FoodieChat

Part 2 of my trip away - Singapore, care of a $1 flight from Penang on Jetstar (which changed the carrier to Valuair ).

My friend recommended the new food court, called Food Republic in Wisma Atria for a well priced fresh cooked meal, and another friend recommended I tried the “Fried Carrot Cake”. It’s basically a chopped up turnip cake stir fried in sambal chilli, and fashioned into a tasty omelette.  Just S$3 a serve, I seriously loved it. The chilli was just a hint of what was to come!

When one thinks of Singapore, the one thing that comes to everyone’s mind is Singapore Chilli Crab.  What is acknowledged as the best place to get it not just by visitors and expats, but locals as well is Jumbo Seafood Restaurant.  It’s a chain, and we went to the one at Clarke Quay, which is Singapore’s take on Southbank or King Street Wharf or Darling Harbour.  The crab is sooooo meaty, with huge claws.  The sauce is sticky, sweet, tangy, tomato-ey, with a hint of chilli, with egg through it.  Order a mantou bun to dunk into the sauce!

Another unique dish in Singapore is cereal prawns. You can have them shelled or deshelled. Basically they are coated in a sweet, crispy crumb not really like KFC, but not really like tempura either. I must admit, I was so-so on these because the sweetness was a bit over powering. 

One of my favourite dishes is taro scallops, and Jumbo does a great version - fashioning them into mini abalone shapes!

Wandering around Clarke Quay and over our way to Robertson Quay, my friend took me to an amazing patisserie, Canelle. Also a chain, these unique creations that are so haute cuisine just look way too good to eat.  Having shared 1kg of crab between two and all those prawns and scallops, sadly our stomachs were groaning with the digestion task, and hence, we stood and looked and finally settled on one to share.

This amazing chocolate dome has such perfectly smooth glacage, topped with the tempured chocolate dome on top was in fact a dark chocolate mousse cake with a hint of sour cherry in the moist centre.  It was an architectural feat that the smooth creamy mousse could hold its structure so well.  It definitely deserves to be admired before it’s devoured. S$7 each which isn’t bad for what must be so much work.

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I just got back from two gluttonous weeks in Penang, KL and Singapore, thanks to the very cheap airfares floating around.  In Penang, everyone goes to Gurney Drive, the biggest and best hawker food centre there. 

It’s right across from the water behind their newest shopping centre, Gurney Plaza, and is two loonngg rows of stalls selling specialties such as popiah, assam laksa,

meat and fish ball skewers,

satays,

and of course the famous char kway teow.  You can easily get dinner for under 10 ringgitt which is approx A$3, and the best thing is that the servings aren’t huge, so you can buy and try lots of things!  It’s eating under the stars - and everyone in Penang goes - locals and otherwise.

We also enjoyed the breakfast buffet at the Parkroyal in Penang.  Two egg stations, fresh char kway teow, Asian breakfast items (curries, nasi lemak, congee), as well as an amazing bakery station with cakes, croissants, pancakes and every other naughty thing your mum doesn’t let you eat for breaky  

And for the diet conscious who pigged out at Gurney Drive the night before, the best tropical fruit spread with jackfruit, dragonfruit, starfruit, longans, paw paw and bananas making regular appearances. 

As Malaysia is a Muslim country, you’ll have to make do with chicken sausages and beef bacon instead of pork bacon which I found very interesting!

At the Shangri-La Rasa Sayang, the most exclusive resort on the island, the Spice Cafe offers the usual Shangri-La amazing buffet spread.  Go on Monday night if you can as it’s BOGOF (buy one get one free) night!  At 102 ringitt for two, it means yo udefinitely don’t need to stuff yourself silly.  The usual seafood specialities of prawns, oysters, sashimi were complemented by yabbies as well. The hot food had an indian bar with fresh tandoori, a laksa bar,

 Asian - with jumbo huge cooked prawns.  But all of these pale in comparison to the dessert buffet. I think a picture speaks a thousand words….

where do you start!

You start with dessert that’s what! hehehe. 

There’s also DIY ice kacang - something I found I wasn’t too keen on.

Something interesting is the black chicken soup… only for the brave!

The Rasa Sayang also does high tea.  it’s not a very good ambience as there were hardly any others there, and it appears to be served in their lobby lounge which is deserted. Only 30 ringitt for high tea!

Very brave to open a mod Thai eatery on the Italian and cafe dominated strip that is the eating hub of Concord - one of many in the Inner West.  Another understated opening - no advertising, website or flyers in the mail that I could see - but given the regular traffic on this well known street, none was necessary.  Walking through the narrow front door, I was super impressed with the not-too-dimly lit, spacious interior.  Large oversized tables, huge cushion topped timber arm-chairs, generous aisles, and candles with the centrepiece being the three hanging globe chandeliers weaved with fairy lights suspended like sparkling moons across the room. And that’s just the decor. The food is equally impressive - and the value is outstanding for such a trendy well decked out place.

