Soup Master 老火汤 @ HarbourFront Centre

Directly translated to old fire soup, this stall in the little known foodcourt in HarbourFront Centre boasts a decent selection of Chinese soups. I've long heard about them, but only managed to try them recently. This is probably one of the newer outlets, with others at Great World City and Sembawang. If I'm not wrong the pioneer outlet lies in Chinatown.

Soups here are priced higher than regular foodcourt soups, but it's worth the money. Scooped out of giant metal pots shaped like earthern pots, into porcelain crock pot-looking soup bowls, it looks somewhat rustic, yet modern at the same time. The soups are thick with the flavors of all the good stuff going into them. Not the usual kind you find in a foodcourt.

CW had a Buddha Jump Over The Wall ($8), chock full of goodies. I could taste a very strong flavor of fish maw, and saw he had a lot of ingredients such as dried Chinese mushrooms, red dates, dried scallops, dried oysters and something that looked like abalone slices (though I doubt it's real abalone given the price, but hey, it makes people happy).

I ordered a 十全大补人参鸡汤 ($6.50). Directly translates to ten tonic ginseng chicken soup. It's essentially a ginseng chicken soup beefed up with so call ten strong herbs into 'completeness'. Again, the herbal taste is strong, the soup is very full of the flavor, and really rich. Only had one drumstick in it, which was a little dry after boiling too long. The essence of the chicken must have all gone to the soup. Overall a very good herbal soup and I liked it.

XP ordered a lotus root with pork rib soup, again, rich and flavorful. It's so well cooked that the soup had turned opaque. Guess there's really a lot of pork essence in there. A really nice change from the usual clear soups that tastes superficial. These soups really had a lot of depth and dimension to them.

E ordered a pig stomach with ginko and beancurd skin soup, not as peppery as the usual kind. The beancurd skin had all dissolved into the soup, resulting in a white colored opaque soup. Forgot to get a picture of his. It's nice too, but he preferred CW's soup. Haha...

Soup with rice

Lotus root with pork ribs soup

十全大补人参鸡汤

Buddha jump over the wall

Soups here comes with free refills, for the broth only, not the ingredients. Good enough, since the essence is really the broth. But the serving is actually large enough that I didn't need a refill. Moreover, at the concentrations of the herbs (especially mine), I think with a refill, I will get so 'heaty' that I'll end up with a sore throat. CW did ask for a refill, and got half a bowl of broth. Somehow the refilled one had a very pronounced burnt taste to it. Not sure if something in the main pot burnt after he got his initial bowl, or whether they have a separate pot of broth for the free refills. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my lunch, and will be back in the future for a good bowl of nice, rich Chinese soup.

Ya-Mahyuddin Al-Jailani Restaurant

Phew, the restaurant name is quite a mouthful. This eatery situated at the end of the stretch of shophouses along Kampong Bahru Road is more a Indian-Muslim prata place, than a restaurant proper. I've long heard about their nice nasi bryani, but never went to try until pretty recently. Twice. First time we had bryani. Second time we had a huge variety and came back with extreme food coma.

First visit was with XP and CW. We all ordered mutton bryani, and a few prata to share. We packed a packet of mutton bryani back for E. We really liked the nasi bryani. It was fragrant, with a generous serving of mutton curry. Their prata were fluffy, and yummy. Although I do like my prata much more crispier on the outside. Maybe because we ordered prata with fillings, and the fillings made the dough a little wetter. I should try the plain ones next time. While the three of us had a comfortable portion lunch, E apparently got a huge huge packet. Considering he's the big eater of the lab, and he was stuffed to the brim by this lunch, I guess he really got a big bag of food.

Two weeks later we returned with a bigger group. We ended up ordering different things: maggi goreng, nasi goreng mutton, mutton murtabak, mutton bryani and chicken bryani. There was an option for either fried or curry chicken for the bryani... interesting... but HY stuck to the norm and ordered curry chicken bryani.

