In general, the Nonya food is fairly authentic, the service was impeccable. The ambiance was relaxed as soothing music played in the background. The lighting in the restaurant was a little on the harsh side, and that made the stainless steel food warmers look a little clinical.

The buffet spread was well laid out, and the decorations and accessories to decorate the spread was quite well done.

Let me go through some of the items that were available:

Appetisers:
- Nonya Achar
- Babi with Chin Char Loke
- Satay
- Sambal Tebun (sambal cucumber)

Of these I felt that the Nonya Archar was most authentic. It was thick and dry with lots of roasted ground peanuts. Nonya style does not feature lots of vinegar. It gets 2 thumbs up! The veggies were crunchy, and the chilli was spicy, but acceptable to most palates.

The Babi with Chin Char Loke
This is another one of my favourites (and I do make it at home).
The Chin Char Loke in this dish wasn't a lot. Which was okay for me, although I had preferred there to be more. But to accommodate non-nonya tastes, whom may find Chin Char Loke to be pungent and rancid, it was well accompanied by thinly sliced shallots, chilli padi and lime.

If you do not know Chin Char Loke is a slightly fermented little shrimps. Most individuals are unable to accept this fermented smell, but when mixed in with all the other ingredients - it does taste heavenly. MUST TRY!

Main Course items
- Ayam Buah Keluak (chicken buah keluak)
- Itek Sioh (coriander duck)
- Chap Chye (Mixed veg)
- Bawang Kepiting (pork ball soup)

There were many others, but I didn't try it out.

Ayam Buah Keluak

As my maternal grandma hails from Penang, our style of Buah Keluak is cooked with pork - not with chicken as local nonyas prefer. It is always a must try for me, to always guage a restaurant's standard is with this dish. With a little trepidation, I took only 2 pieces of the famed "black fruit" (which is actually poisonous if not treated properly and is commonly used as a rat killer in most parts of Indonesia).
The Buah Keluak was not sufficiently ripe, and were small in size. Hence they didn't taste good. It had the unripe sourish bitter taste. But since I didn't like people to think I was wasting food, I swallowed it all and washed it down with Lime juice.

Itek Sioh
Duck cooked with ground coriander is another of my favourites and I practise making this 4 times a year. They had meticulously removed the additional duck fat, making this more palatable. It was this eye for detail, that made me try this. The taste was lacking though, unlike the version that I had at their flagship outlet in Joo Chiat. Similarly the duck pieces were too large and that made eating them difficult. Improvements to their coriander spices should rectify this.

Nonya Chap Chye
This is one of the dishes that was well done. It was able to bring out the sweetness of the cabbage, intermixed with the crunchy bamboo shoots. This dish would only be done better at home. If you're looking for a good pot of chap chye, and you're juz to lazy to do it. This is the place to eat.
Why is chap chye difficult to cook? it involves many ingredients and its a labour of love. Despite the low cost factor, to do well with this dish is no easy task. Each home will have their own version of chap chye. There is no single "authentic" version. Some will not have lily buds, others will include beancurd sticks etc.

Bawang Kepiting
The soup was clear, and free of any "blood sediments". The pork balls were juicy and springy at the same time, yet had enough fat in the meat to make them "melt in your mouth". Although I would have added more bamboo shoots in the soup, it was overall a great pot of soup. An excellent yummy tummy filler with a bowl of rice.

Visit Chilli Padi at Heng Mui Keng to enjoy more delicious food including their kueh pai tie, Hee Pioh soup, Udang with Nanas, Ikan Asam Pedas etc

It was a late lunch, we were running really late (a usual habit of my uncle). I had arrived just 15 minutes before them, and it was just 15mins away from their lunch closing. So I had to order fast (they close their sift at 2.30pm)

So I asked for a few things which I'm familiar with the 7th Storey restaurant - Hainanese Chicken, Hainanese Pork Chop, Hainanese Chop Suey, another stir-fry baby kailan, and a hot-plate toufu (which was quite a mistake).

Given my particularity about Hainanese cuisine (pampered and educated by the various Hainanese clan association experts about how it should taste like etc etc. Plus my familiarity with Hainanese Chop Suey (which is one of my favourites). Let me give a dissertation of their food quality problems first.

1. Hainanese chicken
They had added a sauce on top of the chicken, it was too sweet and thick. The chicken itself was tasteless without the sauce, it had no flavour at all. I also felt that the flesh was a little tough. Perhaps they changed their supplier - this is not good chicken!!

2. Hainanese Pork Chop
Firstly the pork chops were fried for too long, sure they were crispy on the outside, it was also DRY on the inside. Its like eating into a week-old piece of meat (that dried up in the refrigerator). Next based on tradition their method is already wrong with the use of sweet and sour sauce (which was still ok with me). The problem with their sweet and sour sauce was that it wasn't tasty. I would have done it differently anyway. The pineapple in the sauce was too green, it was hard to bite into.

