Food

Didn’t really have the time to write for the last few days, so maybe this will be a long post.  We’ll see.

On last Saturday 22/10/16, Bruno and I went for the Escher’s Journey Into Infinity exhibit at Artscience Museum.  Photography is allowed, but I didn’t take much photos.  We were there to marvel at his works, not to take photos lol.  I only took one photo – which was aptly named as the exhibit itself.

So after spending two hrs and a half inside there, we went for a short coffee break at Commune, before we went for our Restaurant Week dinner.  One nice thing about Bruno is that he can always commit a date (I mean, date, not dating kind of date) for such activities.  So it makes it a lot easier for me to make the bookings when the reservations are open.  This time, we tried Wooloomooloo Restaurant, with me making the booking despite no menu being provided initially.  I mean, what can go wrong, right? It’s a steakhouse!

So we went there at 8.15pm, 15 minutes earlier than the expected time of arrival, and their service was astounding. The lady did not keep us standing for 15 minutes.  Instead, she ushered us into their bar, and asked us to make ourselves comfortable while we wait for the tables to be free.  By 8.30pm sharp, we were being ushered to our table.  It was a 5 course dinner (wow), at the special Restaurant Week price of $58++ (double wow!).  You can never find such a price in their regular menu.  And the best part is they didn’t skimp on their serving size!

Our first dish was actually their complimentary onion bread.  It was still warm when it was being served to us, and although the sauteed onion at the top was a tad too salty on its own, it complemented the warm plain bread very well.  It was so good that we finished the entire bread off.

Next up was the first dish on the menu.  The item reads “Shooter of Forrest Mushroom Soup | Parmesan Cheese | Truffle Oil”.  I was still wondering what the hell does it mean by “shooter”, and I nearly laughed out loud when it was being served.  It was mushroom soup served in a vodka shot glass!  LOL that was so unexpected.  I drank it and wow, the truffle taste exploded in my mouth.  The mushroom soup itself was very thick, and chock-full of mushroom bits.  Mmmm-nice!

Next was their duck confit salad.  I have to confess that 1) I can’t eat duck, and 2) I hate salad.  Like literally hate, with every fibre of my being.  But when the salad was being served, and after gingerly putting one spoonful of salad into my mouth, I eagerly polished the whole plate off.  It was so good!  The vegetables were fresh, and came in manageable bite-sized portions (no huge lettuce that you have to stuff into your mouth), and with the pulled duck meat, walnuts, beetroot and cheese, every flavour just came together so nicely, yet at the same time you can taste each of them individually in one mouthful as well.  It was honestly amazing.  The best salad that I’ve ever eaten, really.  I swear to god, if I ever go to Wooloomooloo again and they have that dish, I will order it.  Yes, I will voluntarily order a salad in a restaurant!  It’s that good.

The next dish on the menu is sauteed garlic prawn.  I wasn’t blown away by this dish.  The toasted garlic was okay-ish, the lobster cream was pretty good, and the prawn was absolutely perfectly grilled – slightly crisp on the outside but succulent and sweet on the inside.  Very nice, yes, but not out of the world.  Bruno absolutely loved this dish though.

Main courses were then served.  We had a choice between Grain Fed Australian Ribeye, Pan Seared Barramundi, or Tagliatelle Salsiccia.  Our choice was obvious.  We were at a steak house.  What else do you order other than steak, right?  XD  So yup, both of us ordered the ribeye.  The guy who served us the main courses had a little mixed up – he gave me Bruno’s medium-rare ribeye, and gave him my medium ribeye.  We both sensed something amiss while slicing the steak, so we just switched it between ourselves.  No big deal.  But the kitchen staff saw it, and alerted the guy, and he came over to apologise profusely for the mixed up.  We had to reassure him firmly that it’s absolutely fine, and the food was absolutely perfect too, please don’t worry about it.  It was very nice though, to have him apologise for the mistake (but not that we minded, seriously).