The maggi goreng was simple, but delicious. It came with a beautifully fried sunny side up. I thoroughly enjoyed my mutton nasi goreng, filled with minced mutton and with an ample amount of fat to make it extra yummy, not to mention extra unhealthy. But note it wasn't overly oily, and I wasn't sick in the stomach after finishing it. We liked how their mutton bryani was served with small pieces of mutton, as opposed to a single large piece with bones that many places tend to sell. The killer was the murtabak. We waited quite long for it, and when it arrived, we were stunned by the size of it. My picture doesn't do it justice, but if you can try to imagine the size of the fork and spoon relative to it... Poor XP and CW ordered one each. We had to help them out a little. That resulted in all of us being uber full after lunch. Thankfully they left out one order of prata, or it would have been worse.

Mutton nasi goreng

Mutton bryani

Maggi goreng

Giant mutton murtabak

I think we got so full from this meal that we are sort of reluctant to return for fear of a comatosed afternoon again. But I'm sure we will get over that, and return for more.

Jpot @ Vivo

It's one of those days that Gracie and I have cravings for steamboat and decided to just meet for lunch. Vivo is our regular lunch meeting place as it's nicely located just in between our workplace. I have been to Jpot a couple of times and I enjoy it so I decided to drag Gracie there. In fact, this is our 2nd visit there. =)

We ordered one lunch set to share and some other ala carte dishes. Lunch set consist of soup base, 1 meat (pork loin/ marinated beef), 1 vegetable, 1 rice/pho/bee hoon, handmade fishball (2), handmade prawnball (2), prawns (2), clams (2). On top of that, fatty beef, Tang O, fried prawn dumplings.

Pork, Fatty Beef

Fried Prawn Dumpling

Tang O and fried beancurd skin

Superior soup base

Pho

Reason why we both adore this place, is their fresh ingredients and customizable sauces. With a good soup base and fresh ingredients, what could go wrong?

Pork loin, being the loin, is not the melt in your mouth kind. It's more inclined to the leaner kind of meat and has a nice flavour to it. It's actually our 2nd time ordering the fatty beef, the 1st time was heavenly but 2nd time the meat seem to be lacking in flavour and abit tough. It might be due to the different parts of the meat. Because of our happy 1st time there, they are forgiven for that.

Fried beancurd skin is a MUST ORDER item there, it will soak up the soup nicely and when you bite it will fill your mouth with the heavenly juices. Word of caution, let it cool awhile before you bite else you will end up with a burnt tongue just like Gracie. Hahaha!

Just in case you're wondering, the seafood items don't come immerse in the soup, as you might have realised, we tend to act faster than our cameras, so they landed in the soup once they hit our table. Seafood tastes fresh and our 2nd time there, they replaced the clams with sotongs maybe because they run of clams.

Overall experience there is enjoyable, service are prompt with little hiccups, total spending per person for lunch is about $20 after member discount. It's under the Jumbo group and maybe that's why they emphasize on freshness and quality of ingredients. There's once my mum commented that the vegetables are abit rotten at the edges and they immediately replaced a fresh set. That's what I call good and prompt service. One thing to add is that they offer vegetarian options. Only complain, the place is always crowded during meal times so do remember to reserve early.

Canton Paradise @ Jcube

I heard some good reviews about Canton Paradise and decided to go there for late lunch with B one day. (usually there will be a long Q during lunch/dinner time). My experience there made me feel like I have to blog this first before my other outstanding entries.  The reason being... I FOUND A MAGGOT ON MY SPOON! I wished I took a photo of that but I was too disgusted and immediately requested for a new spoon. The waitress attitude was like "What's the big deal?" My whole dining experience greatly discounted, even so, I will try to give a fair description of their food. Pardon me as I don't have the exact names for the dishes and after my experience there, I am not really interested in finding out too.

