John 3: 16 has the BEST services if you are looking for your camera. The staff there are real friendly, and always more than willing to answer your any doubts or enquiries.
Just asked them for a hands-on experience on a dslr or camera, and there was no slight frown, or look that says "are you really going to buy?"
Leslie is the one who attended to me, and he's very knowledgable about the products that he's selling. Real friendly too. I had some hands-on testing with the dslr, and he patiently explained to me the difference between the diff models and lens.
But, good services come with a price after all, the quotes you get from John 3:16 will not come cheaper than the other shops. In fact i think the price tag is slightly higher by $20-$30?
Not much diff, but still enough to buy another additional memory card. If you are the kind looking for service and don't mind paying a bit more, then John 3:16 is definitely the place for you, but if you don't mind poor service, so long can get a cheaper deal, den please look else-where.
Oh ya, i forgot to mention, John 3:16 lot is totally pro-canon. They support canon, so despite me telling myself they are not biased, but i cant help feeling that they will advice and tend to pyscho their customers to buying canon products.
One obvious part which i noticed was, John 3:16 is not a Nikon authorised dealer. And i wondered why.
Was DSLR-hunting, and went into the sony shop to enquire on the sony alpha series model. The salesman uncle was quite polite to explain about the alpha 200. and the different pricing for diff lens.
I think there's a sony promotion going on right now, and if you buy the alpha series, it comes with free original battery. But then wasn't pretty much interested in sony dslr anyway, so the deal doesn't attract me.
De-Luxe Cameras and Cathay Photos are two of the authorized Nikon dealers, looking for a nikon dslr, i went in to take a look.
They have two shops (i only realise later). The first shop i went in was tended by an old uncle, he was quite all right i guess, as in altitude wise.
He quoted me $890 (before GST) for the Nikon D60. After GSt its somewhere in the region of $970, and with no free SD card, the deal wasn't cheap. So i move on to the other shops.
I went to the back, and saw this shop, its also call De-Luxe, only then i realise they have two shops in the same place. So i went in and there was this younger man tending the shop.
He's a little eccentric, for every question i asked him, he only gave a very short reply, and wasn't very friendly and doesn't seem bother to talk to the customer.
He quoted me $880 (AFTER GST). If really the price of Nikon D60 is $880 after gst, then its really a great deal since for so many shops i asked around there's no one that quote so low.
However i was pretty much skeptical, and from the double-standards in quoting, i figure there's no such good deal in the world, must been a catch somewhere. Please try asking them for a quote to prove me wrong.
Alan Photo (or more commonly known as AP on the online forums), is one of the more reputable and bigger camera shops in the local scenes. With the others being Cathay Photo, MS Colour and so on.
Stepping into the shop at its store in Funan, it was crowded with customers shopping for their cameras, lens, DSLR and equipments.
There was a mix of ang moh and local customers. Inside the shop was also quite a number of staff attending to them. I went in for the first time but it was too crowded and couldn't talk to any of the staff. After half an hour i went back again, this time there were less people there.
The impressions i got from the staff there were haughty, proud, snobbish. The i-don't-give-a-damn attitude was obvious for all to see.
I got the apparent feeling that they preferred ang moh customers more, maybe they're easier to be "carrot-head chops". There was this ang moh beside haggling the price with another staff though.
The price quotes that i got from the bigger reputable shops were all of less the same, but for the same price and poor poor services, i rather go elsewhere to buy.
Caught a late night show at the new Cathay cineplex at Downtown East. Arriving at the cinema level, I knew it's not going to be as good as the original The Cathay at orchard. Obviously this is one of the smallest Cathay around their cineplexes.
The cinema I went to was no. 3. It was relatively small but leg room was sufficient but not as wide as those at GV vivo. I've to disagree with genesis with the seats. After 100 mins of watching the show, my partner and I both suffered from neck ache and strain. We were seated on Row E, which's still considered among the back rows. The seats were uncomfortable and we were blocked by the couples in front of us. (Not alot thou, but still we can see their heads popping above the seats.)
Unlike GV cinemas, cathay still only provides "couple seats" with reclining arm rest at the 2 back rows. So if you're looking at getting some cuddling, especially for horror shows with your girlfriends, you might want to book the tickets in advance.