It was certainly not the -best- steak that I’ve eaten, but it’s definitely ranked up there among one of the best.  I asked for medium, and the doneness was perfect.  The sauteed mushrooms on top and the Lyonnaise potatoes added a slight tinge of other flavour at the same time. And the serving size was perfect.  We were feeling full after the steak – and that’s with the complimentary bread!

Desserts then came along promptly after we cleaned off our steak plate.  I picked the Wooloomooloo cheesecake with yogurt gelato, while Bruno got himself the Wooloomooloo Brownie with vanilla ice cream.  My cheesecake tasted heavenly actually – slightly salted cheese mousse, and a delicious crumbly biscuit base.  I couldn’t take yogurt though, and the raspberry coullis was a tad too sour for me as well.  Nice dish as it was, but I couldn’t finish it.  Bruno couldn’t really finished off his either, coz his brownie was too sweet and too dense.  But he did mentioned that it will definitely be an amazing dish for those with sweet tooth.

So that concluded our Saturday.  An interesting art exhibit, an amazing dinner, and a lovely companion.  Life’s good.  :D

Oh, and Bruno finally finished my Facebook cover photo!  Initially I only asked if I could use his original artwork (a swiss roll cottage!) for my Facebook cover, because I fell in love with it the first time I saw it in his portfolio reel.  I said I would pay for it (with dinners!), and he said okay, but he’ll have to polish it and resize it to Facebook resolution.  And that took him almost 10 months to do because he was so lazy!  :x  Okay he’s not lazy, just that he had other priorities.  But yeah he finally got it done, and on top of that he tweaked a little and added my favourite comic strip characters!  He also changed my display pic so that it all fits into the banner.

How cute is this?!??!?!  Omg I’m grinning face to face everytime I see it.  The swiss roll cottage looks soooo delectable, and then there were mushrooms!  And there’s all my favourite Capoo characters… awwww….. *heart melted*  <3

And today is Bruno and I’s friend-niversary!  Yupyup, we met up with each other exactly one year ago on this day.  I’m meeting him later for dinner, at the same place we first met too!  Huehue, maybe I should just make it like a tradition.  XD  Hopefully we have more friend-niversaries to come!

Yeah, the title is kinda lame, but heck.

Met up with Bruno today to go Cirque du Soleil – Totem, their second last show of their leg in Singapore.  Initially when Bruno was asking if I’m interested to go to this show, I was like “nooo I don’t like musical :3 “.  Then he was like “WTF this isn’t musical.”  He then showed me a few videos… and I realised okay, this is something like acrobatics.  But since I wasn’t like too familiar with him yet (I think we haven’t even met up when he was telling me about Cirque), I told him maybe not… He sounded really disappointed though, coz he couldn’t find anyone else to go with him.  And he would really love to attend it…

A couple of weeks later (after we met up for the first time), he mentioned about it again and I relented and say OK, I’ll go if he really can’t find anyone to go with him.  Well, he really couldn’t get anyone, so yup, we went today, on their last day of performance, the second last show.

The show was totally spectacular.  Every segment has their breathtaking moments, and some are hilarious.  Bruno and I found out that our favourite segment is actually the same one, so that’s pretty cool.  This is just our third time meeting, but we were kinda like old friends already.  Silent moments were totally not awkward at all too.  And he’s such a persuasive person, lol.  I hated Vietnam coffee, and he could managed to convince me to try his favourite Vietnamese coffee – Trung Nguyen’s Legendee.  It has a similar taste to civet cat’s poo coffee, and it’s priced at an alarming price – SGD16.50 for a small cup!  He still treated me to it though… as he said I should try it at least once.  OK fine…. It’s very sweet actually.  Strong and sweet.  To be honest, I preferred the one that he ordered for himself – Passion (if I didn’t remember the name wrongly).

We lingered in the cafe for a good while, because he needed to charge his tablet and there’s free wifi in there too. Then while we were thinking of where to go for dinner, he suddenly suggested Vietnamese food.  Well I’m really not a fan of Vietnamese food, but somehow he again managed to convince me to go try one restaurant that he feels has really good Vietnamese food, and so we went.

