red and I had the Little Creatures Pale Ale. The Chimay Red was rich and malty but also quite hoppy. Surprisingly for something so malty and dark, it was rather fruity with a hint of apples. The Pale Ale was very forgettable: light and smooth but nothing much. It seemed like the Little Creatures took flight before putting in the flavour.

The beer was also very heady! It was probably a combination of exhaustion, post-illness fatigue, a late dinner and the alcohol. One moment I was telling DC that the beer had gone to my head too fast and the next I was waking up from a faint, flat out on the floor. It must have been rather alarming to the rest of the customers. I was lucky that DC was there and also had the help of another diner who was a nurse. We’d arranged to meet a couple of his friends there for drinks but they showed up only to help haul me to car and get to A&E to be checked out. Such a pity since the Chimay was good and fairly cheap (less than $10 I think).

Smokin Frogz
879 Bukit Timah Road

[post script: I'm OK, don't worry. The hospital couldn't find anything wrong, so all's well.]

Tart at Toast

Toast, like its sister joint Marmalade Pantry, is another one of those dependables that shouldn’t go too wrong if you’re stuck in the Orchard area. A bunch of us went shopping, first just me and G, then we picked up Misa and finally HM. When the troops were assembled, we thought tea would be a good idea and wandered over to the little corner of Taka that’s Toast.

I normally go for the ice lemon tea, it’s quite different from the norm as they blend it with whole pieces of lemon so the zest flavours it nicely and it turns slightly cloudy, almost milky. I like how fresh it tastes, though I’m on the fence on the latest less-sweet formulation.

I liked the lemon meringue tart. For something that’d probably been sitting around all day, the pastry was still quite short, unlike the slightly soggy texture you invariably get with stuff that’s not fresh out of the oven. I’m quite fussy about meringue and am not keen on super high spongy peaks. This version was nicely thick with smaller air bubbles and had lovely burnt tips. It contrasted very well with the sweet-sour lemon curd. A winner.

Toast
#02-11 Ngee Ann City
391 Orchard Road
Tel: 6733 8489

Trung Nguyen Coffee

I was delighted to find out the Trung Nguyen Coffee got to our shores, and even more delighted that DC found it too and loves it. In fact, he loves it so much they recognise him already. I think one week he went there for a cuppa almost every day.

Trung Nguyen is the Viet equivalent of Starbucks, only infinitely superior to the coffee-flavoured milk Starbucks serves. Here they do things the traditional Viet way using flimsy little drip coffee contraptions. Choose which number brew you like (each is blended differently) and wait for the hot water to percolate through the metal filter. I like Blend No. 5. It’s deeply aromatic and very robust with little acidity. It’s the equivalent of a boot up the bum gulped black, but what a fragrant boot up the bum! Drunk with a good dose of condensed milk, it’s a better version of the coffeeshop kopi: very sweet, very smooth and very strong. I think this is the best coffee in Singapore. Do yourself a favour and forget the other coffee places. This is it.

Trung Nguyen Coffee
Liang Court
177 River Valley Road #02-34
Tel: 6837 3314

My First F1

It was the first time for both of us at an F1 race. Miraculously, DC knew someone who knew someone who had tickets to give away. We got Pit Grandstand tickets for the Saturday race. Being a complete F1 newbie, DC had to brief me on exactly what happens at one of these dos. I found out that the cars don’t all start at the same time and definitely not in a straight line with a gun going off to signal the start of the race. Saturday night was to be for pole position for the final on Sunday: they all raced individually and whoever had the best timing would start in front for Sunday’s final. It was quite different from my mental image of a car race. (I’d obviously not paid a whole great deal of attention while playing Daytona at the arcade.)

When we got our seats, I realised that we could only see the last turn and not the finish line! There wasn’t much to see except cars whizzing by at random intervals. I couldn’t even get two cars into the same frame, nothing was happening.

So I tried a zoom shot on sports mode. At least I got a nice blurred picture of a Ferrari streaking by.

Soon I gave up, and popping the ear plugs out of my ears, I demanded nourishment. DC rose to the occasion by getting me horribly overpriced $12 Hokkien mee with scallop (the scallop was fake, some kind of small faux abalone that was nothing even close to scallop). At least it tasted pretty decent.

The heat became unbearable and we ducked into the Red Dot tent for beers and a 7 inch Italian sausage hot dog. In a rare instance, DC chose the wrong beer. He got the Weizen, a wheat beer that was light and, well, simply too light that it hardly had any flavour at all. My summer ale was much better. It was grassy with an aroma of floral honey, and bitter hoppy finish. Very refreshing especially when cold, probably the best part of the evening.