Another inconvenient thing about this Cathay is the toilet. It's located outside of the cinema and boy it was wet and dirty! Although the place is still pretty new, but the toilets were badly maintained. Guess the crowd overpowered the frequency of toilet maintenances.
Although the place is not up to our standard as compared to other Cathay and GV cinemas, we'll probably still go back for movies at nights. Reasons? Well, it's nearby our homes and the open space public parking outside is free after 10pm!
Pine Valley Restaurant at Laguna National Golf & country club. Lunch is courtesy on Yebber. We had our first Yebber Ambassador lunch (for the record i’m one of the six, the other five is Bobo, Claudia, Lucardia, Polarbear & Trumpat).
The interior of the restaurant is your typical Chinese restaurant settings. Most of the tables accommodate large crowd and with a few smaller tables around. Before we went into the restaurant, we were given a mini-tour of the golf club by Steward. The entrance to the restaurant is by the side of the main hall, quite different to miss out if you didn’t see the sign carefully.
The staff busy cutting away slices of the Peking duck skin. But before they served, of course is photo-taking time!!
As this was the first dish, the staff didn’t know there was this group of crazy Yebbers at this table. We demanded the dish to be displayed on the table for photo-taking before they can sliced the duck. Well they learned their lessons pretty fast, and from this onwards, every dish was placed on the table before they need to serve us.
Peking Duck The Peking duck was nice, i always love this dish, but the only complain i had for this dish was the duck skin too little, not “shiok” enough!
Well as they only used the duck skin, we couldn’t throw away the meat right? The duck meat was stir-fried and served. Not very sure about the method of cooking, but the taste was awesome!
Shark-fin Next up was shark-fin. Yes i know the animal-lovers out there are going to complain about this, but the shark fin was good nevertheless. I’m not really a big fan of shark-fin, usually i ate it because its there, and not that i liked it.
Wasabi Prawn Balls This was no doubt the star of the show. Tagged as Pine Valley signature dish, the wasabi prawn balls live up to its name indeed. The prawn balls were springy, and although the wasabi flavoring wasn’t strong enough, i liked it that way.
Fish The steamed fish was pretty decent, nothing to shout about.
Cereal Prawn This was the other prawn dish that we had. I wasn’t too sure whether it was cereal prawn, but the rendition seems pretty close to it. I still preferred the wasabi prawn roll to this.
Veggies Spinach with mushrooms. Another ordinary dish.
Fried Noodles The fried noodles is served with eggs and lar-cheong (chinese sausages). We agreed that the lar-cheong flavor was too strong for the noodles.
Desserts tofu with long-gan fruits assortments.
Overall, the lunch was pretty nice, with the wasabi prawn roll my particular favorite. Sorry, no total bill shown because its a treat and we didn’t know the prices. But with shark-fin, peking ducks, prawns, fish, or commonly known as da-yu-da-rou (big fish and big meat), the bill is likely to be quite heavy.
Thanks to Yebber for the treat, and my fellow Yebber-mates for their company on this enjoyable lunch. Like i always said, its the company that makes the food taste nice.
And as always, i’m looking to the next Yebber outing already!
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
The crayfish hor fun was recommended to me by some former-colleagues. Located at Hong Lim food centre 2nd floor, the store is at the corner area, but food lovers still can find the area with ease.
Coming in sizes of $3.5, $4, and $5, I had the smallest version which offers a small crayfish and some small prawns. My pals had the bigger price tags one, which definitely comes with bigger crayfish and more prawns.
I found the hor fun to be quite all right, then again i'm not really a big fan of hor fun. The crayfish was quite good given the price, if you wanna the real taste i guess the $5 portion is the one to go for.
Melvados is the first and only specialty brownie café in Singapore. The brownie menu offers several unique brownie creations such as ‘Nuts about Bananas’ and ‘Sizzling Brownie Sensation’.
Apart from brownies, the food menu features appetizers like fresh salads and finger food. Their main course selections ranges from sandwiches at $6, baked rice, lasagnes, to spaghetti, bread bowls, pizza, chicken and fish.
The drinks menu offers Gourmet coffee, organic juices, and specialty drinks such as flavoured coffee, ice blends and fizzies. Retail items includes condiments such as basil pesto, sundried tomato pesto as well as gourmet cookies such as hazelnut cookie, blackforest cookie and many more. Samplings available for all cookies and brownies.