It was this small restaurant at Grandlink Square called Little Vietnam, and to be honest, it’s really not a place where I would even take a second glance if I pass by it.  But okay, we were seated indoors, and we looked over the menu to decide what we could order.  He decided to order the braised duck because he said it was really good (he did know that I should be avoiding duck and chicken though), and we also added a dish of stir fry kangkong which he specifically asked for no chilli (thanks, Bruno).  So when the dishes came, I tried the duck and boy, the meat was bursting with flavour with every bite.  It was spicy, but for some reason only my lips were tingly, and my throat felt fine.  There’s totally no need to drink water at all because I don’t feel the spiciness in my mouth!  That was a pretty surprising experience.

The kang kong that came along was good too.  Usually if I asked for the non-spicy version, either it’s super salty or it’s just totally tasteless.  The chef though, managed to get it done just right.  Heavy on taste, yet not overly salty.  I don’t need to reach for the water even after eating half of that dish of kang kong.  The beef slices were flavourful and tender too.  Very nice!

Braised duck in claypot and vietnamese coffee

Stir fry kang kong with beef slices

Oh yeah,  he ordered Vietnamese coffee again, before remembering that he would get migraines if he drank too much coffee.  In the end he only drank about half of it, and I helped him finished the other half, haha!

So yup, that kinda summed up what happened today… a bit tiring for the both of us because we both really kinda disliked going out on Sundays (he made an exception for Cirque du Soleil), but interesting for me because there’s so many “firsts” today!  And really, big thanks to Bruno for managing to convince me to go for the Totem show.  That was an awesome, eye-opening and hilarious experience.  ^_^

So yup, I’m officially older by a year now.  Hello, 34 years old!

Got a couple of birthday wishes from some colleagues and close friends, thank you all so much!  *feels loved*

Received a lovely drawn card from Reko again (hadn’t received any from him in a while!), and I thought the idea was so cute! It probably took him only like 5 minutes max to come up with it, but heck, it’s the thought that counts, lol.

Haha, isn’t it cute!!  He says the bear is on his way to meet me for my birthday lol.  I could see that it’s really just a simple and rough picture, but it really just put a huge smile on my face.  Thank you, Reko!  For remembering my birthday, that is.  :D

Took leave on my birthday itself and Bear was nice enough to spend it with me.  I knew I could count on my buddy to accompany me!  Haha.  Not that I would mind being alone, of course.  I’ll be alone later today!  Which I’m so looking forward to, too.  :)  Anyway we went to Clinton Street Baking Co because the last time we were there, it was so crowded and the waiting list was so damn long that we decided to give it a miss.  But since today is a weekday, we were hoping that there’ll be less people, and yup, we got a table!  We ordered their “signature” dishes – their Pancakes with Warm Maple Butter and Wild Blueberries, as well as their Buttermilk waffles with fried chicken.

Pancakes with blueberries

Waffles with fried chicken

Verdict:  Well I didn’t really try the waffles with chicken, so no comments on that.  The pancakes were good though.  Soft, warm, fluffy, fresh.  The maple butter was sweet and slightly salty, and when paired together with the slightly sourish blueberries, the taste was really “oooomph!”. Very nice!

And because I had my TCM appointment at 4pm, we then slowly walked towards Orchard and stopped by Peace Centre because Bear’s suddenly craving for the tom yum soup there.  He managed to convince me to take a sip, and boy, it’s good!  It’s not spicy AT ALL, to be honest – just sourish.  It’s not those kind of sour-taste that will make your face all scrunched up though.  The sour taste is just right and it really kind of opens up your appetite and makes you want more of it.  Maybe next time I can go there again if I’m around the vicinity, haha!

