Chihuly Lounge- Summer Weekend Afternoon Tea

Take a feast on all the names. Passion fruit mango éclair, casis violet écclair, mango éclair, caramel écair, mac-clair, cherry écair, cookies and cream écair, gula melaka écair, chocolate écair, green tea écair, mixed berries écair, hazelnt éclair, apple écair.

An Equador Rose

Say it with me. #iloveyouimissyousecretfriendshippleaseforgivemeremembermethankyoubemysweetheart. On a rose.

Chihuly Lounge- Summer Weekend Afternoon Tea

Take a feast on all the names. Passion fruit mango éclair, casis violet écclair, mango éclair, caramel écair, mac-clair, cherry écair, cookies and cream écair, gula melaka écair, chocolate écair, green tea écair, mixed berries écair, hazelnt éclair, apple écair.

An Equador Rose

Say it with me. #iloveyouimissyousecretfriendshippleaseforgivemeremembermethankyoubemysweetheart. On a rose.

Chihuly Lounge- Summer Weekend Afternoon Tea

Take a feast on all the names. Passion fruit mango éclair, casis violet écclair, mango éclair, caramel écair, mac-clair, cherry écair, cookies and cream écair, gula melaka écair, chocolate écair, green tea écair, mixed berries écair, hazelnt éclair, apple écair.

Black Udon

Wednesday, June 1   keyboard  

Rainy


This restaurant is known not only because it is at Sunset Way, but also because it has another one in the east. Popular as one of the most extensive japanese menu in heartlands of the island, be it one end or the other.


Another thing which Megumi Japanese Restaurant is famous about is this one dish, which is unique sold here. The sumi udon, udon made of charcoal.


Sumi stands for fine grain charcoal, like the intricate technology of finely milled green tea in chasoba. The enviroment is warm lit, and the prices are decent. There is also a toilet with happy ratings and a separate sink area.


Hiyahsi Sumi Udon (SGD 10.80)

The noodles is not fried or served with broth or soup, but comes as a separate page on the menu; the udon/soba cold dipping noodles. Bento with its dipping onions, and a quail egg.



Have your egg and vegetables in sashimi, together with the noodles, chilled.




As smooth as it looks, the udon does not linger with any charcoal taste, it just gets chewy and more fragrant and bursting with wheat flavour. Sliding the yolk and seaweed in, the senses are tickled, and it is savoury. Cold noodles always go about the least desirable region of food texture: the cold, slippery and squishy, however in paradoxical vision it turns out to be very appetising.

P.S. Until today, the charcoal has no taste. Quite dejected to accept that charcoal is tasteless, no matter how much we want to try it.


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Green Fritters

keyboard  

Rainy

In the corner of Tang's basement, there is this row of squares and obolongs selling fritters.


There is the tapioca, where we all know, the normal plumped and frizzed stuff, and what's that thing, beside it? It is fanatically amazingly, despite so many other kinds of fritters, nonchalantly a green, peering also through its batter.

Fried Tapioca and Fried Green Bean (SGD 1.00 ea)

Another kind of green, it is from the green bean. No wonder it is so uncannily perturbing, it is from the same family of green, after all.

P.S. How was the tapioca and green bean different any other tapioca and green bean? The batter is loose and thin like chinese fish head batter, and you feel like eating big sweet fishcakes in these. The green bean is heavenly, soft and thick with a slightly nutty flavour, the vendors have already made it neutral in the beany taste.

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Pika Noodles

Tuesday, May 31   keyboard  

Sunny


Instant noodles feel better when there are fishcakes inside! The naruto kamaboko, the white ones with a pink spiral.


The kamaboko have the same logic as our sticky or Sweet Enchantment hand-made rock candy, little loaves that are sliced and worked so that a slice can look like an object. Or anything, like a pig or pikachu face!


Sanyo Pokemon Noodles Shoyu (SGD 3.50) and Sanyo Pokemon Noodles Seafood (SGD 3.55)

The tougher pokemon for the shoyu flavour, and the baby pokemon for the seafood flavour?





The blue pokemon and pikachu, the squirtle/totodile/mudkip of the times.


The pikachu remains as the pink and white kamaboko, while the rest have changed like icing cookies.

P.S. From red, green, blue to jewel shades, we were once greatly confident of its next move. Orange, purple, and pink, proclaiming in delight. We never think it would be Black and White.

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Green Cookies

Sunday, May 29   keyboard  

Cloudy

The japanese love matcha so much that besides the grasses, their wheat and margarine is also green! In place of where Chips Ahoy is supposed to be, and things that go well with chocolate.



Bourbon Petit Choco Chip Matcha (SGD 2.00)

From a foreigner's perspective, matcha and chocolate is not that bad. One would have been more curious in chocolate chips. Like what is this flavour, something called chocolate that is chipped, and broken into little pieces as chocolate chip?


How does chocolate and matcha smell like? Open the stick of cookies and wheat and maple comes to you, yes, like quaker oatmeal bars or granola. The smell of autumn or harvest.

