Spring JuChunYuan (聚春园）

It was FIL's birthday. We missed his actual day cos they went overseas. So after a lot of arrangements, finally managed to get a common day to go out for dinner. MIL got some Kitchen Language vouchers from her friend. Since the other cuisines on the Kitchen Language group were pretty exotic (Argentinian and Italian - wouldn't say totally exotic but definitely something my FIL won't like), we settled for the only Chinese restaurant on the list. The address given was 130 Amoy Street. W and me spend 40 minutes pottering around Amoy Street and couldn't find the restaurant. Hubby got lost driving the elder folks there too. Finally he called me to say the voucher say the restaurant is at Far East Square, which is across the road from the Amoy Street cluster and I wouldn't actually consider it Amoy Street. Moreover, the Street Directory app on iPhone directed me to the cluster when I keyed in JuChunYuan. Do not trust these apps completely in future.

With a good ten of us, we were given a VIP room. Good thing, since the elder folks have pretty powerful lungs (ie, they are quite loud sometimes). The menu was actually quite pricey. The soups were going at close to $10 per pax. So you can imagine we can very easily be paying over $100 for soup. They don't seem to have a big bowl common serving for soups, only individual portions. We chose one of the cheapest soup - crab roe with eggdrop or something like that. We also ordered grilled king prawns, spring onion and ginger chicken, broccoli with bai ling mushrooms, eggplant with minced  meat, and stir fried frogs with chilli. Not a whole lot of orders, but this was because I know this family doesn't eat too much.

They serve up a absolutely delish sambal chilli. Too bad we didn't order any rice dishes to go with it. I did eat alot of it with my white rice though. The prawns were okay, nothing to pique my interest. The chicken was really good, fragrant and saucy, goes so well with white rice. The eggplant was pretty good too, just a little too oily, but that's the norm for eggplants. The frogs were special in the sense that its not common, with a kick from the spiciness. Broccoli was normal again. They only had a single vegetarian set for hubby to order. He said their vegetarian food weren't too good. Only 2 dishes out the six he was served were okay. 

The restaurant serves desserts by individual servings too, so you get to choose your favourite and not everyone needs to eat the same thing. I ordered the yam paste and liked it - it wasn't overly sweet. But I still prefer my yam paste with coconut milk, their's were served dry. The siblings ordered their hashima, and apparently they didn't quite like it. The complain was that the hashima pieces were too small and floated at the top, so it didn't have the texture they wanted. We also ordered some glutinous rice balls which weren't very nice.

Crab roe soup with eggdrop

Grilled king prawns

Spring onion and ginger chicken

Broccoli with bai ling mushrooms

Eggplant with minced meat

Stir fried frogs with chilli

Overall I think the food served by the restaurant was pretty good, but the prices are a little intimidating. If I ever go back, it'll be for the sambal chilli. We were somewhat neglected in the VIP room, with several reminders needed before the waiters return with our rice, extra chilli etc.

L'entrecote

After a week full of deadlines, I was ready to reward myself tremendously. Had a huge huge craving for steak and fries, so asked Lynn out for a date at Les Bouchons. But when I called up for reservations, I was informed that only outdoor seats are available, and they are smoking seats at that. No way I'm settling for that. Brawn's Steakhouse was full too, so I went to google and search for "steak frites Singapore". Surprise surprise, other than Les Bouchons, this little French bistro at Duxton Hill popped up on the results. We looked through the reviews and thought we could give it a try. No reservations allowed. The restaurant is pretty hard to locate, because we confused Duxton Hill with Duxton Road. Our arrival there before 7pm met with a still empty restaurant so I guess timing is important. The restaurant did fill up quite quickly through the night.

The tables here are extremely tightly spaced. We are about 2 inches away from the next table on either side of us. And because of the tight space, the waiters have to carry the tables out for guests to be seated on the bench side of the table. Previous reviews said no chance of having an intimate conversation here. We found it ok because it was quite noisy with all the people in the bistro, people can't really hear you anyway. Besides, we were seated between some Americans and some French, so I doubt they fully understand our Singlish.

