Date visited: 21 November 2008

This is actually my favorite Saturday brunch haunt (being very near my residence). During quiet hours when you can get a window seat, it is pleasing to sip on a glass of hot yuanyang and enjoy some dim sum. The view will not be the best in the world as you will be looking out at HDB flats and the street below but it will do for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Anyway, I have sidetracked.

I came for dinner this time and we did not manage to get a window seat. But it was still quite pleasant and not too crowded. We ordered noodles, carrot cake and a vege. My noodle was too oily and the garlic fried vege was bitter. But ok la, it was a natural bitterness from the vege itself and not insecticide-bitter, so I could finish up the dish without complaining. The xo fried carrot cake was quite good, and the yuan yang was power as usual.

The service was generally ok. At one point when I was gazing at nothing, the manager happened to notice my stare, and he actually nodded and gave a big smile. I was confused at first but later on I thought it was quite a friendly gesture.

My expat family are not fan of food courts and my suggestion of paying a visit to the kopitiam next door was greeted with silence. Luckily this cafe was next door and we decided to pay it a visit. Now, this is not Crystal Jade and you should not have high hopes of the quality of the food. For example they use instant Nissin Noodles for some of their dishes - WHY??? I thought that noodles were generally cheap anyway.

We ordered a chicken curry which came with slices of French bread which was tasty although my wife thought it tasted fishy. I know that cheap chicken that is essentially fed on fishmeal can taste like fish - perhaps thats the cause. I had baked claypot tofu which was nice and very hot (not spicy). My wife ordered a sizzling beef dish that never came! The Dim sum was alright although the sui mai had rather coarse meat within it and the chinese dumplings were rather bland but the dipping sauce was good. My girls shared the (instant) Nissin noodles with egg and fried (tinned) ham on it which unsurprisingly tasted just like something I could prepare in my kitchen in the UK!

Food came fairly quickly and filled a small hole but wasn't terribly inspiring nor tantalising to my tastebuds. Overall - around a 5/10. Sorry - for me the Kopitiam next door does much better food and more enjoyable.

I tried the ying yang bake rice ($9.50), pumpkin fries ($6.8), pork floss french toast ($3.80).
This is the 2nd time to the cafe. the french toast is not oily. and the bake rice was good too...but the pumkin fries portion is a little pathetic...Hope they will increase the portion.

We went to Streets Cafe on Sunday evening for dinner. Its kinda crazy in the heartlands even on sunday nights- there are queues outside almost every restaurant within the mall.

On the face of it, the prices are decent and may be considered relatively cheap, but the quality of food is lacking. They serve a wide variety of food though, but this may be another case of variations of easy-to-cook-already-prepared food, and overkill. because if they had a more limited menu perhaps the food served would be of a better quality.

We had:

Steamed Pork Ribs With Black Beans
HongKong Famous Wanton Noodle
Cheese Baked Rice with Pork Chop
Chicken Chop with Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce
Ice Lemon Tea

The steamed pork ribs with black beans was the worst i have ever had. God knoes what portions of meat they served with a ton of bones, and it just did not taste good. its like, pork already has a distinct taste, and even with black beans, you could taste it. it did not bring out flavour, it was just plain terrible. at 2.80, that wasnt cheap either.

My partner had the Hongkong Famous Wanton Noodle, which looked good superficially, but in his opinion was average. i tried it, and it was yes, average. nothing to rave about.

I had the Chicken Chop with Spathetti in Tomato Sauce - i personally felt the tomato sauce was literally tomato sauce from the bottle, i have no problems with it being sourish, but it was so watery, and not hearty, like how spaghetti should be. The sauce consisted of some carrots and chopped onions in any case. The chicken chop was decent, but again nothing to rave about.

We shared a cheese baked rice with pork chop which was badly done and badly presented. The cheese only covered the middle and some sides of the rice- it was unevenly done and burnt at the edges. so you basically had to chip away at it, it was so hard. the entire dish would have been terribly plain if not for the sole piece of pork chop, and it was garnished with capsicum (which is a vegetable i like)and onions that did not really go with the cheese baked rice or pork chop. in essence it was some kinda dish that the chef or management thought about. It was not worth the money ($9.80)

We shared an ice lemon tea which i enjoyed alot, at $2.50. and if we hadnt ordered the drink we would have had to pay 20cents per glass of water. Which is, in my opinion, not really justified. In any case, we ordered water, which never came and which we were charged for.

In retrospect, this dinner wasnt worth the money. You could get alot better food at some hawker centre for like the $34 we paid in total. Possibly the only saving grace is that service is relatively prompt and polite, but seeing how they forgot about our water and charged us for it, im wondering whether im being too generous.