We ordered four entrees - the duck wrap - kinda like a duck san choy bau sort of awkward in cos leaves, but with flavour that just explodes in your mouth, once you realise that it’s cold.  Finely chopped duck meat is mixed with chilli, cucumber, mint, onions and other exquisitely melded flavours. All entrees around around $5.9 - $8.90 which is pretty good value for anywhere.  Tom Yum soup was intense though a bit salty for some, filled with prawns, baby corn, mushrooms and topped with fresh coriander. Did I mention I love the servingware? 

We also tried the prawn cakes (a twist on the usual fish cakes) - chicken and prawn mince shaped into patties and deep fried in breadcrumbs. They were outstanding, and great value - you get four the size of a regular hamburger patty, and not fishy (in a bad way) at all! The chicken meat sweetened the prawns even more.  I didn’t take to the taro puffs as much, square and crimped around the edges. The filling wasn’t tasty enough (maybe because the other things were so much so!).  But the essential money bags were text book perfect - crispy but not oily, filled and tied with a pretty chive, and double layered pastry for extra crunch.

I think we decided at that point that we were totally stuffed because of the entrees, but too late! The mains consist of a three menus: curries, stir fries and noodles.  You pick your meat (chicken, lamb, prawns, tofu/vegetables) and then your desired sauce.  Combination 1 for us: Chilli Jam Prawns. $18.90 for prawns - fresh king prawns sauteed in the thick sweet chilli flavour with just perfect veges of snow peas, capsicum, and garnished dramatically with a long dark fried chilli.  Combination 2: Thai basil sauce rice noodles with chicken ($17.90 for chicken dishes).  A bit too much chicken, but the noodles were al dente and I loved the egg bits in it - all topped with lemon, and deep fried translucent basil leaves.

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One of my favourite ways to spend a day on the weekend is to meet friends and family to have Yum Cha - or “Dim Sum” as the yankees call it.  “Yum Cha” means “Drink tea” in Chinese, whilst “Dim Sum” is what you eat there as an accompaniment for the tea as you catch up - although in modern times, the food overshadows the tea!  Get to Marigold early, as there can be a queue from 11:30am on the weekend - an alternative to the take a number and listen to the microphone approach adopted by some.   Then when you get your table, order your tea (Jasmine, green, oolong etc), and cast your eye over the trolleys filled with steaming hot food (literally - some of the trolleys are mobile steamers filled with hot water).  I love Yum Cha also because the food is mini.  Bite sized so you can have a bit of everything.  Sorry on this trip we didn’t eat that much but here’s what we did have.

Char Siu Bau (or BBQ pork buns) are well known to the general population as fluffly steaming white dough buns filled with sweet pork. But have you tried the baked and glazed version - with a brown top, rounded and smooth?  Another favourite bun of mine is the polo or pineapple buns, filled with custard and topped with a sweet, crispy topping.

Essential but unhealthy - the mandatory spring rolls are crispy, deep fried asian sausage rolls - filled with mince of pork, mushrooms, and prawns if you’re lucky, as well as wood ear mushroom shreds and bamboo.  For the more health conscious, the steamed dumplings are a solid offering.  Prawn dumplings (har gau) are often chased by enthusiastic impatient diners (oh no, I would never do such a thing! ) and are often the first to go; and the most asked for.  Like a steam prawn wonton, wrapped in rice paper and steamed.

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The premises have formerly housed the QANTAS headquarters, a bank branch, and there’s even an optometrist next door.  So it was quite a surprise to workers in surrounding buildings to discover that a new Japanese restaurant suddenly staged a low key opening - appearing suddenly without much fanfare.  The saying to not judge a book by its cover holds true in this case as you are impressed from the moment you walk in.  What looks like a quickly flung together room of tables and chairs looking in from the outside (and also spectacles) is in fact a buzzing room of long pale timber banquettes, with half a dozen cozy couched nooks that offer more private dining on the other side.  The large sushi counter with its sushi train (that even runs through a wall) dominates the space, and provides a moving feast for the eye and a focus from the room.  And the food is GREAT, and certainly, surprisingly priced for the Sydney CBD. 

We took the spacious couched booth and had the salmon sashimi - melt in the mouth tender, juicy and sublime - and fresh; and two other a la carte sushi rolls - soft shell crab roll and prawn and avocado roll.

Six 6 bite sized morsels - I hate it when the sushis are so huge and the nori so stale that you look like a dog attacking a piece of meat as you attempt to bite into a sushi without shoving the whole thing in your mouth. Not so at this place! So fresh and visually exciting - the crab looks like it’s leaping out the sushi (a la Sebastien from the Little Mermaid!)

Okay if I *had* to complain, perhaps they could have given me the full prawn (and also along the length of the roll) rather than the half. But the rice had just the perfect amount of bite, and the nori fresh, with just the right amount of roe to coat the inside out rolls.

Okay if I were to make another complaint it would be that the entrees came after the mains. But oh well…. I had the ebi don - three crumbed prawns with egg and onion on rice.  Egg was teeny bit runny for me (not just the yolk) and I wasn’t sure whether I preferred the prawn to be tempura rather than breaded, but yummy nonetheless.

The chicken katsu curry was text book perfect, and portions generous for city meals; and the udon hotpot was filled to the brim with slurpy soft noodles, a prawn, and an egg - still runny - so that you can swirl it in or slurp whole into your mouth! 

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