P.S. Besides this, the cookies have a very mild matcha taste. Interestingly, they are also much sweeter than the chocolate chips themselves, like the maples or honey, while the chips balance with a delicate bitter cocoa.



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Green Bak Chang

Friday, May 27   keyboard  

Cloudy

To meet the festivals, to meet the festivals. This seems to be on everyone's mind. Be it a f&b company or a lunching individual, we all have promotions to make this time of the year, as if it is a duty we put onto ourselves.


So everyone will start to look at each other, or at their possible patrons' creations. Nowadays it is common to sight dessert, tutti-frutti or chilled rice dumplings. Sweet pudding in dumpling shape. Probably wanting us to feel how it is like when we first saw and behold a snowskin mooncake; a rice dumpling's era earlier.


The bak chang is considered to be one's comfort foods. One has scoured the island to look for new creations, enjoyed its brown rice jasmine, and has been concerned with the rising prices of the black mushrooms before. Therefore the Dragon Boat Festival, or rather the common eating part of it is rather meaningless to me. Luxury groups and hotel talking about the numbers of grain of rice, etc.



Nevertheless at Shangri-La Hotel Singapore, (probably because we only know Shangri-La Hotel, our Shangri-La,) it is said to house a very special rice dumpling. Yes, sweet rice dumpling. Green tea. Now you'd probably act like what you did when you first saw a snowskin mooncake a few years ago. How does it look like? How does it taste like? Is it green outside, inside or what?


Sweet Green Tea Dumpling (SGD 7.50)

You want to tear it open now and see its true face. Ok, so it is a kee chang! Of all sweet rice dumplings, weren't they a kee chang also, concealing sweet bean paste inside?(!) Yes so of course it is a kee chang, but ever so bright and luminous like an inside out sunrise, the colours of a rainbow inverted, with the murky green inside.

P.S. Or maybe before you realise it is a kee chang, or even ask what a kee chang is, you started eating it already. This is one of the best alkaline rice dumplings, the rice mound silky and tender, because the rice is so severely fine, and pearly like cotton! The alkaline taste is gentle and pleasing. Seeing the cream white with a green-filled centre, instead of the usual dark red bean kee chang, it is like owning a limited-edition toy, the batch now in another shade besides the changed taste!


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Green Rice

keyboard  


26 Apr, 2011

You can say this is the end of it. Finally, somewhere which stops and screams you from taking photos. So imagine yourself with a plate of hot rice, fried, against the lime-green melamine lookalike table. Every bit looks tempting and perfectly fine, until you notice the rice grains coated in a thin green colouring.






Green Tea Fried Rice (SGD 3.30)

Yes, it is green tea fried rice. Also to note there are the usual carrots, peas, corn and char siew. The green tea must have been a salty paste, lathered over the rice when stir-fried, causing them to turn a leafy green and a strong scent of jasmine over to you when the plate is ready. With the smell, yet the taste is ordinary like fried rice, every grain firm and distinct with a savoury smoky flavour, well-balanced with the toppings. You can't really taste the green tea, it only comes to you as a bitter aftertaste after you finish your meal, the taste of mints or herbs.

P.S. And I am not going to say where it is, either. Green tea has come to us in all fashion and assemblages until we forget what it really looks like/is, until it touches on the very mundane on us such as fried rice. There is also green tea salad, or green tea sold elsewhere. All this remind us that before green tea was green, or green, it was a paste. Yes, the paste which does wonders.

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Green Dim Sum Dumplings

Tuesday, May 24   keyboard  


Sunny

Dim sum can make your meal look more interesting, with their reds and emeralds peering from the translucent white skin like porcelain pieces.


Mushroom & Seafood Dumpling (SGD 3.50)

These are not casually put on the menu, without seriousness but food! They do have a consumer group of their own and sell out within half a week. Having some meaning themselves and it is up to your luck/chance to catch them.


Brocoli Dumpling (SGD 3.50)

One of the best-sellers is this green-skinned vegetable dumpling! It is the most interesting dim sum because enoki mushrooms are used as the center of the dumpling. The proportion of mushrooms is so great that you are practically eating the mushrooms, their salty, velvety texture flowing through the dim sum. Believe it or not, the skin is coloured by broccoli(?) and there is also some susceptible asparagus/broccoli stalks for garnish, though you can't really taste them because they are also simmered in the stock till soft.


Vegetarian Dumpling (SGD 3.50)

Another lovely technique on the dumpling- the drip paint! The green slowly melting into nothingness. To add on to the decor there is the goji berry, sort of wrinkled from steaming, and carrots(well no actually there is no carrots, they are just strips of dough of the same composition snipped to bits and dyed in orange.) Just for fun, like drip paint.

P.S. No doubt about it, while most novelty foods dress themselves up in glitzy appearances, they also become unavailable on the menu. Not this dim sum. While it is often missing on the menu, it is not because of wearing demands, but because they are really sold out week after week! Even if it is for many weeks now.


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