Shanghai Ren Jia

On the last dinner of my family's visit to Singapore, I brought them to Shanghai Ren Jia located at Upper Thomson Road (beside Han's Restaurant) upon ieat's blog recommendation. Apparently, the shen jian bao is said to be extraordinarily good and well proven by the various news paper clippings and foodie reviews pasted on the glass walls of the eatery.

The place is too small though, to properly accomodate a dinner crowd (around 10 - 12 tables?) and we waited for almost half an hour before being seated. Of course theres a reason why we waited so long, everything has a reason right?

Blah blah blah, with recommendations from friends and blogs in my head I shot off my orders with a few other recommendations from the lao ban niang herself.



The handmade noodles with beancurd, pork chop and chicken pieces came first and tasted like.. maggie mee. I'm not kidding! It's bad enough that the noodles were springy and had a texture like maggie mee, the sauce wasn't at all fantastic and chicken pieces were scarce. The pork chop even had the texture of rubbery fish cake, in the form of pork. I very much prefer Crystal Jade's zha jiang mien. Hmmm, not a good start huh.



The second bowl of noodles, beef noodles recommended by the lao ban niang, was well.. a little worser. In my opinion, I think the soup tasted like MSG and really maggie mee-like but maybe thats just me. Or is it? A $7++ for a bowl each with really, really small portions, I'd say go to Crystal Jade. This is starting to get ugly.. Did I mention that they served really small portions?



The luo han vegetables were okay tasting but for $4.50 a serving the size of my palm, its not very economical. Thumbs down again.



The mei cai kuo rou (preserved vegetables and three layer pork) is kill people put fire! Sa ren fang huo! At such a small bowl, (imagine a small rice bowl-size), it cost us $6++! And the large bowl which I think SHOULD be the price of the small bowl's, cost us $13++. Murder!



Taste wise, it was alright. The sauce was a little on the thick and salty side but is quite tasty but the vegetables were a little hard. I would very prefer if the vegetables were boiled to an even softer consistency. The pork was also too thinly sliced and doesn't have a good "kou gan" or in english, no bite! However, the owner said that the oil in the fats had been squeezed out to give a good bite feel yet without the added calories a.k.a fat on the waist. Err.. Okay man, whatever you say.. Haha.



The xiao long bao had the similar taste as Crytal Jade's. However, it's juicier and you can't really bite into the meat filling. That could be a good thing, or bad.. depending on how you look at it.



Don't fret though, good things come in the midst of bad things [I don't know how the hell I came up with that] and the drunken chicken was really good. Man, the moment it was served it did some kind of drunken aerobics on the table followed by an impersonation of Jackie Chan's drunken fist. Oh, did I forget to tell you that their drunken chickens are served live? Yeah, and then they slaughter it and cook it right there. Just kidding, I'm not that sick, and neither are they. The drunken chicken (cooked.. chicken) was really tender to the bite and especially in the breast meat. Such tender breast meat are really hard to come by and the wine was just nice, not overly strong and indeed made the dish quite delectable. This however, will set you back at $8++.



Lastly (literally), the shen jian bao ($7++ for 6) was served. My gawd it took them almost an hour to serve this man (which kinda explains why we had to wait so long for our seats) Now, I understand that their shen jian baos are made from scratch when you order but seriously speaking, the taste doesn't justify the wait.

Granted, its much better than Crytal Jade's (which is harder and tougher) but theres nothing really special about it. The broth is same as the xiao long bao's and it is simply wrapped in a bun. Of course, the bun has a nice bite to it with a oh-so-cripy bottom and a spongy top if thats what you're here for. However, I was looking for surprise and I didn't even get a kick out of it.

Shanghai Ren Jia is THE place to go, if you have THE money to spend. The dishes are exorbitantly priced, I wouldn't say unreasonably but rather, inappropriately. Taste wise and portion wise, they have much to improve on and I certainly hope they do so.

My question for you is

So what's fine dining anyway? A fancy restaurant, several waitresses attending to you, nice tall wine glass and a piece of half seared tuna the size of a nickel on a plate the diameter of Shaq O'neal's foot. Yeah well of course they made the plate look full by drizzling sauces all over it and placing one or two funny looking vegetables at the side, all this for an exorbitant sum. It's the entire experience, they'd say. I'd say, Go ahead, kid yourself.

Now how about this. Imagine fine dining in a different way; situated in the heart of Singapore, located on the streets, with passer bys and soaking in the hot, humid heat with cars whizzing by meters away from you. Hey, just treat it like al fresco dining aye?