After lunch at Relish for their gourmet burgers, we decided to skip the wild rocket signature cheesecakes for the ‘gourmet desserts’ at Melvados which was just across a street away from Relish.
Stepping into Melvados, it was definitely smaller than what i had expected, the interior can accommodate at most 20 seaters, with the al fresco adding another 8 or thereabouts.
The walls are done in bright colors, with a cozy corner for the sofa seats. But the granite floor looks out-of-place for a cafe interior. Furthermore, there is a large fridge displayed openly and looks messy.
Rich Chocolate Madness ($4.80) & triple choc ice cream ($1) Rich Chocolate brownie with chunky walnuts, served warm with a layer of chocolate sauce. Pure indulgence for chocolate lovers. The whole taste about this brownie is chocolate-ty! Even though i love sweet things and chocolates, it’s still way too sweet for me.
But not mention i had the triple choc ice cream to go along with it. The vanilla ice cream was sold out, and the other brownie had cookie & cream so i thought i had something different.
Surprisingly the triple choc ice cream does not taste sweet when we eat it together with the brownie, i guess the sweetness of the brownie overwhelmed the triple choc and in contrast the ice-cream did not taste very sweet.
Black & White Kisses ($4.80) cookie & cream gelato ($1) Dark chocolate brownie topped with black and white Hershey’s kisses, accompanied with Cookie & Cream gelato. If you ordered the brownie, an additional scoop of ice cream is a dollar, while ordering the ice cream on its own is $3.20 for single scoop and $4.50 for double scoop.
Touted as Melvados signature brownie, the black & white kisses did not disappoint. We preferred it to the Rich Chocolate Madness. The dark chocolate was not very sweet, but coupled with the black & white Hershey’s kisses, the taste blended in perfectly.
A scoop of the cold cookie & cream gelato, on top of the warm chocolate brownie, the result was an instant melt in the mouth effect.
Total Bill for 2 brownies come up to $13.6, not very expensive for 2 desserts. There are plenty of other desserts selection which looks interesting to me. Most of the food items at Melvados are reasonably priced, with the most expensive at $12 for the pizza. Desserts like brownies and cakes are mostly going at $5 each.
While I have not tried the food, but Melvados is billed as a brownie specialty cafe after all. I doubt the food quality will be that fantastic, but given the price i guess there’s no harm trying it. Located at King’s Arcade (besides Coronation plaza), it is not very convenient by people not living in the west, but there are a lot of buses which goes through the area. And its about 20min bus ride from Orchard.
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
When my colleagues decided to give Kuishin Bo a try, after reading about it here, we didn't know it was a buffet place. We got excited when we saw the great variety of food on display as we were lead to our table.
The place was packed with hungry customers ogling at the spread of Japanese food at the buffet area. The seats at Kuishin Bo was either trying to create the Japanese dining feel or its purpose is to hurry people to eat and leave, as its not at all comfortable for prolong sitting. It kinda makes it hard to truely enjoy the food. It's also pretty hard to browse and take food from the buffet area as a part of it has only a narrow lane. Not possible for 3 people to past at one time. (Imagine 1 standing to take food, 2 trying to walk in the opposite directions. Not possible.)
As mentioned by the others above, the food to some is good but some feels that its average. For me, I find some of the food not bad. My favorite are the teppanyaki wayu beef and the alaskan crab legs which are hugeeee! The desserts were pretty good too. Especially the chocolate eclair (hidden in a mini fridge near the drink machine).
One thing unique about Kuishin bo is the specials that only first 20/30 diners who queued when the announcement came on will get. The announcement comes after a Kuishin bo jingle that some find irritating while the others find it refreshing and catchy. We managed to get a serving of a special dessert that's wrapped in egg crepe.
Ladies, if you're planning to go, go on a Tuesday as it's ladies night. You get special price for dinner. I'll probably go back again on a Tuesday with my girlfriends for more beef and crabs!
A food blogger’s life is tough. On the glamorous part, we always travel around in search of good food.
“Wow, you all always get to eat good food at expensive places!”
Behind the scenes, not many people understand what the group of us (foodies) go through. When others are happily enjoying their meals, we labored on to take perfect shots of the delicacy for the sake of showing to our share-readers. Pictures after all tell a thousand words.
And thats just the beginning, thinking of the way to describe the food, how to phrase the sentence, what to write so as to make the review more reader-friendly and interesting. All these take times, and writing a review nowadays is not a laughing matter.