Upon being seated, we were immediately served a sweet wine. I think it's part of the main course set. They don't serve ice water, so we ordered a bottle of still water to share. The unique thing about this bistro is this: They only have ONE main course, and that is of course, steak and unlimited supply of fries, plus a walnut salad on the side for $29. They do have a variety of appetizers and desserts. We ordered a half-dozen escargots and foie gras. The next question was then how well we want our meat to be done. The server then wrote MR (medium rare) and M (medium) on the table cover (made of paper) at the respective sides of the table.

The appetizers arrived pretty quickly. No shells on the escargots again. I know we had two bad experiences with shell-less ones, but I told Lynn, let's give it one last shot. You know what they say about the third try's a charm. This was by far one of the best escargots I've had. The texture was great, not overly chewy like a few we had. And the garlic butter flavor permeated the snails completely. So I can finally conclude that its not the shell that makes the escargots good, its the chef. Thank you L'entrecote for dispelling our former belief.

The foie gras arrived and we were both disappointed. To be fair, no where in the menu did it mention pan-fried. We had both made the assumption that it will be. So when we were served cold foie gras, our hearts sank a little. Because it wasn't pan-fried, it wasn't quite as soft and melt-in-your-mouth as we wanted. The rich flavor of the foie gras was better appreciated if we ate it plain, instead of with the bread and caramelized onions it was served with. Lynn pointed out that it felt more like a slab of butter that we were spreading on bread than actually eating foie gras. Lol.

The walnut salad was served next, which I found a little too tangy to my liking but finished nonetheless. I did enjoy the generous sprinkling of whole walnuts in the salad though. We were then served half our steaks sliced thickly and smothered with their special butter sauce, with a generous serving of french fries. The other half of our steak were kept on candle warmers - pretty thoughtful, since too big a slab usually end up cold by the time you're halfway through (although Lynn thinks it didn't help keep warm at all). The meat was tender, in fact, I found it overly tender. I'm not sure if its because I haven't had tenderloins for too long and had been mainly eating ribeye steaks. The meat itself had almost no flavor, and needed the special sauce to be tasty. The fries, well, they actually tastes like McDonald's fries, which is pretty good. It's just not special like Les Bouchons'. When we were midway through our meat, the second half of our steaks were served onto our plates.

After we cleared our mains, we were given the dessert menu. When we asked for recommendations, I also asked whether we could get extra fries. The server gave us a stunned look, repeated my question dumbly, asked me if we got any while we were still eating our mains - to which I replied no, I only had my first plate, and then said he will check. I was a little surprised. We can't be the first people ever to ask for that right??!! If so, how embarrassing that so many Caucasian men who are supposed to have big appetites didn't ask for extra, and these two Chinese girls did... He eventually came back with a plate of fries for us, and we ordered a dessert of Floating Island. I then saw another server going round with extra fries asking whether the people next to us wanted any. Hey... why didn't I get that offer??

The Floating Island was served with caramel decorations which both of us thoroughly enjoyed. The creamy sauce was nicer than the one from Hippopotamus, less sweet and cloying. But with such a carbo-laden meal, we were both of course, completely stuffed by the time we left.

Foie gras served with toast and caramelized onions

Yummylicious escargots

Very normal bread that wasn't even warm

Tangy walnut salad

Steak frites

Zoom in of the steak, smothered in sauce

Floating island with its decadent caramel decorations

I subsequently found out from a French colleague that L'entrecote means "piece of meat". Hm... I didn't think the meat was the best part of it. If anything, it was the escargots and floating island that saved the day. We had initially went because we thought $29 for steak and fries sounded pretty reasonable. But with everything else, the price added up quite a bit and we could have gone and treated ourselves to Morton's.