It's special in a different sense, allowing you to really soak up the asian street vendor kind of dining and it feels good every once in a while. The place in question? Basil Aclove located on the sidewalks of Fortune Center and the chef I've read about from a few blogs is Xander.



I haven't spoken to Xander personally yet but i think the food is quite good and price is quite reasonable. For starters, take the Grilled chicken caeser salad. Now, this really caught us by surprise as we were expecting some kind of white chicken chunks in some average caeser salad. It actually turned out that the chicken was really seasoned well and grilled and there were ALOT of them. The bed of lettuce was also generously sprinkled with cheese and coated with tasty dressing. It was also brilliantly balanced with raisins which did gave it a different touch.



Mmm! Not bad for $7++ but I only wished he had eased on the dressing. It turned out to be a little too much and cloying [too jelark lar]



I ordered the chicken with avocado cream priced at $7++ but I didn't really enjoy the dish. It's pretty dissapointing that the chicken was deep fried and ended up really oily. Although the seasoning was good, thhe oil pretty much spoiled everything. One can only take in so much oil in one night right?

But alas, the avocado cream and salsa was refreshing and the cream was really tasty with none of the raw avocado taste. Sides were french beans which I totally lurrrve and mashed potato with chunks still in it [Oola!] and infused with a buttery taste.



Dad ordered the duck breast dish which came in medium done and accompanied with some red wine vinaigrette. Medium cooked duck breast? This is the first time I've heard of such a thing and medium cooked poultry is somewhat a little.. disturbing. But since Dad said that duck meat is technically red meat, well, my Dad always knows best ;-)

I still prefer my duck well done and soft and tender in braised sauce [I know lar so typically Chinese] and the only implication in having it medium done was that it was really chewy. Still, it quite creative (for a sua ku like me) and went well with the vinaigrette.



Mum and Qin ordered the cod fish which was really nicely served. The fish was [Mmm!] fresh! and it was served with a side of pink cream which tasted slightly sweet and buttery. I think it was made of beetroot is my memory serves me correctly. The salsa with mashed potato was also a good combination.

The food here is not bad considering its prices. However, it still needs a little bit of tweaking and a little more getting-right which I hope can be done in the future. Desserts will also be a nice welcome to end a good dinner. If so, the "restaurant" will start seeing larger crowds of people coming to try the food.

Address:

Basil Alcove
190 Middle Road, #01-07, Fortune Centre
63361318
Open 12pm to 10pm
Closed on Mondays

Zi Yean Restaurant

Zi Yean restaurant is the perfect place to hold a meeting, for my parents and Qin's. It's well priced, well located and serves good food at a good price. This restaurant is located at the void deck of a HDB block. No no no! Don't run away yet!

Its located at the void deck of a HDC block but it really looks like a restaurant! Thats quite a unique experience, if you think about it. Zi Yean stretches the whole void deck and is split into two parts; one part air conditioned and really resturant-looking, and the other un-air conditioned and kopitiam tze char-looking.

Okay, I didn't take pictures of the actual dishes though, as it was somehow like a formal dinner and it would look weird, plus rude, cause we're chinese.. I think, and it will definitely draw weird stares and ridicule from my grandma.. and others. So I took pics of the food on my plate! Hope that helps.



Now to the FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODAAA. The first dish was long beans with dried shrimps. It was really good. The beans were smaller and thinner than normal long beans and was really crunchy. It also wasn't too oily and the dried shrimps really gave it a good sweetness/saltiness and fragrance. Swee!, or Nice!



Next was the Empire Chicken which is chicken stuffed with preserved vegetables on a bed of chye sim. Mmmm, umami! The chicken was tender and stuffed with preserved vegetables which had the right bite consistency, not too hard or soft. The preserved vegetables were also not salty and soaked in the sauce very well. The sauce was nice and yummy and really nicely balanced.



The home made tofu came next. This was also nicely done with loads of spring onions on top. One thing about this Zi Yean is that their sauces are never bland.



The dog stew duck which was served in a claypot was supposed to be the highlight of the dinner and it didn't disappoint. The sauce is thick and rich and the taste was something I couldn't place. To put it simply, it was thick, more on the salty side and had a slight nutty taste with chinese wine in it. It is good but also very heaty so don't eat too much! In the claypot was also muchrooms and loads of tau kee.

The vegetables came next and looked.. funny. So I stared.. and stared and took a bite. Wah Lau eh! Shark fin?! I asked the lady to recommend one vegetable dish and she blabbered something in chinese and I, being the lousy-in-chinese guy, just said Er... can lar can lar and she gave me.. shark fin!? With vegetables nonetheless but still! [fuming mad] And it wasn't exceptional either.