We have to be creative in our writing otherwise all our readers run away (who wants to read a boring review?). So foodies have to crack their brain (at least for me) and spending at least 3 hours on a review has become part and parcel of my life.
But don’t get me wrong, i was just ranting about our “tough life” because Relish was supposed to LIC first food outing. Tons of people were supposed to turn up, but for some reason or other almost all of them cannot make it last minute. For the sake of reviewing though, i bravely forged on and went to Relish with a friend.
Organizing a food outing is no easy feat. I learned a few lessons, never do it on weekends, and at ulu places like Bukit timah. Hopefully the next food outing in May will go out smoothly.
Burgers, when we think of them, fast food chains like MacDonald’s, Burger King, Mos Burger, Carl’s Jr instantly comes into mind. Understandably, the price range associates with fast food are naturally cheaper.
Relish is the sister restaurant of the more popular-known Wild Rocket @ Mount Emily is a casual chic joint dedicated to burgers. Putting it in a simpler term, Gourmet Burger Restaurant.
Now the question is, how do we define a Gourmet Burger? Other than the prices are at a hefty $17-$19 range, Relish also provides special creations like the BBQ charsiew soft-bone pork open foccacia burger, a garam masala lamb and mint hummus pita burger and even a portebello to-fu burger with eggplant salsa.
Seafood Burger with lemon mayo ($19) The Seafood burger comprises of crab, fish, prawn, squid, and toppled with generous serving of the lemon mayo and veggies. Every burger at Relish is accompanied with fries.
Colossal is the word to describe the seafood patty! We were quite astonished when the staff served us the burger, and the surprise soon turns to excitement as we figure out whats the best way to consume the burger. Should we ignore everything and just pick up the whole burger and bite, or should we take the fork and knife to cut? Well in the end we took the first massive bite, after that we came to a decision that using the knife is a better option.
This burger is for all the seafood lovers out there. The lemon mayo is the key here. It combined well with the seafood patty, & added an refreshing taste to the patty. The burger was really huge and it took quite an appetite to finish the whole thing.
One special thing to note about Relish, they actually came up with gourmet beers to go along with the gourmet burgers, interesting idea right? For the seafood burger, it’s best with Titje (Belgian beer)
Curry Chicken Burger ($17) Chicken Pattie dished up with curry mayo, caramelized onions and curry leaves. The curry mayonnaise mix was nice, with the inclusion of the curry leaves further enhancing the “curry flavor”.
However, the chicken pattie was a tad too dry for our liking. The curry mayonnaise sauce in a regular burger would have been enough “wetness” as mayonnaise is a main ingredient for making a burger not too dry. But because the pattie was a chicken and not beef, it tends to dry out due to the longer cooking time required.
We lamented the fact that the chicken mayo was not enough, and the Curry Chicken burger was overall too dry to finish. Anyway, the burger is best served with Australian Rogers beer.
LIC discussed the definition of good fries with my friend. To us, good fries mean that it should have a salty start in the first bite, but it should not be too salty to the extent that you can’t taste the slightly sweet finish of the potato. A bit buttery flavor of the fries will also be good. But unfortunately, the fries at Relish are also too dry and lack the “buttery” taste.
Total Bill for 2 was $42.37. Relish is a interesting concept, by far there isn’t any restaurant that delicates to serving gourmet burgers. Kudos to lawyer-turn-chef Willin who came up with Relish!
However LIC still find the price of a gourmet burger slightly on the high side. If the price will drop a little, or there is some other promotions, you will surely see the other burgers surfacing at LIC. Perhaps we didn’t order their signatures like the wild rocket burger, and other interesting ones like the BBQ char siew burger, Ram-lee burger. My friend doesn’t eat beef (most of the inclusion), lamb and pork. This left us with limited options.
If you are the type that doesn’t conclude burger as a under $10 dish, then Relish could just be the place for you. Do remember to make a reservation before you go, when we went there at 1pm on a Sunday, it was packed to the crowd. By the way, do try the wildrocket signature cheesecake, we didn’t had any because we went to Melvados (just opposite) for our brownie dessert. But their cheesecakes are really awesome, i had it the last time i went to Wild Rocket
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
1=SGD 0.0587
John 3: 16 has the BEST services if you are looking for your camera. The staff there are real friendly, and always more than willing to answer your any doubts or enquiries.