3. Hainanese Chop Suey
This dish is cooked with fresh prawns (which I didn't think were fresh), Wong Bok, carrots, mushroom, bamboo fungus and rightfully should have fish maw. This dish was ok in its presentation. I'm never finicky about presentation in such places. The prawns were obviously frozen ones. They lacked taste. I was really disappointed with their rendering of one of my favourite Hainanese dishes.

4. Baby kailan
It was ok. If they can even do this wrongly, they should fire the cook. Even a 10 year old child can cook this with one hand tied behind her back.

5. Hot Plate Toufu
They put kernel corn. No one puts kernal corn in such a dish. Its like one of the main ingredients apart from the Toufu. It is one of the most unacceptable in my opinion. I believe chef has the creative right to include ingredients and add their own flair to a traditional dish. But this is preposterous.

Let me explain why kernel corn should not be included with toufu. They do not add any additional flavour other than sweetness. presentaion of toufu with corn is not interesting. They should look into this.

It wasn't a cheap lunch anyway. Luckily I wasn't footing the bill or I would have been ballistic. Not forgetting that we arrived late? Our food came at 2.30pm, and so did the bill.

The reason for the bill even before we started to eat?
"oh we are changing shift, so we have to print out the bill, please settle the bill now"

"but you can sit here and eat slowly no problem, because we're starting our afternoon High Tea."

To me - that's bad service. Enuff said.

We couldn't find a place at TCC, so decided to head over to this place. It was crowded during lunch time. I've always been a sucker for chicken rice. I can eat it 3 times a day and won't get sick of eating it.

So I'm a chicken rice fanatic, that makes me a chicken rice critic as well. Fussy fussy.

My favourite part is the lower thigh portion closer to the back-bone of the chicken. This is the most tender part of the chicken. The chicken relied alot on their sauce to give it a salty flavor. It was too salty.

The chicken was tender, the chicken skin was smooth and silky. It was thick and jelly-like. The sesame oil that they used slightly over-powered the fragrance of the chicken.
But the chicken quality was good.

Rice
I tried the rice ball. The rice that they used were not of the glutinous type. It was the long grain rice, which was hard, the correct type for chicken rice, but not for chicken rice balls.

But it's okay. I prefer hard rice.
But it lacked the chicken smell. They didn't put other seasoning while cooking the rice or at least I can't taste it - like the ginger, pandan fragrance etc. It was also on the bland side. It would be nice if this had some salt seasoning.

As usual, I drench my rice with thick dark soy sauce before eating.
The chicken only had chilli as the main condiment - no ginger sauce :(
Normally a must for me.

Please also note that I was just eating this chicken rice, because I cannot resist eating chicken rice. I had already eaten a big bowl of the famous Hong Lim complex chicken curry noodles before going there.
So this chicken rice meal is round 2.

For the price that we are paying for the chicken rice - and eating in aircon comfort. It's quite good value for money actually.

It was 3pm yesterday, and we were on the way to the airport. I was rushing some business proposal so brought my family to century square on the way to the airport. We were all hungry, and I didn't want to go to The Soup Restaurant since I was at Tang Dian Wang the night before - too much of the same thing wasn't appealing to me.

I thought Sakae Sushi can't be that bad. I was wrong.

We had ordered a sashimi platter, and I must have Tuna, but the tuna they served was TASTELESS! The cuttlefish was leathery just to say the least, I think the prawns smelled as if it was 2 days old - had a strong fishy smell.

The service was horrible as well.
But at least they bothered to ask me which credit card I had that allowed me to enjoy a 10% discount.
In fact they had discounts on all the credit cards - DBS, POSB, Citibank, HSBC.

We were looking for a reason to go to this new branch of Tang Dian Wang. The ambiance, decor were impeccable, the soothing crooning of chinese oldies matched the theme of the restaurant which served Shanghainese cuisine.

Obviously a soup joint, and given that I'm a soup boiling fanatic at home, I had to try their "must try" and "home recipe" soups.

We had the "Luo-song" tang, which is effectively what we call - ABC Soup at home. That is probably one of the only delicious items that we had. The serving was ample for the 4 of us, each of us were able to enjoy about 3 bowls of soupy goodness.

We also ordered the prawn in golden pumpkin and salted egg, and another prawn wrapped in noodles with mango sauce, chicken with spring onion oil, sourplum spareribs steamed lotus leaf rice.

These items were nice, but the flavors are imbalanced.

1. Prawn in golden pumpkin and salted egg.
I had eaten something similar in Shanghai & Hangzhou, so I have always been searching for something that resembled that flavor. I was disappointed. But the problem with this dish is that you won't be able to taste the unique waxy salted egg. The sweetness of the pumpkin overwhelmed the taste of the prawns. Hence the sauce overshadowed the star of the dish - the prawns.