The last dish was steamed grouper [I didn't take a picture] which was fresh and goooooood. The sauce was the same, usual light soy sauce etc, but the fish was well steamed.



And finally, Orh nee for dessert! Mwahaha! Thick, rich and gooey makes a bowl of yam paste sinfully good. Mmm, it was a little overly-sweet though but good nonetheless. I ain't complaining. I easily finished two bowls of this stuff.

Overall, I will recommend this place to friends. Its good and reasonably priced; considering we paid $230 for 11 people and we ordered 2 meat dishes, 1 fish, 1 vegetale dish, 2 big bowls of dessert and.. a plate of shark fin. Plus, the environment is nice and comfortable.

Address:

Lengkok Bahru
Block 56
Tel: 64740911
Opposite Redhill MRT Station

Miss Clari-who?

It rained cats and dogs yesterday [not literally because that would be scary.. and freaky.. and kind of dangerous], which kinda spoiled our day since we decided to get off our butts and shop a little. So we ended going to Raffles City where we passed by the famous donut shop. And I HAVE to say, anyone queuing up for those donuts.. gotta be nuts. Look at the darn queue! Are any donuts THAT GOOD to command such a queue?!



Maybe yeah, but I wouldn't queue up for 2 hours for my favourite min jiang kueh.. [or maybe I wooould..] I'm quite amused at the insanity of people and the see-queue join-queue syndrome which is especially prominent here in Singapore. But who am I to say right? [Predicting the flight of many donuts to his face]

Raffles City has got quite a few new restaurants, none of which interested us so Miss Clarity it was! Previous good experiences led us there again and again but alas, this time they missed.

For one, the restaurant was quite deserted, considering they were just featured on a foodie TV show just the week before, something smells fishy.



I like the $3 add-on for set meals which can get you a salad/soup, drink and a dessert. Its really quite worth it. We had the escargot which I have never eaten in my entire life. Served on a bed of sea salt, it reeked strongly of butter and it was damn oily. I'm sure escargots taste good, if cooked correctly, but I plonked 1/2 into my mouth and I thought I was gonna get hypertension. Where did those snails come from, the Dead Sea?! It was seriously salty to the max and there wasn't much flavour in it.



I ordered chicken ballotine before and it was quite good so I had it again. This time though, it wasn't stuffed with shitake mushrooms which was such a disappointment. I feel cheated. The chicken was also overcooked and was baked to almost rock hard at the ends (imagine the mushroom turned crunchy and crispy) but the sauce was the same ol good sauce was goes well with the vegetables and meat and taste a little like braised sauce. Okaaaay, I suck at this. I'm sorry I failed all my compositions okay! Just kidding. MOVING ON!



The baked rice looked unappetizing the minute or second it landed on the table. The rice looked dry and there wasn't enough cheese and sauce. To give it credit, the rice had been fried with butter. The sauce, to put it frankly, tasted horrid and sourish and was just like canned tomato sauce. The chicken, although served a generous portion, wasn't that good and had the frozen chicken taste (read: not fresh). So BIG thumbs down for this dish.



Alas, the bread and butter pudding was still Miss Clarity's saving grace. Its heavenly and thats all the description you need [but you JUST want more don't you]. The bread is soft and soaked with some kind of altered carnation milk which isn't cloyingly sweet and has a subtle taste of cinnamon. throw in a few soaked, juicy raisins in it and you've got a damn good dessert. Its just soft, warm, sweetly soaked bread with raisins that just mushes in your mouth and releases the slight milky and cinnamon-ey flavour and slides down your throat into the dark abyss called your tummy. Good enough? I thought so.

Miss Clarity attracted us in the past because it served good food at reasonable prices. It USED to be cheap but after its prices increased, I don't find it particularly cheap compared to other restaurants. In order to get back its customers (namely us), it has to start working on the quality of its dishes and people (us again) will start coming back. So, till then, Adios!

Soup, ribs and stuffed

Soup restaurant is one my favourite restaurant worth visiting again and again.. and again. I simply love the dishes they serve there. Its just sooo... chinese! Which is good cause I like chinese fooooooooooooodddaah.

Plus they also serve nice slurpilicious soups which are really strongly flavoured without MSG, I guess, since I don't really feel thirsty afterwards.

We popped by Soup Restaurant in Suntec City yesterday after craving it for SO many months and ordered the set meal for two which consisted of a plate of Samsui chicken, Ah kong potato leaves, Begger pork ribs, Soup of the day and desserts.


O sweet holy mountain of nuts!