Just asked them for a hands-on experience on a dslr or camera, and there was no slight frown, or look that says "are you really going to buy?"
Leslie is the one who attended to me, and he's very knowledgable about the products that he's selling. Real friendly too. I had some hands-on testing with the dslr, and he patiently explained to me the difference between the diff models and lens.
But, good services come with a price after all, the quotes you get from John 3:16 will not come cheaper than the other shops. In fact i think the price tag is slightly higher by $20-$30?
Not much diff, but still enough to buy another additional memory card. If you are the kind looking for service and don't mind paying a bit more, then John 3:16 is definitely the place for you, but if you don't mind poor service, so long can get a cheaper deal, den please look else-where.
Oh ya, i forgot to mention, John 3:16 lot is totally pro-canon. They support canon, so despite me telling myself they are not biased, but i cant help feeling that they will advice and tend to pyscho their customers to buying canon products.
One obvious part which i noticed was, John 3:16 is not a Nikon authorised dealer. And i wondered why.
Rating given:
Was DSLR-hunting, and went into the sony shop to enquire on the sony alpha series model. The salesman uncle was quite polite to explain about the alpha 200. and the different pricing for diff lens.
I think there's a sony promotion going on right now, and if you buy the alpha series, it comes with free original battery. But then wasn't pretty much interested in sony dslr anyway, so the deal doesn't attract me.
Rating given:
De-Luxe Cameras and Cathay Photos are two of the authorized Nikon dealers, looking for a nikon dslr, i went in to take a look.
They have two shops (i only realise later). The first shop i went in was tended by an old uncle, he was quite all right i guess, as in altitude wise.
He quoted me $890 (before GST) for the Nikon D60. After GSt its somewhere in the region of $970, and with no free SD card, the deal wasn't cheap. So i move on to the other shops.
I went to the back, and saw this shop, its also call De-Luxe, only then i realise they have two shops in the same place. So i went in and there was this younger man tending the shop.
He's a little eccentric, for every question i asked him, he only gave a very short reply, and wasn't very friendly and doesn't seem bother to talk to the customer.
He quoted me $880 (AFTER GST). If really the price of Nikon D60 is $880 after gst, then its really a great deal since for so many shops i asked around there's no one that quote so low.
However i was pretty much skeptical, and from the double-standards in quoting, i figure there's no such good deal in the world, must been a catch somewhere. Please try asking them for a quote to prove me wrong.
Rating given:
Alan Photo (or more commonly known as AP on the online forums), is one of the more reputable and bigger camera shops in the local scenes. With the others being Cathay Photo, MS Colour and so on.
Stepping into the shop at its store in Funan, it was crowded with customers shopping for their cameras, lens, DSLR and equipments.
There was a mix of ang moh and local customers. Inside the shop was also quite a number of staff attending to them. I went in for the first time but it was too crowded and couldn't talk to any of the staff. After half an hour i went back again, this time there were less people there.
The impressions i got from the staff there were haughty, proud, snobbish. The i-don't-give-a-damn attitude was obvious for all to see.
I got the apparent feeling that they preferred ang moh customers more, maybe they're easier to be "carrot-head chops". There was this ang moh beside haggling the price with another staff though.
The price quotes that i got from the bigger reputable shops were all of less the same, but for the same price and poor poor services, i rather go elsewhere to buy.
Rating given:
Caught a late night show at the new Cathay cineplex at Downtown East. Arriving at the cinema level, I knew it's not going to be as good as the original The Cathay at orchard. Obviously this is one of the smallest Cathay around their cineplexes.
The cinema I went to was no. 3. It was relatively small but leg room was sufficient but not as wide as those at GV vivo. I've to disagree with genesis with the seats. After 100 mins of watching the show, my partner and I both suffered from neck ache and strain. We were seated on Row E, which's still considered among the back rows. The seats were uncomfortable and we were blocked by the couples in front of us. (Not alot thou, but still we can see their heads popping above the seats.)
Unlike GV cinemas, cathay still only provides "couple seats" with reclining arm rest at the 2 back rows. So if you're looking at getting some cuddling, especially for horror shows with your girlfriends, you might want to book the tickets in advance.
Another inconvenient thing about this Cathay is the toilet. It's located outside of the cinema and boy it was wet and dirty! Although the place is still pretty new, but the toilets were badly maintained. Guess the crowd overpowered the frequency of toilet maintenances.