So the F1 was a disappointment, but at least it was free. Oh well. And there was good beer to be had.

Beer and Pinot Noir

I met up with Tweych for dinner and drinks. It was a pity that our sushi dinner hardly stood out especially considering that the place claimed to fly in fish daily. I didn’t like how loosely the rice was packed and felt that the fish wasn’t particularly fresh. It wasn’t frozen but neither was it fresh. However, I enjoyed the standing sushi bar’s Suntory Premium Malt’s (5%) which is supposedly hard to find in Singapore. It was a lovely pale yellow, very malty as expected and also surprisingly sweet. It went down fairly well with the sushi although I think Asahi Super Dry would probably do better at cutting through the seafood.

Not being particularly satisfied, we headed to Moomba for wine. Our resident wine expert Tweych picked out a New Zealand pinot noir, the 2007 Wairau River Home Block Pinot Noir (13%). Like most pinot noirs, it was light red and of course still very young. There was plenty of heady cherry, strawberry and red currant in the nose and it went down very smoothly. The only problem was that I felt like I was drinking alcoholic Ribena. The feeling only damped slightly after about a glass or so when the mild tannins started showing through. It was not bad, but I’m still not quite convinced when it comes to pinot noirs.

Standing Sushi Bar
1 Raffles Place
#B1-02B OUB Centre
Tel: 6533 7078

The Moomba Wine Shop
52A Circular Road
Tel: 6438 2438

March in Laos: Up the Mekong

Siamesecat and I took a trip up the Mekong to visit the Pak Ou caves, famous for its retired Buddha statues. We took one of these wooden boats and put-putted slowly up the river.

On the muddy banks grew the occasional pair of majestic banyans, roots entwined in a charming embrace.

We passed by typical idyllic scenes of daily life, here appearing to be quite authentic and not a show for the tourists.

Ours was the true blue experience as we pulled up alongside a petrol shop-boat to top up the fuel tank.

We stopped at a flight of cement stairs leading up to a little village that specialised in local whisky.

Glutinous rice whisky (lao lao) of all sorts of interesting flavours was laid out for sale.

There was the usual scorpion one for virility…

… and snake too for the same. There was also the less common centipede which was so big we wondered how it got stuffed into the bottle.

They gave out samples of the regular version. We tried out shots of the mild stuff that was quite pleasing as it was sweet and light, then progressed on to the full strength (40%) stuff that was smooth but not quite worth lugging around the country, especially considering the makeshift distillery it was made in.

We were somewhat taken aback when the villagers proudly showed us their distillery shack. This setup is it: three barrels, a wood stove and a bunch of earthenware jars. We soon moved swiftly on.

Spirits of another sort awaited us at the Pak Ou Caves where old Buddha statues were deconsecrated and put out to pasture. It was behind an amazing cliff face, looking rather like it came out from a movie set.

Inside were Buddha images in various stages of age and wear. Some didn’t look quite that old and others, well, had seen far better times.

There really were hundred and hundreds of these images. I wonder if anyone’s ever done a count.

There were statues in every nook and corner of the cave, all of them crowding even to the edges of the rock shelves. I think that was the most Buddha images I’ve ever seen in one place. Crazy stuff.

Relish

It was raining so instead of our usual running date, DC and I went to stuff our faces with beer and hamburgers. Oh joy.

First, the beers. DC had the German Konig Ludwig Weissbier (5.5%) that was light, wheaty and smooth. I didn’t fancy it that much because it was a tad characterless and hadn’t much in the flavour department.  But true enough to the suggested pairing, it went well with his burger (see ginormous later).

I had the Belgian Titje Blanche (4.7%), also smooth and light but much better than the Konig Ludwig. It had a sweet and rounded fruity taste that I liked a lot. Slightly hoppy, it had a bitter aftertaste that balanced off the flavour profile very nicely. A worthy pairing with my seafood burger.

DC ordered the bacon and cheese burger with guacamole on the side. It really is as huge as it looks! It was a rather decent burger: juicy though vaguely lacking in beefiness. I liked it together with all that sinful melted cheese, bacon and even more sinful guacamole. Accompanied by fries and mayonnaise, this probably negated our exercise gains for the month.