They serve nuts as an appetizer. Peanuts soaked in sugar and dark sauce, I think, which are reaalllly good.



Soup of the day was winter melon soup which was VERY good. Very well boiled and brought out the flavour of the pork ribs. Yummay~



Can I just say that the Samsui chicken is SUPER DUPER WOOPERLY NICE?! Ooo nicely boiled chicken pieces wrapped in fresh crispy lettuce and topped with a KILLER ginger sauce. The ginger sauce is just outta the world when eaten with the chicken, or alone, or with rice, or with anything. Its just so delicious! I think they added sesame oil, some soya sauce and a little sugar to it to make it taste so good but if you don't the ingredients right on your 9980th attempt to get it right, don't worry. They do sell it in a bottle for $4.80 only.


Wrap it up~ before you go go~



We also order the begger pork ribs because its lip smackingly good. The slightly charred ribs is seasoned in a sauce so good you'll keep wanting more. Come to think of it, the sauce tastes like tweaked char siew sauce. Don't come here expecting Tony Romas though, the ribs here are dry but tender and comes off the bone easily, not juicy little sticks with fat dripping down their bodies.



The Ah kong potato leaves we changed to Ah por's. And yes, there is a difference, one is cooked with sambal while the other is cooked with black sauce. Nothing special about this and it tastes like spinach drenched in dark, sweet sauce.

Dessert is a choice of white fungus and gingko or herbal jelly and we tried both which were pretty average.

Order the set meal because it's only $40 (you're allowed to change one dish) and it will save you quite a good sum. Plus, it think its more suitable for three people cause we were STUFFED to da max!

Sobs... love handles...

Kim Gary's

It's hard to find good fried rice that's nice, tasty and not oily, even harder to find just better than average fried rice in restaurants. Or maybe that's because I don't order fried rice in restaurants. How many times has it been... Cnce..? Twice?

Alrighty but Super Sam knows a good plate, or in this case a bowl, of fried rice when he sees one! ..Or tastes one! Yeeeah, trust the man who never eats fried rice.

We popped by Kim Gary's restaurant in Vivocity sometime last week which had me asking the question, "Who the fish is Kim Gary?!". But nevertheless, we crossed our fingers, clutched our souls and sacrificed our tastebuds for the greater good. Or so we thought...

Kim Gary's offer Hong Kong styled cuisine and has the usual thick toasts, pork chop noodles etc, and rice with toppings like stir fry beef, pork chop and fried fish pretty much like the stuff you can find in Hong Kong, I guess.

We had an Almond tea ($1+) which was pretty milky in a cow kind of way. It tasted diluted and not almondy enough.



Also, a dish of mini drumlets ($5+) which were pretty decent but the sauce tasted pretty much of mainly black pepper and wasn't really suitable for the drumlets.

We also wanted to try the thick toast but when it was served to the table beside us we went, "Holy shizz! Look at size of that thing!". I swear man it was at least 8 inches high or maybe it was only 4 inches... I wanted to take a picture but I was quite sure they would've minded. Oh well.



Okay finally to the mains! The hot and spicy noodles with chicken wings tasted pretty much like crap. The soup was so diluted and tasted like peanuts and yeah, that's about it.



But I ordered a gem! Yay, a gem! I ordered stir fry beef with mushroom rice which was a-w-e-s-o-m-e. The rice was well fried but yet not oily even one bit. In fact, the rice was so separated and un-mushy that I could feel every grain of rice. It had the right wetness level of sauce which actually made it taste like steamed rice which had been slightly left dried and seasoned with sauces, grainy but tasty.

And I'm telling you, mushroom, chinese sauces and rice gotta be a match made in heaven. The mushroom soaked in all the seasonings and mixed with the already lightly sauced rice was drool worthy. Besides, the rice had the wok hei taste and they were brilliant to add corn bits to the rice which added a distinctive flavour and crunch.

The beef was soft and nicely cooked, although it may have been swimming in corn starch for a little too long. Even so, it had a good wok hei taste and nice texture and a $6 bowl of fried rice provided me with a hell lot of beef.

It wouldn't be fair to judge Kim Gary's at this point but the fried rice was really worth it.

Some shots and what not

We gave Waraku another shot. Not much words this time round, Just enjoy the food-porn alright fellas!







Oh yeah I just have to add in that the udon was quite good. Good, chewy udon with good soup. But darn it, it made me scratch the whole night because the waitress said it doesn't contain wheat...

Alrighty, that's all for today folks, till I lay me fingers on my sexy Apple keyboard again. Adios!