Although the place is not up to our standard as compared to other Cathay and GV cinemas, we'll probably still go back for movies at nights. Reasons? Well, it's nearby our homes and the open space public parking outside is free after 10pm!
Rating given:
Pine Valley Restaurant at Laguna National Golf & country club. Lunch is courtesy on Yebber. We had our first Yebber Ambassador lunch (for the record i’m one of the six, the other five is Bobo, Claudia, Lucardia, Polarbear & Trumpat).
The interior of the restaurant is your typical Chinese restaurant settings. Most of the tables accommodate large crowd and with a few smaller tables around. Before we went into the restaurant, we were given a mini-tour of the golf club by Steward. The entrance to the restaurant is by the side of the main hall, quite different to miss out if you didn’t see the sign carefully.
The staff busy cutting away slices of the Peking duck skin. But before they served, of course is photo-taking time!!
As this was the first dish, the staff didn’t know there was this group of crazy Yebbers at this table. We demanded the dish to be displayed on the table for photo-taking before they can sliced the duck. Well they learned their lessons pretty fast, and from this onwards, every dish was placed on the table before they need to serve us.
Peking Duck
The Peking duck was nice, i always love this dish, but the only complain i had for this dish was the duck skin too little, not “shiok” enough!
Well as they only used the duck skin, we couldn’t throw away the meat right? The duck meat was stir-fried and served. Not very sure about the method of cooking, but the taste was awesome!
Shark-fin
Next up was shark-fin. Yes i know the animal-lovers out there are going to complain about this, but the shark fin was good nevertheless. I’m not really a big fan of shark-fin, usually i ate it because its there, and not that i liked it.
Wasabi Prawn Balls
This was no doubt the star of the show. Tagged as Pine Valley signature dish, the wasabi prawn balls live up to its name indeed. The prawn balls were springy, and although the wasabi flavoring wasn’t strong enough, i liked it that way.
Fish
The steamed fish was pretty decent, nothing to shout about.
Cereal Prawn
This was the other prawn dish that we had. I wasn’t too sure whether it was cereal prawn, but the rendition seems pretty close to it. I still preferred the wasabi prawn roll to this.
Veggies
Spinach with mushrooms. Another ordinary dish.
Fried Noodles
The fried noodles is served with eggs and lar-cheong (chinese sausages). We agreed that the lar-cheong flavor was too strong for the noodles.
Desserts
tofu with long-gan fruits assortments.
Overall, the lunch was pretty nice, with the wasabi prawn roll my particular favorite. Sorry, no total bill shown because its a treat and we didn’t know the prices. But with shark-fin, peking ducks, prawns, fish, or commonly known as da-yu-da-rou (big fish and big meat), the bill is likely to be quite heavy.
Thanks to Yebber for the treat, and my fellow Yebber-mates for their company on this enjoyable lunch. Like i always said, its the company that makes the food taste nice.
And as always, i’m looking to the next Yebber outing already!
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
Rating given:
The crayfish hor fun was recommended to me by some former-colleagues. Located at Hong Lim food centre 2nd floor, the store is at the corner area, but food lovers still can find the area with ease.
Coming in sizes of $3.5, $4, and $5, I had the smallest version which offers a small crayfish and some small prawns. My pals had the bigger price tags one, which definitely comes with bigger crayfish and more prawns.
I found the hor fun to be quite all right, then again i'm not really a big fan of hor fun. The crayfish was quite good given the price, if you wanna the real taste i guess the $5 portion is the one to go for.
Rating given:
Melvados is the first and only specialty brownie café in Singapore. The brownie menu offers several unique brownie creations such as ‘Nuts about Bananas’ and ‘Sizzling Brownie Sensation’.
Apart from brownies, the food menu features appetizers like fresh salads and finger food. Their main course selections ranges from sandwiches at $6, baked rice, lasagnes, to spaghetti, bread bowls, pizza, chicken and fish.
The drinks menu offers Gourmet coffee, organic juices, and specialty drinks such as flavoured coffee, ice blends and fizzies. Retail items includes condiments such as basil pesto, sundried tomato pesto as well as gourmet cookies such as hazelnut cookie, blackforest cookie and many more. Samplings available for all cookies and brownies.