Keisuke Tonkotsu King (Orchid Hotel)

After a long day at work, I was thinking of a place to meet C for dinner, so the thought of the new ramen place near my workplace came to mind. SH was also craving for dinner so altogether we went there for some comfort food. Even at about 9pm, there's a abit of a queue and we ordered our food while in the queue.

Ordering the food feels like filling in a survey form, you will need to fill in your name, then you get to choose from the 3 kinds of soup flavours (Original, Black spicy, Red spicy), 3 levels of strength for broth, 3 kinds of noodle thickness (Soft, Normal, Hard) and 3 levels of chicken oil. There's also options for the toppings you want to add to it. In short, it's a highly customizable ramen. Just nice there's 3 of us so we each took one flavour and went on with "Normal" for most of the the options. After about 20mins wait, we were finally seated, the interior is very interestingly decorated with some old posters and Japanese wordings giving a unique and cosy feel to the small little restaurant

Interior of the restaurant

While waiting for our food to arrive, we noticed the basket of eggs on our table and after asking the busy waitress, we got to know that the eggs are provided FOC as appetizers for customers. She suggested us to eat it with the Mayo sauce provided, brown eggs are lower in cholesterol and white eggs are the normal ones. Other than the eggs, there's also the marinated beansprouts, and black & white sesame, bonito flakes for us to add to our ramen.

FOC basket of eggs, seasoned beansprouts, black&white sesame

Finally food is here! I had the black spicy ramen, C the red spicy ramen and SH the original one. After a round of soup tasting, I still prefer the black spicy ramen that gives a little peppery and spicy taste. Red Spicy ramen has similar level of spiciness but I seem to taste a little sesame oil flavour, I am not sure though. The flavoured egg that we added, tasted different from the FOC eggs provided. The egg yolk is more liquid and overall, tastes slightly sweet. How I got to know is because, I tried all 3 kinds of eggs! After dinner today, I declared that i exhausted my egg quota and no more eggs for me this month... or maybe this week.

The noodles have a nice springy texture to it, it's the straight, white japanese noodles so it does not leave the"yellow flavouring" taste in the soup. As we ordered the option with "All toppings", we have Seaweed, egg, chashu, black fungus and spring onions. Being the curious me, i experimented with bonito flakes, crushed sesame and seasoned beansprouts as well. Result was a bowl of very flavourful ramen with very robustly flavoured soup broth, of course I did not add them all at one go so  to taste the original broth.

Red Spicy Ramen

Black Spicy Ramen

Original Ramen

Overall, it's one of the better ramen place that offers value for money and also I am impressed by the thoughtfulness of the restaurant by providing tissue boxes and also "sides" to fill the hungry stomaches while waiting for the ramen. One piece of advice maybe would be to choose the option with less chicken oil as the soup can get rather oily and heavy towards the end. One more thing to take note will be that this place only accept cash payments.

KT's Grill @ Sentosa

An impromptu trip to Universal Studio with my mum, one minute we were lazing at home on a Saturday afternoon and the next thing we know, we are queuing up to get tickets for the USS "Hollywood after hours" pass. It's quite a bargain at $5 for 7 - 10pm and comes with a free fireworks show.

During our recent poly mates gathering, a friend mentioned that the steak at KT's grill is superb, so tender that u can tear it apart with just your fork. So, there's no reason not to try it since we are there.. 

De Menu

Not feeling too hungry, we ordered 1 set dinner for sharing, warm bread with unsalted butter was served before the meal. I remembered someone telling me that eating unsalted butter with bread would make the butter flavour more noticeable. I don't know how true it is but one thing for sure, I prefer my butter salted. The bread tasted like your average loaf of bread heated up, it's not lousy but it just lack the "WOW" factor. Maybe it's just me, always benchmarking against the onion loaf at Morton's.

Warm Bread

Appetizer: Onion ring with bed of salad

Appetizer was an onion ring on a bed of salad, onion ring tasted just like how it looks, fragrant without being overly oily. Salad dressing was slightly sweet and sourish and quite refreshing for the palate.