Waraku

We don't usually eat at Japanese restaurants alot. And nooo, Ichiban Boshi doesn't count, it's just like a sushi chain thingy. So I was really anticipating how Waraku would taste like (not the store but the food duh) especially after reading Food Glorious Food's multiple posts on how uber fabulous the negitoro tastes like.

Verdict: It's freakin' good. Awesome. Fabulous. Yummy. Slurps slurps!



Good fatty tasty tuna belly with rice (which was pretty normal) with huge loads of heavenly spring onions which is the SUPERB sidekick to minced tuna belly. It's like robin to batman... Or kaya to toast... or issit toast to kaya (okay I've got some strange metaphors going on back there in my head). Or bananas dipped with chocolate... Jesus it's quite shitty I'm stuck in camp now and I'm hungreeeeeeeee.



Seriously, it's awesome. The spring onions added this fragrance to the otherwise (presumably) yucky raw tuna belly. I said presumably. Nah, actually I would like the tuna belly with rice alone too. But the spring onions are just so essential! Read the above paragraph again if you do not understand (or just keep reading it over and over again). And adding good grade soya sauce and a little wasabi would just hit the spot.

NEXT



This uber fabulously nice sushi. Raw chopped up tuna with a quail egg yolk. At least I think it's quail egg cause it's so teeny weeny. Omg, gobble up the whole thing and feel the awesome tuna taste combined with eggy texture so smooth it just slides down. Awesome.



We liked the pork katsu too. It was thick, and juicy... and sufficiently porky. And dipped into their AWESOME sauce meant for katsu. Ooo, genius. The best sauce I've ever tasted in my life (and I totally dig those things). It's not as sharp yet that's what brought out the flavour. Okay that explanation sucked... I can't remember much except it being the best I've ever tasted.



The udon was just pretty normal though. No hoo haa about it.



Ooo and we ordered the 5 kind sashimi. HAHA you should have seen Qin went into a state of shock for like 2 seconds when the dish was served. Actually I also went into a state of shock because the thing was SO FREAKIN HUGE we had to be shifted to another table!

But alas, the sashimi was a little of a let down. Not that fresh I suppose and the salmon doesn't have that milky taste. The rest were also only so-so and not the freshest I've had.

But otherwise, it was a good dinner and the bill came up to around $60 for both of us.

Did I also mention they provide two kinds of soya sauce? The one for sushi is sweet while the one for sashimi is a little more salty. But both rocked.

You can find out more here.

Best Birthday Ever

We initially wanted to go to Equinox at Swissotel for their lunch buffet on my birthday. However, considering the fact that it's quite pricey for a semi-buffet style lunch, plus the bad view from the recent haze problem, we decided to search for another buffet.

Alas, our search ended when I read about Melt, The World Cafe's dual chocolate fountains. Looking at that and pics of their desserts, I knew I had to go there. So let's cut to the chase and get to the food!

There's quite a variety of cuisines ranging from the usual Western, Chinese and Japanese to Indian, Thai and some other cuisines which I couldn't quite remember. We were a little late for the buffet so I didn't take pics of the stations. I did, however, take pics of the food :P

First station I tried was the Indian cuisine which had the usual masala and tandori chicken, lamb and fish accompanied with various sauces.



Next was the western section which had a whole salmon on the tray! Can't remember waht else so just enjoy the pics. Oh the mussels with mushroom sauce were pretty good tho.



Japanese...



Indian pastries and curries and different chutneys.




Thai section with various salads and curries. The rice crackers with minced chicken dip was damn good.



There were also Nonya kuehs which weren't really good. Other than that, there were also a large array of cheese and crackers, salamis and a salad bar at the same table.



This. This and this alone was what I came here for. This was what filled my mind for the past 2 weeks.




Cakes!!!!!!!! Look at the yummy cakes! Mmmm yummy yummy.



Of course, the chocolate fountain. I was a little dissapointed tho cause I supposed they only have the white choc one during dinner.



Omg, I love this station! I had 3 vanilla ice cream waffles wahaha! And look at the sweets they have on the table free for taking!





Hmmm, the quality of food isn't as good but they make up by variety and a nice ambience. Not forgetting good service too.

Finally, lets get down to the presents! The first present is a hand-knitted handphone pouch. I love the colour! So retro! And she knew that I love tortoises...



Next, check this out. The coolest gadget in the world. A handheld body fat analyser! How cool is that?! Wahaha, perfect for a health freak like me.



And last but not least, she knew that I love Dragonlance (a fantasy novel) and she bought this hardcover limited edition of the original book! Not in words, mind you, but in comic form! Totally awesome!



Thanks darling for everything! Love you loads. Best birthday I ever had :)