After lunch at Relish for their gourmet burgers, we decided to skip the wild rocket signature cheesecakes for the ‘gourmet desserts’ at Melvados which was just across a street away from Relish.
Stepping into Melvados, it was definitely smaller than what i had expected, the interior can accommodate at most 20 seaters, with the al fresco adding another 8 or thereabouts.
The walls are done in bright colors, with a cozy corner for the sofa seats. But the granite floor looks out-of-place for a cafe interior. Furthermore, there is a large fridge displayed openly and looks messy.
Rich Chocolate Madness ($4.80) & triple choc ice cream ($1)
Rich Chocolate brownie with chunky walnuts, served warm with a layer of chocolate sauce. Pure indulgence for chocolate lovers. The whole taste about this brownie is chocolate-ty! Even though i love sweet things and chocolates, it’s still way too sweet for me.
But not mention i had the triple choc ice cream to go along with it. The vanilla ice cream was sold out, and the other brownie had cookie & cream so i thought i had something different.
Surprisingly the triple choc ice cream does not taste sweet when we eat it together with the brownie, i guess the sweetness of the brownie overwhelmed the triple choc and in contrast the ice-cream did not taste very sweet.
Black & White Kisses ($4.80) cookie & cream gelato ($1)
Dark chocolate brownie topped with black and white Hershey’s kisses, accompanied with Cookie & Cream gelato. If you ordered the brownie, an additional scoop of ice cream is a dollar, while ordering the ice cream on its own is $3.20 for single scoop and $4.50 for double scoop.
Touted as Melvados signature brownie, the black & white kisses did not disappoint. We preferred it to the Rich Chocolate Madness. The dark chocolate was not very sweet, but coupled with the black & white Hershey’s kisses, the taste blended in perfectly.
A scoop of the cold cookie & cream gelato, on top of the warm chocolate brownie, the result was an instant melt in the mouth effect.
Total Bill for 2 brownies come up to $13.6, not very expensive for 2 desserts. There are plenty of other desserts selection which looks interesting to me. Most of the food items at Melvados are reasonably priced, with the most expensive at $12 for the pizza. Desserts like brownies and cakes are mostly going at $5 each.
While I have not tried the food, but Melvados is billed as a brownie specialty cafe after all. I doubt the food quality will be that fantastic, but given the price i guess there’s no harm trying it. Located at King’s Arcade (besides Coronation plaza), it is not very convenient by people not living in the west, but there are a lot of buses which goes through the area. And its about 20min bus ride from Orchard.
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
” Brownie Specialty Cafe “
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When my colleagues decided to give Kuishin Bo a try, after reading about it here, we didn't know it was a buffet place. We got excited when we saw the great variety of food on display as we were lead to our table.
The place was packed with hungry customers ogling at the spread of Japanese food at the buffet area. The seats at Kuishin Bo was either trying to create the Japanese dining feel or its purpose is to hurry people to eat and leave, as its not at all comfortable for prolong sitting. It kinda makes it hard to truely enjoy the food. It's also pretty hard to browse and take food from the buffet area as a part of it has only a narrow lane. Not possible for 3 people to past at one time. (Imagine 1 standing to take food, 2 trying to walk in the opposite directions. Not possible.)
As mentioned by the others above, the food to some is good but some feels that its average. For me, I find some of the food not bad. My favorite are the teppanyaki wayu beef and the alaskan crab legs which are hugeeee! The desserts were pretty good too. Especially the chocolate eclair (hidden in a mini fridge near the drink machine).
One thing unique about Kuishin bo is the specials that only first 20/30 diners who queued when the announcement came on will get. The announcement comes after a Kuishin bo jingle that some find irritating while the others find it refreshing and catchy. We managed to get a serving of a special dessert that's wrapped in egg crepe.
Ladies, if you're planning to go, go on a Tuesday as it's ladies night. You get special price for dinner. I'll probably go back again on a Tuesday with my girlfriends for more beef and crabs!
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A food blogger’s life is tough. On the glamorous part, we always travel around in search of good food.
“Wow, you all always get to eat good food at expensive places!”
Behind the scenes, not many people understand what the group of us (foodies) go through. When others are happily enjoying their meals, we labored on to take perfect shots of the delicacy for the sake of showing to our share-readers. Pictures after all tell a thousand words.