Then we head to PoMo and tried the coffee at the Montana Brew Bar.  Their latte was not bad, but I really just prefer Percolate, haha!  I guess I’m biased.  :x  After coffee, I went for the TCM appointment, and we just head for a Shin Sapporo ramen dinner after that before heading home respectively.  I’m SO disappointed with the ramen at Shin Sapporo now.. their egg is totally flavourless!  The soup and noodle texture are still all right, but the chashu and eggs are totally off the mark.  Like, WAY OFF the mark.  Sad… I remembered I used to love their ramen when they had a small shop in Suntec… it’s really disappointing to find that they’ve totally lost their standard.  =(

Well that kinda concluded the stuff that happened on my birthday!  Nothing much, really, obviously. Haha. Gonna go catch my beauty sleep now… long day ahead tomorrow too!  Breakfast at Percolate… solo karaoke session at Teo Heng… Dinner with the girls… woot!  And on Saturday, it’s GameStart Asia!  Gosh so many things lining up! Now I’m kinda looking forward to Sunday too, when I finally can relax and rest at home lol.  There’s still that colouring book that Sharon gave me!  Need to get started on that too!  :D

So, went to the eye specialist at SNEC on Monday, got a perfect eye test (yay!).  Doc checked my eyes and said there’s no more spots now (yay!), but she’s very wary of asking me to stop putting the eye drops, because every time I stopped, the spots will come back 3 weeks later.  So this time, she told me to continue putting the eye drops for 3 more months, and then stop for one month before going back to see her again.

Meh, $200 gone just in a morning.

Went over to Project Paleo for lunch, and was slightly disappointed with their food again.  The broccoli and carrots were so raw, and there isn’t much taste to their sauteed mushrooms.  The prawns and squids were okay, but the serving was obviously a lot smaller now.  I added two eggs, and they were all right, I guess.

I had Jewel’s coffee at Clifford Centre before PP, and then I dropped by Jamaica Blue for another cup of coffee after lunch. I was just trying to spend my time while waiting to meet up with Swordsman over at Boon Lay a few hours later.

After the coffee, I started to make my way down to Jurong Point.  It was still pretty early, but I thought to just walk around the shopping mall while waiting.  Nothing interesting there, really.  The new wing was like… nothing much?  Yeah the place is huge, but it just doesn’t feel interesting at all.

While walking around, I started to feel like, really gassy all over again.  It was so bad that I thought I’m really gonna puke again and be sent to hospital lol. I grabbed a cup of hot mint tea at Starbucks and tried to rest and calm my tummy a little, but the feeling was a little too overwhelming.  Well in summary, I was breaking out in cold sweat, feeling hot yet cold (thanks to the air con) at the same time.  It really felt like the night when I puked twice before going into A&E.  I quickly tried to down a few more mouthfuls of the tea, and made a beeline for the toilet.  You know, just in case.  I sat in the cubicle for god-knows how long, before it started to feel slightly better.  Thank goodness, otherwise I really don’t know how the hell am I gonna meet Swordie lol.

So yeah, I managed to meet up with him without any hiccup.  He kept telling me he is a 200kg big show, is “disfigured” (he has psoriasis) , etc etc.. but duh, he looks just fine.  Big sized (around same size as Bear?), and yeah his psoriasis is quite visible, but not to the point where I’d say “disfigured”.  Yeah his forehead was being hit quite badly, but he covered it up with a cap, so it wasn’t that obvious.  Oh yeah and he was wearing a Nat Pagle shirt!!!  HOW COOL WAS THAT!  Haha, and he was surprised that I know who Nat Pagle is.  I was like “eh hello, I play WoW too, you know?”  Which he replied “But not everyone who plays WoW knows Nat Pagle.”  And then I said, “How would I not know, when I don’t play end-game content and has nothing to do except levelling professions?”  To which he laughed.  XD

Although we talked quite a bit on the forums, I thought he’d be the kind who’s a little difficult to chat with. But hey, it turned out that I thought too much.  I think we hit off pretty well (since I already told him I’m a chor lor auntie so that he won’t have too much of an expectation =x), didn’t have much of any awkward moments, etc.  Maybe it helped that we have chatted on forums before…

We did asked those usual questions like “actually how old are you ah?” and “So what do you exactly work as??”, haha, but at least the conversations didn’t just die there.  We went on to talk a bit about EDMW, about the people we’ve met up with, about food, about work, about Bear, about Bear and I, etc…

It was funny that I thought he knew I’m a girl, but he actually doesn’t.  He said he got wrong information from someone that I’m a guy.  Until I gave him my number via PM and told him my real name, he was like “omg you are a zeh zeh?!?”  I was like “ehhhh… I thought Bear told you guys in that Whatsapp group already?!”  He said he couldn’t remember…  haha.