Congee with Pig liver, intestines and meatballs

Roast pork, Roast duck and Roast char siew



Char siew bao

Char siew bao interior

Siew Mai

Prawn dumplings

Mango Prawns

Congee is nice, the pig part are fresh without any funny taste and I quite like them. Prawn dumplings are good, skin is thin and prawns used are fresh too with a nice crunch to it. Siew Mai is nicely done too, unlike other places that have siew mais that are too porky, this one is well balanced with their pork and fish portions.

Roast pork, I felt that the crispy skin is abit too thin and not "Shiok" enough, taste wise is just average. I like the roast duck that has a nice crisp skin but meat feels abit bland. Char siew was below average, B feels that the taste of it is abit bland with no depth, the honey coating was just on the surface, some might feel that meat texture might be abit tough but I am alright with it cos I like my char siew lean. Overall the platter is abit disappointing with it's average roast pork and roast duck and its superficial char siew.

Their char siew bao is very much raved about, as it is pan fried at the bottom and the skin is different from regular char siew bao. It came jus slight warm, not our usual steaming hot Baos. My opinion, it's a nice change from regular char siew baos but they used the same superficial char siew so its just passable for me.

Reason why there're 3 photos of Mango roll prawns, is that B says there's a hell lot of mayo in the roll. The oil was not well drained and made the rolls slightly too oily and yes I agree that the mayo was really too overpowering. I guess I will stay off mayo for the rest of the month.

Till this point, you might have realised my lack of excitement blogging about this place, I am really NOT excited at all. Service here does not suck but surely has lots of room for improvements, they should teach their staffs how to react when customer finds a maggot/ worm/ whatever on their plate. Good thing is, I am still well and does not have any diarrhea after dining there.

7Adam

We came across this fine dining restaurant in Groupon, with a deal of 5 course fine dining menu at either $88 per pax, or $170 for 2 pax. Seriously, who will go to this kind of restaurant alone? The one pax option is pretty dumb. It was kind of expensive, but we thought that it was a decent deal considering the menu includes foie gras as it's appetizer, and eye of ribeye or cod fish with hokkaido scallops as it's main.

The decision to go 7Adam the day we did was an impromptu one. I had a sudden steak craving, and asked Lynn out for lunch at Mariner's Corner. However, their steak failed to satisfy my craving, so I needed better, more flavorfully grilled steaks. We sort through our three Groupons waiting for our visits, and decided that the description in 7Adam may get me what I want. So reservation was made for that evening, even as we were having lunch. This restaurant is pretty out of the way, at 7 Adam Park. We could have changed three buses or mrt to get there, but we took the lazy way out and took a cab. 

The restaurant was very quiet, with probably only about 2 to 3 tables of patrons other than us. We were served French rolls upon settling down. The rolls tasted great, especially with butter melting on their warmth. However, the crust were a little too hard, and the bread was poking into the roof of my mouth. We were hungry though, and liked the taste, and asked for a second helping. Helping two were somehow even harder than the first, so we finished that and didn't ask for a third helping.

French rolls with butter

This was followed by the soup - a Duck Consomme with Ravioli of Duck. The soup was delightfully light and fragrant, and I was joking that I could do with a few strands of Chinese noodle floating in it. The ravioli got conflicting feedbacks from us. I found it too salty and thought the stuffing tasted like salted fish. Lynn found it nice and said the stuffing tasted like roasted duck. Ravioli aside, I gave this soup 8 stars. The waiter came by and asked how things are when he collected our plates. Lynn gave the feedback that the bread was too hard. He was surprised, and assured us that he'll get us another serving, and will make sure he get us the softer ones.

Duck Consomme

Ravioli of Duck

So we somehow ended up with a third serving of bread alongside our appetizer - Pan Seared Foie Gras with Pear reduction. This time round the bread were hotter, so appeared softer. The Foie Gras was the star of the night. It was the oh-so-melty, and oh-so-livery type that we both loved so much. The pear reduction tasted exactly like caramelized apples. I'm not sure if they really taste alike, or the restaurant had tweaked the menu that appeared on Groupon a little. But this scored a 10.

