Archive for the ‘chinese’ Category
hk kim gary restaurant, vivocity
After I realized that I had never posted about Cambodia I noticed that I basically skipped 3 months of eating out that I’ve been doing in and around Singapore. I had a wave of visitors from California and while we visited my usual haunts we also hit up a few new places. This one is courtesy of Jeff who alongside a misspelled Bible, a milk carton piggy bank, and a bun key chain treated me to lunch as payback for housing him during his Singapore layover.
After Sunday church I met Jeff at Vivocity where he offered up HK Kim Gary (selected due to the queue which had dissipated about an hour earlier) as the lunch spot.
This, by the way, is home of the previously lauded strawberry aloe vera drink.
mooncake madness
I am all rusty with the blogging. I’ve started this post about 4 times. I refuse to use the backspace again. I will soldier on with whatever word vomit decides to spillover.
I went to a mooncake making class with Pat and Ruth today. It’s nearly the Mid-Autumn Festival again (yes, again – I’ve been living here for a year!) which means mooncakes are coming out all over the island. There are several different types of mooncake. The most common are baked to a shiny brown with thin skins and a heavy, sweet filling of red bean, lotus, or yam paste. The class, which we took at Jialei Confectionary and Training Center, covered Shanghai style lotus paste mooncakes, flaky yam paste mooncakes, and also a quick lesson on how to make the yam paste from scratch.
Golden flaky mooncakes with lotus paste and walnuts for decoration. These were nice and warm outta the oven.
the great singapore food tour
I’m supposed to be in Bangkok right now relaxing with some iberry after a long day of ziplining in the rainforests of Chonburi. Instead, I’m chillin on the couch watching the first season of The OC with the brothers. What are the odds that my brother would develop a 101F fever, sore throat, and nausea 8 hours before our flight? Sigh. Grounded.
This does mean I have lots of time on my hands and thus have fewer excuses to drag my feet on the ol’ blog. In truth I’ve been feeling wishy washy about it. To blog or not to blog? I’ve been taking the camera out less and less, feeling less impressed and less intrigued by the yum yums to be had all over the island. Too lazy to document any culinary magic happening in my humble kitchen. In short my friends I’m feeling all blogged out. I’m trying to get revved up about it again so let’s begin by a post that needs, nay aches, to see the light of day.
Nags and I with the leadership of some of our favorite true blue Singaporeans, Melina and Isaac, put together an office food tour to visit 4 of the island’s tastiest hawker stalls. Please make way for the gluttony of 1 rainy Saturday in Singapore, 17 hungry tummies, and 4 hours of num nums in the tum tum.
The fun started in Tiong Bahru which I have to say has a pretty nice, modern hawker center. Very spacious, adequately clean, and lots of variety.
ji de chi – remember to eat!
Cute name for a shop, huh? As you can see I had Hong Kong style dessert two nights in a row. Oink oink to you too. This one was after Yum Cha with Kwan and Pui. Kwan said her favorite dessert place was nearby so after some wandering we rolled ourselves into Ji De Chi, which according to the wall decorations, is a favorite of local celebs and has garnered itself a few awards.
aw chew desserts
This place is always, always busy. I’ve even seen it in a few guide books as *the* place for Chinese/Hong Kong style desserts. We saw this place before dinner so we made sure to leave some room in our bellies for a visit.
The verdict: good but not life changing. The most popular stuff on the menu is the mango sago which I wasn’t in the mood for due to my scratchy throat. I picked the sweet potato with sago while Steph got the milk custard. We were lucky enough to grab a table outside which gave us some breathing room from the durian specials of the day.
oh yes i did
I had bought a bag of flour to deal with my pancake cravings and had also sprung for some scallions for the cha soba dish that I made. So here we are. Bag of flour. Bunch of scallions. Can you guess what happens next?
Scallion pancakes that’s what. I looked far and wide for an easy how-to and found one here. After a brief pep talk to ready myself for the task, I got down to business and ended up with these.
yummy yum cha
My post titles are always so boring.
We took advantage of the office’s walking distance proximity to Chinatown on Thursday night on a mission to get some hot pot. Alas, when we got to the place it was no longer in business. Undeterred we opted for yum cha aka dim sum at the aptly named Yum Cha Restaurant. The dim sum menu here is shorter at night but still has a decent selection of twenty or so choices that you have to order from the kitchen (no trollies on the night shift).
The food was good but I think we ordered things that were too similar to each other so there wasn’t enough of a variety in the flavors.
onde onde(licious)
I’ve had a great day of eating (and laser tagging) and am now at home making the familiar dent in my couch while I couch potato status and watch American Idol. (PS Adam Lambert, you are totally overrated.)
My Makansutra guide has been gathering dust on my bookshelf for a few months but I pulled it down to do some research for an upcoming work event. The section on onde onde reminded me of some of the posts on EatingAsia that sing the praises of gula melaka. This prompted a lunch time hunt for these sweet treats which, I’m proud to say, was very successful.
thick toast strikes again
You’ll recall my previous love for thick toast.
It recently joined forces with butter and a new fave – chicken floss.
I used to see this stuff at Ranch 99 but never thought much of it. In these parts, it’s everywhere. I find it on rice crackers, in sandwiches, in steamed buns, and (obviously) on good ol’ thick toast. It’s salty and a bit sweet, sorta fluffy, but still with a meaty texture. Since the end product looks nothing like its original form you can expect a multi-step process that you can wikipedia on your own darn time.
I had this slice while waiting for Bamboo to take the stage at the Pinoy Sunday concert a few weeks ago.
Haaaaall-ayyyy-looooo-yooooo!
crystal jade hong kong cafe
Don’t worry I’m not in Hong Kong again. 
This past Friday the gang got together to bid adieu to Selene as she heads back to (strangely enough) Hong Kong. We had aspirations of First Thai but were denied since they’re closed for Chinese New Year. Not one to be discouraged, we trekked a little further to Liang Seah Street and settled on Crystal Jade Hong Kong Cafe.
I was a bit confused at first. I had been to Crystal Jade before but their speciality was xiao long bao and la mian. This CJ was all about congee and milk tea. Apparently the Crystal Jade peeps have their fingers in lots of different pots and this is a different flavor of the same chain.
Feed your reader! 