He’s really a huge eater though!  Although I seriously think Bear can eat more… but Swordie isn’t weak sauce either.  I told him to bring me eat good sio bak, which he did!  We ordered roast duck and sio bak combo, some siew mai and har gow.  The sio bak is AWESOME, but the rest of the food are just so-so.  Oh yeah, another similarity between him and Bear – both love ice water.  =_=  I wonder why!

After Round 1 dinner, it’s time for his Round 2!  (Yeah he eats two rounds of dinner everyday.)  We wanted to go Din Tai Fung, but it was closed.  =_=  So we end up at Eggs & Berries, where he ordered salmon and I ordered bratwursts.  The sausages are SALTY omg.  I can only finished like 1 and 1/2 of it before I gave up.  Bleh.  We chatted further… but hmm.  I actually don’t exactly remember what we were talking about now.  Maybe it’s really just random stuff.

What I found out was that we were pretty similar in terms of character.  We are both fussy with food (he doesn’t like a lot of food, whereas I couldn’t eat a lot of food), we are anal about people we can click with (as in we would rather dine alone than to go eat with someone we can’t click with), we both don’t know where our passion is and what we want to do in life, in terms of career (which is sad, haha).

He said I’m the first girl he has gone out alone with in probably the past 10 years. I was like “WHAT! Are you serious??”.  But then again, for him it’s just work, food, and back home to play games… I guess its hard for him to meet up and go out with girls anyway.  As usual, we took photos of the food we ordered, and he posted them up in the forums.  One of his photos captured my arms, and suddenly he was swarmed with questions like “WAH who’s the zehzeh”.  LOL.  He got bombarded with questions like which girl did he dine with, is it his girlfriend, does his girlfriend eat as much as him, etc etc etc.  Hahaha… he did a good job in fending them off though.  But I really had a good laugh reading at all the questions thrown at him.  He said he posted the photos on his FB and even his friend is questioning him.  Haha… I told him next time he should just crop me out to prevent such headaches.

He seems to be a very considerate person despite his tough replies in the forum some times.  I explained to him a little regarding my gas issue, and he seemed to remember everything.  And every now and then, he would ask me if I could eat this or that, have I tried this before, have I tried that before, etc.  He asked if I had tried Omakase Burger before, and I said nope.  He said he’s interested to try it, and before I can say I might not able to eat the buns, he already said “you just eat the patties ok?”  =__=  I was like “oei then it’s not called a burger liao leh…”  Then he laughed and said that the staff can probably find something to substitute the buns with.  He even said next time it’d be his turn to come down to my turf (east side, that is) and I must bring him around to eat.  And then he was asking about my lunch hours and said next time if he’s going for his TCM, he can drop by and lunch with me. Hmmm, knowing that he’s anal about who he dines with, I guess he can click with me too if he has plans to makan with me again?  =x

It’s not that common for me to be able to click with someone the first time I see them.  I guess I’m just comfortable with Swordie because 1) he’s a trusted friend of Bear, 2) we are slightly similar, 3) I know I’m not his type (he goes for those 气质淑女 style), 4) he knows I’m attached. So its just a pure friendship thing… which is rare! We’ll see when we can arrange another meal again, and this time with Bear too!  Feels weird not having him around when it comes to eating… a lot of food.  =P

… stop eating rice?

Just a small small bowl tonight for dinner, and I’m starting to feel the gas coming up now.

Why the hell do I get grain intolerance out of blue, when I had been eating rice with no issues all these while for 33 years?!  =(