Wednesday, May 21

May 2008: Gastronomic Gluttony!

It's the 4th anniversary of my blog, and what better way to celebrate than by blogging about one of my favourite pastimes - eating! LOL - I think this is gonna be one of my longest posts ever - yet! :D Here's what I had this past month:

2 May. Met Song Hua, Bastian and friends at Ajitei (Takashimaya) - food was alright; I ordered some katsu chicken dish I forgot the name of. =.= Didn't take any photos as I didn't bring my camera along though. =X

4 May. Dinner at Swensens' (Suntec City) with Zhen Hong and Alan. I had a Sourdough 49ers Chicken ($11.90) and a complimentary scoop of lime sherbet (using a voucher I had gotten from visiting an open house by the School of Music & the Arts [SoMA]). The sourdough chicken buns were rather pathetically small, as you can see below; the small serving of fries didn't help. I mean - the dish was priced at $11.90, and certainly they could have been a bit more generous? =/ Well, at least the refreshing bowl of coleslaw served with juicy bits of pineapple helped to satisfy my appetite. You can do bettter, Swensens'!


Sourdough 49ers Chicken ($11.90)

5 May Had breakfast at McDonald's (Tampines Interchange) with Zhen Hong before heading to the gym. It was the largest breakfast I had for some time - Big Breakfast with milk and a Sausage McMuffin with Egg (thanks to the free add-on coupon)! Lunch later was at Swensens' (Plaza Singapura), because I wanted to use my 1-for-1 ice-cream voucher before it expired. =.= I had a Black Pepper Seafood Pasta ($9.80) and a Double Berry Sundae ($7.90). The pasta was spicy and good, although the pathetic servings of clams and crabstick didn't help very much (then again, what can I expect for $9.80?) The sundae was delightfully berry-ful; ice-cream being the niche product of Swensens'.

9-11 May TICE Eco Camp 2008: Had nasi lemak, beancurd (tau huey), and roti prata - all of which I blogged more about in my TICE Eco Camp post (see previous post).

16 May Had my favourite "Honeydew with Sago" dessert at Ah Chew Desserts @ Liang Seah Street, Bugis. It was a tad too watery for me; the honeydew wasn't really fresh, though the generous helping of sago compensated for its shortcomings.

17 May Steamboat dinner at Bugis with my diploma coursemates. You can view the photos at my Facebook album. For $17.90 nett per head (adult), the price was rather exorbitant, but the quality and optimal variety of food made up for it. There were also these "bonus cooked dishes" that the waitresses occasionally handed around to customers - our group got 3 of these, including a dish of fried man tou buns - small but thoughtful "nuggets" to entice customers to come again next time. It did help that the drinks (orange/grape cordial) were free flow too! For the 2 soup bases, we ordered 老母鸡汤 (herbal chicken soup) and 麻辣汤 "ma la" (a spicy soup) - which had lots of chilli oil and chilli padi in it - only for those able to tolerate its spicyness (see the photo below)! Side dishes we ordered included pig's offal organs, flower crab, prawns, and the customary chicken and pork. Dessert was agar-agar and slices of watermelon, which really helped to quench our thirsts.

The wide variety of food

Spicy "ma la" soup!

With my prized collection of food leftovers =.=

18 May Dinner @ Pete's Place, Grand Hyatt Singapore; courtesy of Singapore Polytechnic Principal Mr Tan Hang Cheong. Mr Tan gratefully treated the cast and (main) crew of the recent school drama production of "An Inspector Calls" (see previous post) to a hearty Italian dinner. What really exuded the Italian charm of Pete's Place was its homely ambience and the occasional 'live' demonstrations of "dough-throwing/flipping-in-the-air" by this amazingly talented chef (I don't know the correct technical term for it - but watch the amazing video below!)