Pumpkin Soup

Pumpkin soup was NICE! It's smooth, creamy and has a very nice sweetish pumpkin flavour. Mum and I both enjoyed the soup, finishing every drop of it. Another plus point that it arrived piping hot, slurping it gives a hearty feel on a cooling night.

Steak with baked potato and tomato on the side

Here comes the main course! I headed right for the medium rare steak, to see if it's really as good as described. Verdict: It is good! Although its not the melt in my mouth kind of steak, I love the texture of it, juicely tender with a nice stringy chew to it. I always like my steak medium rare so that the juice of the meat gets nicely sealed. YUMMY! Another surprise is the tomato, normally I don't really fancy tomatoes but i took a peek at this one and i spotted CHEESE! Again, no reason not to try. Tomato is very very juicy and slightly sweet, cheese flavour is not strong but gives a nice balance to it. Baked potato is alright, I would very much prefer it to be flaky-er, moister but I am not complaining.

Brownie with Vanilla Ice cream

We both were giggling when we saw the presentation of the dessert, did the brownie quarrel with the ice cream or what? Why so far apart? Despite the unusual presentation, brownie was quite nicely done, chocolaty and nutty but a tad too sweet for me. I ended up not finishing it and at that moment, I kinda wish Gracie was there so she can lend a helping mouth.

Overall experience at KT's grill was not too bad, service was attentive and staffs warm and friendly. However, when we first arrived at the restaurant, mom spotted a nice cosy partitioned corner and when we requested to change our seats there, we were told that the seats are only available to those who ordered the set menu. We only ordered one set and the waitress told us we need to order one more main in order to sit there, we both decided not to cos we won't be able to finish the food. A while later, a group of Caucasians are seated in that cosy corner even before they ordered their food. Seeing that made me feel abit inbalanced, so much for being a Singaporean. I did not pursue the matter any further cos the steak kinda distracted me, but I truly hope I am mistaken.

Yomenya Goemon Japanese Spaghetti House

Gracie and I passed by this place while looking for Brawn Steakhouse previously, one of the rare occasions that we are at Marina Bay Link Mall. We wanted to go in to satisfy our growling stomachs but still we resisted the tempting thought. So on another occasion, with S and J, after our Pink Ribbon Walk to support the Breast cancer patients, we decided to fill our stomachs with some pastas.

Stealing a glimpse of people's pasta, we decided that the portions are abit too much to finish if we were to order one pasta each, so we ordered a set of "half half pasta set" (Carbonara and Olive oil based vongole) and a Napolitean pasta.

Half portion Carbonara

 

Half Portion Vongole

Drink/Cake and Soup that come along with the set

Carbonara came with a raw egg yolk, the cream sauce is flavourful without being too overpowering. Its consistency is more liquid and makes it easier to finish without feeling too sick of it. After the meal, I saw a version which has meat sauce with carbonara (best of both worlds), something that I planned on trying on my next visit.

Vongole on the other hand comes across as a bit dry and bland, but it acts as a balance from the other 2 stronger tasting pasta. However, no surprises from this pasta.

Napolitean Pasta

Napolitean pasta is a tomato based pasta with capsicums and sausage and I think i tasted some cream cheese along the way. The egg yolk is half cooked and creamy, blends well with the rest of the pasta. And again, i saw a cream cheese version on the menu and I guess I will be back to try that as well.. LOLZ!

Total Damage minus the calories

 

All 3 of us wiped out all the pastas and left the place feeling satisfied. Overall was a good experience with the yummy pastas, even though service was abit lacking and the waiting time for food was kinda too long, about 45 mins. We spotted the lady from the table next to us buy a Polar puff to fill her stomach while waiting for her order. To be fair to them, this might be due to the sudden surge of customers from the Pink Ribbon Walk and also because their service crew are rather new.