Pan Seared Foie Gras with pear reduction

With such promising starters, we were quite looking forward to their main courses. The dish to be served was the 'pasta' - Sauteed Soba in Sze Chuan Sauce with Tiny Shrimp, Tobiko and Seaweed. It sounded all wrong, but tasted alright. Wasn't fantastic. Just alright. I'm not even sure why they categorized it as pasta.

Sauteed Soba in Sze Chuan Sauce with Tiny Shrimp, Tobiko and Seaweed

There were two options for main course, so we got one of each. First was the Eye of Ribeye with Teriyaki Sauce, Yam Mash (oh, that's what that was...) and Fried Lotus. Second was the Pan Seared Cod Fish with Hokkaido Scallops and Pilaf Rice. The waiter was so confident that when he set the plates down, he told us that once we have tried these dishes, we will definitely be back. I took a bite at the fried lotus from the ribeye first. It was good! Thinly sliced, fried to crispy perfection. A very interesting texture on an otherwise uncrispy plate. I had wondered why the mashed potatoes tasted a little like yam paste  Chinese dessert. Now that I look back at the item list on Groupon, I finally understood why. LOL... The meat was a little disappointing though. It was tender, as was expected of a eye of ribeye. BUT, it was a little bland (ok, very. Lynn said it tasted like plain water boiled beef.), and it wasn't grilled. So it failed to satisfy my grilled steak craving.

Eye of Ribeye with Teriyaki Sauce, Yam Mash and Fried Lotus

The meat

The cod fish was... uh... disappointing. It had a very strong fishy taste, masking the natural oils of the fish. It reminded me of the strong fishy smell I detected from the table behind me much earlier in the meal, and Lynn had assured me that guy wasn't eating cod fish when I gave her the horrified look. That kind of fishiness is simply unacceptable in a fine dining restaurant. The scallop wasn't as sweet as I had expected it to be, and turned out to be a very normal scallop. The nicest thing on the plate? The rice. It was surprisingly fragrant and yummy. Lynn was mumbling that she wouldn't know what to say if the servers come by to ask us how's things. I said that we could point out that we liked the rice here, and the fried lotus there, and not say anything about the rest. What if they returned with two more plates of food like the bread?? How was I supposed to stuff them all into my stomach??!! I wondered out loud to Lynn whether the server was overestimating the restaurant, or underestimating our taste buds, when he said we will definitely return after tasting these. She concluded he was underestimating us.

Cod Fish with Hokkaido Scallops and Pilaf Rice

The disappointing fish and scallops

By now we were pretty stuffed, especially since we had three bread rolls each. So when dessert was served, we were playing with it a little. The server was confident again and told us that we will definitely be back after trying these desserts. Chocolate Fondant and Chunky Peanut. While I can figure out what Chocolate Fondant is by looking at the name, Chunky Peanut means nothing to me. I couldn't even reconcile it to the unidentified object on my plate. It was a square of chocolaty something, with peanut mixed into a hard chocolate base. The chocolaty something was described by Lynn as 'have... and don't have..." I was laughing so hard at her useless and weird description, until I tried it myself. 'Have' was because you obviously have to cut it with a fair bit of force. 'Don't have' was because when you put it into your mouth, it just melted immediately and sort of disappeared into nothing. I think it's a real mousse foam made with an aerator - airy, light and almost weightless feel (as opposed to those dense chocolate pudding-like things people here called mousse). The chocolate fondant was a little over the top sweet, and we both couldn't finish our desserts.

Chocolate Fondant and Chunky Peanut

Dessert was so sweet that we had to order tea to balance out our tongues. We ordered an additional rose green tea. It smelled really really good, something pretty special which we haven't tried before. This we really liked. The likelihood of returning to 7Adam is pretty weak, since the steep original price and the not-too-good quality of the food didn't exactly give a very inviting result.