These were among the dishes we had (appetisers/main course):

Selezione di insalate (customized salad)
Capricciosa pizza (tomato, mozzarella, pork sausage, mushroom, artichokes, black olive and oregano)

My main course: Linguine alle vongole (Linguine with clams and herbs in white wine sauce) - coincidentally, the Principal had the same dish as me too. :)
Celebrating the birthday of Mr Tan Hang Cheong, Principal of Singapore Polytechnic, with a scrumptious cake sponsored by the hotel
You know you want a bite of the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake - those "red berries" on top are actually not what they seem - they're filled with molten chocolate!
The sound crew from Singapore Polytechnic (clockwise from top): Edwin (sound designer), Melissa (theme song vocalist) & Lydia (theme songwriter)

20 May Dinner at Shokudo Japanese Food Bazaar @ Raffles City Shopping Centre with some of my DMAT (Diploma in Music & Audio Technology) coursemates. It's been a while since I saw some of them, though we'll all be seeing each other again soon at the upcoming Graduation Ceremony on 28 May! It was my first time at Shokudo, kind of a Marche-style Japanese restaurant, where cards are used to register food/beverage transactions, which are later paid for at cashiers before leaving - makes for a temptation to "swipe" (purchase/eat) more than one can afford though. The penalty for losing the card is SG$100!

The modern Japanese-style lighting/ambience/decor is conducive and refreshing, though the seating is rather cramped - some tables are located barely a chair's distance or so from another, and the walkway gets rather squeezy if human traffic gets high. Still, Shokudo has a super wide range of food to choose from that will leave the discerning gourmand spoilt for choice - teppanyaki, hot pot, meat skewers, udon, donburi, curry rice, fried rice, Japanese "yong tau foo", gyoza (dumplings), desserts, soups, salads - just to mention a few. According to a Sunday Times Life! article (10 February 2008), they have a whopping combined total of about 230 items in all the different stalls! The price, expectedly, is rather steep; the average side dish itself costs at least $3, while the main dishes start from around $6. Long queues predominate certain popular stalls, where you have to wait in line for some time or wait for your food for some time to get cooked - it's mostly prepared fresh. The quality/serving size of the food was above average, I felt (at least for the dishes I tried). Here's what I tried; not much of a dinner, due to the late lunch I had keeping me full... more photos at my Facebook album.

Tokyo-style clam chowder ($3.80) - It tasted very different from its Western counterpart - perhaps less creamy. :) It turned out to be my "main course" for the night.

Bacon and cheese omelette ($5.80) - I had a bit of this, which Jasmine generously shared with me.

Robatayaki (grilled) skewers: beef ($2.50) and scallops ($3.80) - It wasn't excellent for its price. I mean, look at the serving size and tell me if it deserves to be that expensive!

My bill chalked up to be $11.85 (not counting the omelette above), rather pricey for just 3 side dishes. It was a good experience mingling around with my soon-to-be ex-classmates though. :D See you all on Graduation Day!

And here's Shao Chong & Jwee Keat fooling around like they always did since Year 1. =P

26 May Swensens' was having a 1-for-1 Ice Cream Sundae offer from 26-30 May 2008 (courtesy of soshiok.com), so I went with Zhen Hong to the outlet at West Mall - I had a yummy-chocolatey-bananey-strawberry Coit Tower ($7.60). No photos though.

28 May Graduation Day! Wee Siong, Clef, Louis, Yuanjie, Boyuan, Peixia, Meijun and I went over to Ajisen Ramen @ Bugis for dinner after the graduation ceremony that evening. I ordered a set meal - Spicy Octopus Ramen (dry) with cold tofu, fried chicken, and iced lemon tea - $16.30 in all. It was all a tad too spicy for me, and the iced lemon tea was absurdly sweet (though I should be grateful it's not diluted).

31 May Went out for a "farewell dinner" with Song Hua before my army enlistment in 2 weeks - thanks for the treat Song Hua! :D We ate at Sketches Cafe in Bugis Junction, where they had this "Design-Your-Own Pasta" thing going on - and so we did! My pasta dish I created was a mixture of 3 types of pasta (ravioli + fettuccine + spaghetti) along with alfredo (cream and cheese) sauce, topped up with chicken, bacon bits, ham, carrots, pine nuts and, of course, more cheese. Song Hua had his pasta with garlic sauce. Our creations didn't taste too bad after all, contrary to our expectations.

To end May on a fitting note, we went off to catch the highly-anticipated movie "Sex and the City" after that. I ended up really enjoying the movie (peppered with hilarious moments at every corner), as well as its soundtrack - including Fergie's "Labels or Love", Jennifer Hudson's "All Dressed In Love", Duffy's "Mercy", and Mairi Campbell & Dave Francis's solemn rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" - the version that I like best so far - the melody just pierced through my heart (and got stuck in my head too). For those who haven't caught the movie, do catch it before it's too late! ;)

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