I went for the seafood burger. It worked surprisingly well as the prawn, crab, squid and fish (?) combined very well.  Tasted good and had lots of texture from bouncy prawn to soft crab to rubbery (in a good way) squid. Enhanced by the lime mayonnaise it’s definitely a keeper. I’m coming back for this one.

It was Wednesday, where there was some kind of ladies special. DC mock pouted as I tucked into my free chocolate cake. He’ll just have to come back wearing a skirt! For the record, it was very good. There was something a bit dense about the cake, as if there was too much cornstarch in the mix. Now don’t come telling me that molten choc cake is supposed to be dense. It’s not. Molten choc cake is supposed to be rich. Rich and dense are two different things. Anyhow, I’ll stop knocking the rather flavourless cake, it was free after all.

501 Bukit Timah Road
#02-01 Cluny Court
Tel: 6763 1547

August in China: Doing the Conventional Tourist Thing in Chengdu

At Chongqing train station, I jumped straight into the local experience with a rather harrowing argument in shrill foreign-accented Mandarin with queue-jumping locals. Dismayed to find the ticket hall packed to the brim at 7am, I grimly joined a queue and hoped I’d catch either the 7.30 or 8 am train. Following the queue into the bowels of the hall, I soon missed the 7.30 and got increasingly anxious. Luckily I was nearing the ticket booth but unluckily, there were way too many people hanging around either asking to cut the queue or outright butting in. When someone approached me to jump queue, I finally lost my temper and yelled that everyone here queues from the end of the queue and that no one has the right to jump queue. If he wanted to cut queue he’d have to ask the person behind me. The stress got to me and somehow my Mandarin got more fluent than normal when I lost it. I shouted that their drive for a civil society in time for the Olympics wasn’t working. The rumbling in the crowd suddenly turned into a hush and as if by magic, the path opened up for me and all the queue jumpers let me through to buy tickets. By then it was 7.45 am and the ticket seller asked if I was sure I could make it. I nodded gratefully, grabbed the tickets and ran out the ticket hall to catch my train, thankful that Chongqing people were nice enough not to lynch this crazy foreign shrew.

In Chengdu, the inimitable Mr Bunglez met me at the train station. It was great to see a familiar face after all that winging it on my own. To my Chongqing train station story, he said that he was surprised I arrived alive. After dumping my stuff at his pad he whisked me off to do the touristy thing. I was surprised to find it a nice change to let someone else decide what to do and where to go even though it was to the overexposed places.

First stop was Jingli, an “ancient” street, where Mr Bunglez whinged about all the bloody tourists who insisted on taking a picture with them  hanging on to the door knockers at the main doors. He cringed when not only did I insist on taking the cheesy picture, I also did it with what I thought was the jaunty foot kick. OK sure, it is teh failz and looks really stupid but I guess that’s the point.

Even though it’s heavily restored and reminds me of an old lady with far too much cakey makeup, Jingli has a certain charm to it. Mind you, Jingli was a rather elegant overly madeup old matriarch. I liked the delicate styling of the overly lacquered wooden facades.

There were also the pretty stylings of the walls and doorways. All very atmospheric. We explored the little stalls selling things from chuanshao (barbecued meat on sticks) to handicrafts to cute souvenirs like tiny plush pandas with magnetic paws.

After dinner, we went to Tianfu Square to check out the Mao statue. I’m ashamed to confess that I chickened out of Mr Bunglez dare to take a picture in the same Mao pose. I figured that I was fortunate enough not to get lynched at the train station already, there really wasn’t any point pushing my luck further.

At night, there’s nothing better to do than to people watch at one of the many pubs in Chengdu. Mr Bunglez knew the staff at one of the coolest places in Jingli, which is how I got this amazing set of drinks for free. Check out the fantastic sparkler accessory! We were too busy oohing and aahing over it the first time we forgot to take pictures and cheekily asked the staff to get us another sparkler. Everyone in the bar must’ve thought it was my birthday!

In every Chinese pub, the de rigueur game is dice. I can’t quite remember how the game went but I kept losing to Mr Bunglez obvious experience and finesse, which meant that I ended up losing my coordination so much that he banned me from making fancy dice shakes. We’d lost way too many dice to the dance floor this way.

And finally after a long day of having fun, the best thing to do is to check into a 24-hour massage/leisure centre. We got there at 1 am and there were still plenty of people milling around in coordinated pyjamas. Some of them were playing ping-pong in them, while others in the same garb were played pool while chain smoking. It was all highly amusing. We ended the day with a great foot massage and watched Kungfu Panda on DVD at the same time. What a way to spend the day!