And thats just the beginning, thinking of the way to describe the food, how to phrase the sentence, what to write so as to make the review more reader-friendly and interesting. All these take times, and writing a review nowadays is not a laughing matter.
We have to be creative in our writing otherwise all our readers run away (who wants to read a boring review?). So foodies have to crack their brain (at least for me) and spending at least 3 hours on a review has become part and parcel of my life.
But don’t get me wrong, i was just ranting about our “tough life” because Relish was supposed to LIC first food outing. Tons of people were supposed to turn up, but for some reason or other almost all of them cannot make it last minute. For the sake of reviewing though, i bravely forged on and went to Relish with a friend.
Organizing a food outing is no easy feat. I learned a few lessons, never do it on weekends, and at ulu places like Bukit timah. Hopefully the next food outing in May will go out smoothly.
Burgers, when we think of them, fast food chains like MacDonald’s, Burger King, Mos Burger, Carl’s Jr instantly comes into mind. Understandably, the price range associates with fast food are naturally cheaper.
Relish is the sister restaurant of the more popular-known Wild Rocket @ Mount Emily is a casual chic joint dedicated to burgers. Putting it in a simpler term, Gourmet Burger Restaurant.
Now the question is, how do we define a Gourmet Burger? Other than the prices are at a hefty $17-$19 range, Relish also provides special creations like the BBQ charsiew soft-bone pork open foccacia burger, a garam masala lamb and mint hummus pita burger and even a portebello to-fu burger with eggplant salsa.
Seafood Burger with lemon mayo ($19)
The Seafood burger comprises of crab, fish, prawn, squid, and toppled with generous serving of the lemon mayo and veggies. Every burger at Relish is accompanied with fries.
Colossal is the word to describe the seafood patty! We were quite astonished when the staff served us the burger, and the surprise soon turns to excitement as we figure out whats the best way to consume the burger. Should we ignore everything and just pick up the whole burger and bite, or should we take the fork and knife to cut? Well in the end we took the first massive bite, after that we came to a decision that using the knife is a better option.
This burger is for all the seafood lovers out there. The lemon mayo is the key here. It combined well with the seafood patty, & added an refreshing taste to the patty. The burger was really huge and it took quite an appetite to finish the whole thing.
One special thing to note about Relish, they actually came up with gourmet beers to go along with the gourmet burgers, interesting idea right? For the seafood burger, it’s best with Titje (Belgian beer)
Curry Chicken Burger ($17)
Chicken Pattie dished up with curry mayo, caramelized onions and curry leaves. The curry mayonnaise mix was nice, with the inclusion of the curry leaves further enhancing the “curry flavor”.
However, the chicken pattie was a tad too dry for our liking. The curry mayonnaise sauce in a regular burger would have been enough “wetness” as mayonnaise is a main ingredient for making a burger not too dry. But because the pattie was a chicken and not beef, it tends to dry out due to the longer cooking time required.
We lamented the fact that the chicken mayo was not enough, and the Curry Chicken burger was overall too dry to finish. Anyway, the burger is best served with Australian Rogers beer.
LIC discussed the definition of good fries with my friend. To us, good fries mean that it should have a salty start in the first bite, but it should not be too salty to the extent that you can’t taste the slightly sweet finish of the potato. A bit buttery flavor of the fries will also be good. But unfortunately, the fries at Relish are also too dry and lack the “buttery” taste.
Total Bill for 2 was $42.37. Relish is a interesting concept, by far there isn’t any restaurant that delicates to serving gourmet burgers. Kudos to lawyer-turn-chef Willin who came up with Relish!
However LIC still find the price of a gourmet burger slightly on the high side. If the price will drop a little, or there is some other promotions, you will surely see the other burgers surfacing at LIC. Perhaps we didn’t order their signatures like the wild rocket burger, and other interesting ones like the BBQ char siew burger, Ram-lee burger. My friend doesn’t eat beef (most of the inclusion), lamb and pork. This left us with limited options.
If you are the type that doesn’t conclude burger as a under $10 dish, then Relish could just be the place for you. Do remember to make a reservation before you go, when we went there at 1pm on a Sunday, it was packed to the crowd. By the way, do try the wildrocket signature cheesecake, we didn’t had any because we went to Melvados (just opposite) for our brownie dessert. But their cheesecakes are really awesome, i had it the last time i went to Wild Rocket
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
” Casual chic gourmet burger joint “
Rating given: