eww at my brother :p

Was my dad's birthday yesterday. We ended up in this Japanese restaurant called Wahiro. It's one of those places people tell you it's good, you make a mental note to try it out one day and cleanly forget about it. So yeah, was quite happy we ended up going there although our initial plan was to go have spanish food.

Anyways – went in and was shown to our seats. Ambience was cosy, staff was nice, my nephew looked happy as he went "I want Chasoba, I want Chasoba, I want Chasoba, I want Chasoba.."

and he got soba, though not chasoba, but he still liked it. We also ordered a bottle of cold sake and decided on a set of dishes meant to go with the sake. Then I got distracted with trying to set a good setting for my camera to take indoor photos without flash, so I had no idea what was ordered after that.

The 1st thing that came was this:

The waitress said it's one of the dishes for the sake set. We looked at it, quickly turned around to grab her before she left and went, "Sorry, excuse me! sorry..but..what is this??" and she went, "The one on the left is seaweed with wasabi, and the one on the right is squid's gut."

"Squid's gut??" my brother and i went simultaneously.

"Yes, haha, squid's gut. But it goes well with sake~", she lightly laughed and walked away.

Well..okaay...I stuck my chopsticks in it and tasted it. Tasted...salty and..like the usual fish, but I couldn't get past having the knowledge of where it came from. So I was happily distracted again when the next dish came.

I have no idea what fish this is. But it's cut small and it's oily and is pretty good. There's spring onions and ginger on the side, so we mixed it together when we ate it.

These 2 came with the sake set, one was the oden, with the tube fish cake thing (Chikuwabu I think it's called?) and a piece of daikon. And 2 small pieces of salmon tempura. 

We also ordered 2 oysters but i didn't have any. My sis-in-law and my bro ate it. It's huge! Well ok, not that big but I think I'm getting a little scared of eating raw oysters. Small ones are ok though.

Oh, and this was good, fresh snapper (I think). Not so sure about seeing the entire fish raw and sliced up, but the meat was light and fresh and I think they squeezed some lemon on it. They told us that when we were done with this, we can have the bone cooked with a clear broth or with miso. We chose clear broth, but I didn't take a picture of that. Shortly after this, the food came very quickly, and I couldn't keep up with the phototaking, asking what it's called and eating. So i didn't manage to take pictures of everything, and there were some things I didn't try.

Here's the Kushiyaki (I think it's called.) That's foie gras wrapped with something (didn't try that cos i don't eat foie gras), and..something wrapped in beef i think. I'm not sure if i had that cos bits of food was just placed on my plate while i took pictures. And cos of the low light, the pictures were all blurry, I had to keep retaking.

unagi sushi which I didnt have

and the grilled onigiri. I had a bite and that was good!

small fried fish, very crispy, very good too.

and..my 1st time trying the sea urchin sushi (uni issit?) hmm...I'm undecided about this one. Everyone says it's good but I'm not sure..the texture is...squishy. It doesnt taste bad, it doesn't have a strong taste, kinda like when u eat raw fish. It has a slight raw fish taste but otherwise it's quite bland. and it was fresh so it's not "smelly" or anything but I think i was overwhelmed by the texture to really taste anything. I don't know why but I was expecting it to be firmer. I'm not a big fan of soft and squishy food, also part of the reason i don't eat foie gras or fatty meat. I'll try it again..one day.

ok, 2 beef dishes. I don't really eat beef unless it's very well cooked, so I only dared to try the 1st dish, that's ok I suppose. I didnt really taste anything. but I ate the lotus root of the 2nd dish and that was good! So I suppose the meat should be good. Though looking a little raw..? but there was a prawn dish which I like. There's some creamy sauce grilled together with it, not sure if it's mayo. and after that the clear broth from the fish bone came as a finishing dish. Then we sat for a bit, sipping the sake and chitchatting. and then we called for the bill and while waiting for it, I turned around and saw this:

My bro ate the squid's gut!! He silently polished it off!

"it goes well with sake!" he says

*grin*

-E

ps: Sorry bro, but still..eeww!

Savoury and sweet

It's my good friend's birthday in a couple of days, so the group of us asked the usual "go where? eat what?" I haven't been out in ages but i heard this place called Old Hong Kong serves really good dimsum, so we decided to give it a try. Unfortunately when we got there, we realised that they didn't serve dimsum for dinner..bummer. Oh well, like that will stop us from eating (fine fine, i speak for myself).

Hokaay...lessee...1st up was the fried carrot cake. Good good. Friend 1 doesn't eat bean sprouts which was fried together with it (not the usual way we are used to). No problem, the remaining 3 of us picked it out and in the stomach it goes. I really like this dish, think i can eat like 10 plates of this.

The next was this homemade tofu dish, fried with scallops and mushrooms. This was yummy too. We each had one (me starting to thinks de portions are a tad too small). We also ordered kailan fried with garlic.

Then the evil fried stuff started coming up. fried chicken wings with prawn paste. Thought the kid (birthday friend's 4yr old girl joined us) would like fried wings, which kid doesnt like fried wings? but she went for something else..

No..not the deep fried prawn balls with salted egg yolk – she went for the deep fried bread coating -_-

There was also the fried wantons. By now, I actually started to feel quite full. Whoever said the portions looked small huh? Actually, they were small portions, just that the food with the exception of the carrot cake and the tofu were on the salty side, so...kinda cant eat too much of it, plus hyper child wanted fried bread coating, friend that doesn't eat bean sprouts was watching what she eats (and i didnt exactly order the healthiest dishes), birthday girl's husband had plans to go for a 2nd round at another Hong Kong cafe and was saving his stomach.

After dinner, we headed to the Hong Kong cafe for coffee and he got this thick sliced french toast, everyone else got drinks and i got the mountain of ice to share with the 4yr old :D

Before we got to the 2nd Hong Kong cafe, i went to get breakfast for tomorrow and saw these muffins. Couldnt resist, so i got 6. They do sell them individually but hey, buy 5 get 1 free!

Can't believe i got hungry blogging and seeing my own pics...i ate a strawberry one -_-"

-E

Hash House a Go Go

For our last clinical day we decided to treat our instructor out for lunch. After endless days of deliberating and many a sleepless night agonizing over where to go, we finally decided on a place: Hash House a Go Go.

So last Friday, after deciding on a time and getting rough directions, I proceeded to ... hitch a ride with a friend. I'm somewhat infamous for being directionally-challenged so it was probably good I carpooled. I'd have been so lost... and amusingly enough, we were.

My friend and I were given a set of directions. Okay, easy enough. When we got to the intersection we saw this non-descript restaurant called Hash House. Looked like a morning breakfast place - had pictures of omelettes, potato hash, pancakes, etc. Seemed like the right place... yet nobody was there. My friend called another member of our group and was told that they were at the meeting place. Apparently, we ended up at another place that served similar food with a reaaaally similar name. The place we were supposed to meet at was a couple of blocks down. What are the chances?

After driving yet again and arriving at the correct place with the correct name, we proceeded to sit down and order food. They had a relatively varied menu and as the waitress explained (one of my friends asked), it's not quite the normal food - it's their take on it. For example, their "Famous One Pound Stuffed Burger" consisted of two patties stuffed with a variety of different things. The one I ordered had fresh mushrooms and swiss cheese. Another friend ordered the same burger but with apple smoked bacon and mashed potatoes inside. The rest of my friends ordered a griddled meatloaf sandwich ("The Kokomo") and a "Hash House Farm Benedict." Our instructor and I ordered the same thing.

We waited quite a bit, the passage of time aided by the amusement we derived from our instructor's son. He was 4 and quite a handful - his toy airplane somehow crashed into my glass of lemonade. We had fun though, from toppling the stacked empty juice boxes he brought to him giving his toys all a wash with his own little cup of lemonade (which wasn't so yellow near the end of our meal).

At last our meals arrived. And... boy, was it a feast.

A whopping gargantuan burger. I had no doubts it was one pound - heck, it was probably heavier than that. The whole thing was big - it came in on a huge plate (with a side of fries, of course) with a freaking knife stabbed down the middle.

I tried picking it up and eating it like that... to no avail. I suppose that's why the knife was there, huh? So I ended up resorting to slicing the darn thing in half.

Hash house farm benedict and close up | The Kokomo

The food was good. And relatively cheap, given the taste and size of the portions. The meat was juicy and flavorful, and the filling was, in a word, filling. Hmm... maybe I should've traded in half of mine for the other half of my friend's as she ordered the same thing just with different innards. I believe as time wore on I ended up being the only one finishing my meal, the rest of my comrades had to take theirs home. I even got a small cheer from my group when they noticed I had but a small handful remaining (a few cheers here and there... and mostly stares and gaping mouths).

A whole buncha nurses eating plaque-forming, artery-clogging goodness. Anything wrong with the picture? No? Yeah, I didn't think so either. This place definitely warrants another visit.

- West

Red Lobster

Last Friday my family and I went to Red Lobster, a seafood restaurant, for lunch. It's Lent and we decided we were tired of ye olde Long John Silver's. Anyway, we hadn't been there in quite a while so... when else would the perfect day be if not now when you can't eat meat?

We got complimentary biscuits to start our meal. For appetizers, we got a sampler dish with stuffed mushrooms and grilled scallops and a plate of calamari rings and vegetables. Also, some of our meals came with salad. Mine was Caesar.

Two lobster tails, garlic shrimp scampi, and grilled shrimp served with wild rice.

Shrimp, scallops, clam strips, and fried sole.

What I got: split lobster tail, grilled salmon topped with lobster meat in a butter sauce. Served with wild rice.

All the grilled portions of our meals were absolutely delicious, especially the scallops and salmon. You can definitely taste the grill-age of the food and not just see the grill marks. Now I remember why I like Red Lobster.

The seafood is good.

- West

BJ's

Last Tuesday, mein family and I visited a new branch of a restaurant that had newly opened near us. We've been to this restaurant, named BJ's, before but it was a different branch located quite a long ways off from our place. Knowing that a new one had opened up a day or so ago, we didn't wait long before we began our invasion.

This one was similar in decor indoors and out, which I assume would make sense - why would they make the same name of restaurant with different themes and decorations serving the same food, right?

It was only their second day of opening and yet they were already pretty filled up. Our time of arrival was most fortunate - after we had sat down and ordered more people steadily trickled into the restaurant. We commented about the busy-ness of the place to our server who seemed quite surprised by the whole thing as well. We all wondered what kind of marketing they had... didn't seem to recall if there were TV ads, print ads, flyers, etc. I guess just having big signs outside the place was enough to promote the place?

-=-

Or maybe it was the food.

We ordered a half a baked potato (which came with soup - New England clam chowder) for my grandmother. My cousin got a small deep dish pepperoni pizza while my other cousin got a Chili Cheese Angus Burger. My other aunt and I both ordered their spicy Jambalaya (which I was no stranger to) with a side of rolls. As for beverages we got soda, lemonade, and strawberry lemonade.

The baked potato was quite huge. It had chicken and broccoli topped with molten cheese.

The pizza, while small, was pretty hefty in itself. The burger looked like a yummy heart attack waiting to happen, served with potato wedges on the side. The jambalaya had chicken and sausage and pretty spicy.

The lemonade's rim was coated with sugar for that extra "mmm~"

-=-

Yeah, it was definitely the food.

We also had the dessert in mind when we came here. Oh yes... definitely the dessert. Simply called a "Pizookie" and according to their website is a "freshly baked, hot out of the oven, rich and delicious cookie topped with two scoops of vanilla bean ice cream and served in its own deep dish. Your choice of chocolate chunk, white chocolate macadamia nut, peanut butter or oatmeal raisin walnut." We picked macadamia nut.

Yes, you are drooling.

Prices are pretty good considering the food, which is a bit above-average for your normal run-of-the-mill poor college student like moi. Definitely worth a revisit, if only for the dessert (definitely for the dessert!). Here's their website if you're interested: BJ's Restaurants.

- West

Oh, and by the way:

Mr. Curry

January 02, 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2nd day of the new year, had no mood to work so was already thinking of what to eat for dinner. Called up my friday friend (for some reason we always meet only on fridays) and we arranged to meet after work at Mr. Curry (Japanese style curry) in Central at Clarke Quay. They just opened a branch there and there's a 50% discount on certain items on the menu.

1st time I've heard of Mr. Curry, realised that it's part of the Waraku group. Explains why the exterior was done up in pretty much the same style as the other Waraku places with the wall filled with rows and rows of plastic food. But the inside decor of this one was much nicer that I expected.

We ordered a Shrimp Omelette Curry, a Bacon and Asparagus Spaghetti Curry Gratin, and a Kakiage Sandwich. A bit too much for the 2 of us, but all we left behind were the fries. Overall pretty decent food, presentation is very nice - the curry came in a separate claypot and had a cute little wooden ladle for you to spoon the sauce over your rice. There's a small side salad with every dish and they recommend using their mango dressing, which is a specialty I suppose. The food in general is a bit too salty, not sure if that's the standard.

Like all Warakus, it's a bit commercialised, so your crowd is anyone from overly excited teens to smartly dressed office workers to family and kids. There's one thing that always baffles my friday friend and me – no matter which branch of Waraku you go to, the noise level is...incredible. We used to wonder if it's the structure of the interior that traps noise or something but you can hear EVERYTHING. The conversation 2 tables away, the staff shouting "Irashaimase!", the clanging of utensils, voices over voices...it's incredible.

However, when you don't know where to go, Waraku can't get too wrong. There's a wide range of food, decor and food presentation is quite nice, everything else is not fantastic but not too shabby either. Because of the discount, friday friend and I forked out abt SGD10 each.

- E