2. Chicken with spring onion oil
This is more like Hainanese steamed chicken with deep fried spring onion. Nothing fantastic, but the chicken was tender, the young ginger condiment that accompanied this dish brought out a different refreshing taste to it. Unlike the coarse minced ginger that The Soup Restaurant serves up with its chicken. I would give this at least 1 thumbs up.

3. Chicken wrapped in noodles - deep fried and served on mango sauce
I'm not exactly sure of the name, as my friend had ordered it.
But again the same problem with the earlier prawn dish - the sauce was strong, sweet and that overpowered the taste of the prawn. In fact I wasn't exactly sure if I was eating prawns.

4. Sour plum spare ribs lotus leaf rice
the plum fragrance was nice, but it gave the rice a slightly sourish taste, which strikes me straight in the face when I took my first mouthful. Because I'm used to eating all sorts of weird stuff. I did like the sour plum taste, but I felt that the spare ribs lacked flavor, it was a bit dry. And a fatty cut of ribs would have made the difference.
However, my friends didn't like the sour taste the plum gave to the rice and they said it tasted "FUNNY", but I had explained that it was due to the plum. Well they didn't eat much of it though.

5. For dessert, we had the sea coconut with lime

Again this dessert was a little disappointing. The chinese herb taste was strong, and it didn't compliment the freshness of the lime. The juxtaposed taste was odd even for me.

Went down late abt 9.30pm for a late night dinner. Based on the earlier review written here, we ordered the club sandwich, but apparently it had been taken off the menu.

The service was actually excellent. Recommendations for roast beef sandwich, and mushroom soup. The sandwich was within expectations (so could have been better), but they accepted my feedback. The mushroom soup was thick, and had real mushroom bits, with an earthy mushroom fragrance and flavour.

They kept asking us if we needed anything else.

Pho is actually the terminology for noodles, but its actually meaning in Vietnamese (which explained to me by my Vietnamese tenant 4 years ago), meant that you are "eating sneakily", because Pho is actually more of a snack than a real meal.

But the portions at Madam Saigon are big (well at least for me). The bowl of pho is quite substantial (especially the large quantity of beef borth). As usual, I love adding peripheral condiments like fish sauce, chilli, extra lime. And I always ask for extra bean sprouts and basil when I drop by to eat (since it opened).

It is a must to add the vietnamese version of 'Hoi Sin sauce'. I have always favoured a stronger flavoured broth to balance the fragrance of the fresh sweet basil.

It is also important to ask them to make sure that the broth is extra hot when they serve it to you. What that does is that when you place the basil leaves and the raw bean sprouts in, it cooks it slightly, and the flavours and aromas of the basil and bean sprouts will blend with the broth, and be slightly infused into the noodles, as you wait for the noodles to soak up that broth that is unique only to that bowl. Of course it is important to add all your condiments at the same time (quickly).

Let it sit for a while (while its cooling), before starting. The Pho will absorb the broth, and will be tastier. So don't be (like me), sometimes I forget this last step, and normally I am salivating and eager to slurp down the bowl of noodles.

While waiting, it is always good to have a small appetiser, and I recommend the fried Vietnamese spring rolls. I always prefer this version (i love fried stuff), it goes really well when you are eating something soupy.

I have eaten Vietnamese beef pho in Melbourne and in numerous other places, the quality of the beef stock and beef slices is always important. Since Singapore imports nearly all its beef, and fresh top quality beef is expensive, for the price I am paying, I think I'm getting value for money.

This is one of the places that I have business meetings, when I don't like having it in the office.

Its couches are nice and comfy, and Coffee Bean cakes and pastries are wtihin expectation.

But I was recommended this Lemon and Banana Cake. Which I felt was a fairly original mix of flavours - Banana and Lemon. Not commonly found together in a cake. Banana is always going with Chocolate or on its own, but never have I come across a pairing with Lemon.

So based on the staff's recommendation, I took a slice.
As usual, I love the tangy, tart taste of lemon. It also had the fragrance of banana, but I think the lemon overpowered the taste of the banana. Although it had banana pulp thickly packed in between the layers of the sponge cake, it didn't taste very flavourful.

The merainge made with whipped cream was sweetened by granular sugar. Perhaps I'm used to the type that is made with icing sugar, I was not used to crunching grains of sugar in my whipped cream. That was most certainly could have been done better. Hope they do better next time, or I shall just stick to my NY Cheese Cake on my next order.

Mooi Chin has been a place where I would bring my family, my clients for either lunch or dinner.

Mooi Chin has been a restaurant that I heard from my grandparents, as well as my classmate's parents who have been living in the Bugis Area back in the 50s and 60s. Mooi Chin was located along North Bridge Road then. A famous Hainanese restaurant at that time already, they have now included more local stuff like sambal pomfret.

My favourite dishes that I will ALWAYS order:
1. Hainanese Pork chop
2. Mutton Soup
3. Fried Fish Maw with vegetables
4. Sambal prawns
5. Yam Paste (for dessert)