Potion Bistro & Bar

I honestly didn't know that there's a small boutique hotel so near my workplace. I mean, I knew about the existence of Wangz hotel and Link hotel. Never heard of Nostalgia Hotel. We only got the Groupon for Potion mainly because the location description sounded very convenient for both of us. With me at Outram Park, and Lynn at Tanjong Pagar, 'between Outram Park and Tiong Bahru MRT station' sounded near and accessible. And this marked the first of a chain of Groupons we ended up buying because the description sounded either feasible (in this case) or tempting (in some other cases).

The deal was a half-price deal, $20 for $40 worth of food. The hotel wasn't difficult to locate, but the size of it sort of threw me off balance. It is probably the cutest, and smallest, hotel I've came across in Singapore. The restaurant is by right an alfresco style restaurant. We somehow were offered indoor seats with air-conditioning (thankfully). However, it was sofa seats with low tables. Great for drinks probably, but not the most comfortable for meals.

We went on a day when we had a late and heavy lunch. As such, we didn't really over order like we normally do. After browsing through the small menu, we finalized on a Caprese salad, a tenderloin steak and a carbonara. The mains were decided on based on the waiter's recommendation. He returned and informed us that the Caprese salad is unavailable - they were having plans to remove it from the menu (boo...), and recommended us the Mesclun salad. But we were more interested in the ingredients in the Caesar salad, but preferred the balsamic vinaigrette from the Mesclun, so we asked for a fusion of a Caesar salad without the Caesar dressing, substituted with the vinaigrette.

The salad was a decent sized and decently flavored one. Nothing out of this world but we enjoyed the bacon pieces in it. The carbonara was surprisingly good. Not overly creamy and cloying, yet with just enough richness to satisfy the palate. The tenderloin was a nice, thick piece of meat. The flavor was good, the texture acceptable, the portion comfortable. It was served on a bed of extremely smooth mashed potatoes. Overall, we had a pretty happy meal.

Carbonara fettucine

Caesar salad with vinaigrette dressing

Tenderloin steak

The staff was extremely attentive too. He came back to ask us how things are, offered to take photos for us when he saw my camera, and offered to bring us on a small tour around the hotel. I was quite impressed at his apparent pride for the hotel. We probably will not come back here, at least not Lynn, as it isn't so fantastic that it will bring her back to this little restaurant tucked away near Tiong Bahru market. I may however, bring my colleagues back some day for a celebratory lunch or something, since it's so so near our work place. The thought of the afternoon heat in a outdoor place is deterring me somewhat though. I did snap a picture of their lunch promotion, which look pretty ok.

Ban Heng Pavilion Restaurant

Taking the location of the former Dragon Gate Restaurant, parked away at a corner of the Harbourfront's level 4 carpark, this restaurant isn't easy to locate if you're going by public transport. We only came across Dragon Gate long long time ago because my family happened to go to Harbourfront by car. Dragon Gate subsequently closed down and we stopped visiting the area. Not too long ago, I'm not sure how my parents somehow happened to visit and realized that the old site is now taken over by Ban Heng Pavilion Restaurant. If you go by public transport, there's one specific elevator that will bring to it's door step. It is not accessible by escalators.

Parents liked it enough for us to return twice more for family dinners. The first time I went, I forgot my camera. So here it is now, when we returned for an uncle's birthday dinner, that I finally took photos of the food. There were four tables of us, so uncle booked the VIP room. Even on a Sunday night, the restaurant is barely full. Not sure it's due to the out of the way location, or the poor reviews I saw on HungryGoWhere. I understand they have an ala carte buffet, which is what most of the reviews were based on. I'm in no position to comment as we've always had the ala carte menu.

Since it was a birthday dinner, it started off with longevity buns. Very normal lotus paste buns shaped to look like peaches - to mimic the legendary longevity peach said to add years to one's life. You know how us Chinese like to eat things with good meanings. I honestly think it's just an excuse to eat, but I welcome those excuses. Hehe...

Longevity buns

This was followed by a family favorite in this restaurant - roasted suckling pig. Of our table of 10, there were 2 non-pork eaters, 1 vegetarian and 1 child. The result is 6 people eating one whole pig. Having gone to Red Star earlier that morning, I was having a two month's dose of sucking pig in one day. That said, I liked the crispy roasted skin of the suckling pig, served with sweet sauce, spring onions and egg crepe. So you dip a crispy skin in sweet sauce, take a piece of spring onion, package it all in the egg crepe, and get a tasty treat all in a mouthful. The skin had quite a bit of fats under them, tasty for the first few pieces because of the contrast in texture between the perfectly crispy skin and the soft jelly-like fats. It does prick your conscience after, say, the 4th slice, and I started to scrape the fats off. I think the pig was big enough, and there were few enough of us, that I probably ended up eating some 10 slices of skin. After the carved skin were gone, the pig was brought back to the kitchen, chopped into bite size pieces, and served back to us. The flesh was ok, but a little on the porky side. We didn't manage to finish those, and sent them back for takeaway.

Roasted suckling pig

Next dish a common family dinner dish as well, sharks fin. I can't remember much about it actually, so it wasn't impressively good, or disgustingly bad I guess. Just a normal tasty bowl of thick soup. It was what came after that I love. Another favorite in this restaurant - braised goose. Braised duck is common everywhere in Singapore. Braised goose is rare. And us being teochew, we really love our braised food. So to have discovered this dish is probably what made my family like this place so much. Thin slices of yummy goose, stacked on equally thin slices of soft tofu. The meat was tender, the flavor just nice without being overpowering. Love it!

Sharks' fin

Braised goose

These were then followed by a fish fish in soya sauce, another tasty but normal dish. Their fish didn't have the heavy soil flavor of freshwater fish, so was quite well accepted by all. The vegetable was the surprising one. I didn't quite expect to see Nai Bai (baby bok chai) in a banquent style dinner. Still, it's 'status' was upped by the island of fried conpoy (dried scallop) in the centre of the huge plate of vegetables. Although I welcomed the vegetables after so many dishes of meat, the fried conpoy was actually quite oily. So I was getting quite sick of it after a while.

Fried fish in soya sauce

Nai Bai with fried conpoy

The final dish before the noodles was the chilli crab. Theirs was a miss. The gravy was so so, the crabs had a teeny weeny bit of roe (which we had to fight over). The worst was the crabs themselves. Thin-shelled crabs with very pathetic flesh withdrawn away from the shell. Tasted quite fishy, and the texture was horrible. I didn't continue after having one claw.

Chilli crab

The noodles were again normal, and their dessert of sago cream had (urgh) pineapples in it. Ok, it's just me, because I dislike pineapples. But overall, the food were quite suitable for the family's palate, and because when you have people of three different generations, Chinese food is generally the way to go for gatherings. I can foresee more visits here in the future, a change from the usual Boon Lay Raja.

Update:
Recently went back again for a dinner with my family to celebrate my parent's anniversary. There was an ongoing wedding dinner, so us 'loose tables' were stuffed into the VIP room. Despite the hullabaloo going on outside with the wedding, the service was still pretty ok. In fact, I was impressed with one single act. We requested for a bowl of white rice for my baby nephew, wanting to mix it with baby food to feed him with. It did take us three attempts at asking different waiters before it finally arrived. I think they thought that we wanted it with our dishes, which weren't ready yet. Then I told the third waitress that it's for the baby, and it arrived soon after. What actually impressed me was what came after. The manager returned with two bowls of century egg congee, on the house, for my nephew. She said that rice may be a little too dry for him. Although he can't eat the congee (he's still on a no salt diet), I appreciated the thought, and thinks that it's worth blogging about.

Red Star Restaurant 红星酒家

W and G asked me whether we wanted to join them for Dim Sum with aunt and uncle. Turned out here wasn't anything vegetarian food, so hubby passed and only I joined them. They came and fetch me bright and early at 8.30am on a Sunday morning, and then went to fetch aunt and uncle, and reached the restaurant at around 10am. Because we were relatively early, there wasn't any queue and we were seated in no time. Unfortunately, we were given a seat towards the back of the restaurant where trolley traffic wasn't high.

Red Star is a typical dim sum restaurant where you look out for trolleys carrying various items. We have a menu card on the table, and for each item we get off a trolley, the server will stamp a mark right beside the item. Final bill will be tabulated based on the number of marks. Most items comes in three pieces per serving. If you ask for double servings, two stamps will be issued. The problem with this system is: because you aren't sure when the next trolley is coming by and what's on it, you have the tendency to just get things off the first trolley. With this occurring multiple times before the food you really want make its way to your table, the likelihood of getting too much food becomes very high.

That was what exactly happened to us. Although we knew that having deep fried food at the start will make for a very limited stomach for everything else, the first trolley that stopped by served exactly that. We ended up with a plate of Onde Onde (what's that doing in a dim sum restaurant anyway??) and a fried dumpling. The dumpling turned out to have a banana filling, much to G's disgust. He hates bananas. This was also when I discovered I was in some kind of trouble. When there are three pieces of food, and you're dining with two couples, the result is each couple will share one piece, while I have to eat the third piece all by myself. So you can imagine that I was filling up a lot faster than they were.

Onde Onde

Next trolley gave us fried prawn dumplings and fish paste stuffed chillis. The dumpling were nice and crispy. The fish paste were of good texture (meaning no overuse of flour), and the sauce aptly flavored. These were followed by the trolley carrying steamed goodies, but of all, we were only interested in the siew mai and steamed glutinous rice. The siew mai were decent, but not amazing. The glutinous rice were pretty yummy. Then another trolley came by with deep fried battered tofu. They must have been mediocre, because it had escaped my memory so much that I had to text W the picture to ask her what it was just a moment ago... =P

Fish paste stuffed chillis

Deep fried prawn dumplings

Siew mai

Deep fried battered tofu

Glutinous rice

After these 'unintentional' orders, we finally got the trolley we wanted. Chee cheong fun!! Hot, nicely steamed chee cheong fun that had a great chewy:brittle ratio (if you know what I mean. If you don't, I'm really just trying to say that the texture is still resistant to the teeth, but you don't have to struggle like a mad cow to bite it off) wrapped around delicious char siew. But somehow, I still prefer NUH kopitiam's steam-on-the-spot-with-fillings-of-your-choice chee cheong fun. It had become some kind of a gold standard for my chee cheong fun.

Char siew chee cheong fun

By then we finally went off to the counters to get the other two favorites (which aunt had already decided on the ride there that she wanted those) - roasted suckling pig and century egg congee. The pig skin is nice and crunchy, and the flesh not overly oily. It was pretty good suckling pig, at a comfortable quantity. I did refrain myself because I knew I was going to have a lot more suckling pig for dinner that night (next post). The congee was fragrant, with a generous heap of fried wan ton skin added for texture and flavor. Luckily W and G only got 2 bowls to share among the 5 of us. I didn't want to be stuck in the scenario of finishing one whole bowl by myself. Another steam trolley came by and we got prawn dumplings and yam cake. I really liked the yam cake drenched in sauce. It had a good amount of yam in it, not just flour like many other places.

Roasted suckling pig

Century egg congee

Prawn dumplings and yam cake

We waited a long long while before the dessert trolleys came around. We had the so-call signature durian pancakes - crepes filled with pure durian. It was pretty good, but nothing out of this world. Finally finished our meal with honeydew sago cream and gui lin gao. By then, I was so so stuffed. I did enjoy the meal, probably more because of the company. Food wise, they were pretty good but nothing much jumped out and impressed me. I did like the suckling pig, congee and yam cake. Given this is only the second time I'm having yum cha style dim sum (timing around helping out at my mom's coffeeshop stall didn't allow for it since young), I don't think I'm in the position to critique too much. Although I'm sure I've eaten better dim sum before, and (oops) most of them were mom's...