Foodie Paradise

I once wrote a raving review about Fish and Co.  However, my recent dining experience at Suntec’s Fish and Co. had left me as a frustrated and angry customer instead.

We went in a big group of eight and had to wait for 45 minutes before we could get a table.  While dining, the service was slow.  The cutlery was placed on the left hand side of the diner instead of the usual right hand side.  They only gave us two plates of sauces even though there were eight of us dining, and we had to request many times before the extra sauces were given to us.

Food wise, the portion seem to have shrunk as compared to the other Fish and Co outlets (I last dine in other outlets only one month ago).  The Fish and Chip that my friend and I were sharing was slightly saltish and the fish and chip didn’t taste as good as I had remembered it to be.

It’s definitely upsetting, when you encounter bad food and bad service at the same time in one of your favourite dining outlets.   

P.S: Fish and Co often offers mints to its customers after they had foot their bill.  According to my friend, those lovely mints can only be found at the Fish and Co outlets, and they do sell them to you in packets if you request for them.

Yuan Chun Famous Lor Mee
Stall No. 02-79 and 02-80
Amoy Street Food Centre

Ratings: 7.0/10

If you ask me to name some of my favourite local food, Lor Mee will have made it to the list.  Lor Mee is a Hokkien noodle dish with brown sticky gravy topped with ingredients like fish, braised pork and fried flour bits.  Poured lots of vinegar into the gravy (a personal preference of mine), it instantly becomes a delightful meal to me.

Yuan Chun Famous Lor Mee is currently my favourite Lor Mee stall in Singapore, that is, before I give another famous lor mee stall at Bukit Purmei a try so that I can make some comparison.  I love it so much that I’ll purposely make a trip down to the stall at Amoy Street just to satisfy my Lor Mee craving.

Just imagine:  The strong vinegar taste in the gravy instantly piques your appetite.  The thick and sticky-looking gravy becomes the silky and smooth gravy that slides down your throat while you eat the yellow noodles.  The crispy flour bits are so crispy and delicious to munch on and the pork is so nicely braised. 

And that is how Yuan Chun Famous Lor Mee tastes to me - the hearty and delicious meal that I’m so addicted to.

At the price of S$2, it’s so worth the price even though the portion is a bit paltry.  From a single stall at Amoy Street Food Centre, it has expanded to occupy two stalls that are side-by-side to meet the increasing demands for its Lor Mee.  Long queues are a characteristic of this stall, so prepare to wait if you want to try some of these mouth-watering Lor Mee.

Parklane Zha Yun Tun Mee House
#01-53, Sunshine Plaza
91 Bencoolen Street
Singapore 189652

Ratings: 6.0/10 

To put it frankly, this place has been over-hyped.  

The most notable feature of this stall is its zha yun tun or fried wanton (fried dumplings).  Apparently, many people love the wantons of this stall because they’re extremely crispy.  True enough, you can hear that "crunchy sound" of people biting the extremely crispy wantons echoing throughout the stall.  However, the reason why the wanton is so crispy is because of the paltry amount of meat that’s wrapped in the wanton, thus making the wanton less moist when fried, hence resulting in these crispy wanton. 

However, is this method of cooking justified?  I don’t think so.   

I feel like I’m just merely eating wanton skin when I’m biting those wantons.  True enough, they’re extremely crispy.  But I could hardly taste the minced meat wrapped in it.   If the reason why I’m eating those wantons is just to taste the crispy wanton skin, the owner of the stall might as well skip wrapping the meat in the wanton and just served fried wanton skin to its customers. 

To make a tasty wanton so to speak, you need to also have a good mastery of the right combination of ingredients to use in the wanton filling and also on how to marinate the fillings well.  It’s easy to fry a wanton skin well.  However, when it comes to making a good crispy wanton with delicious fillings, I think this stall has failed to make the mark. 

Perhaps I should put the blame more on the patrons of the stall, who goes "Oh, I like the wanton because it’s so crispy and nice to bite!  The noodles are nice because the sauce that accompanies the noodles is sweet!"  And wala, the stall owner has found the "winning formula" to draw its customers back again and again. 

Thus, the measly fillings in the wanton, the paltry portion of noodles for $3, or the thinly-sliced char siew that’s actually made from frozen meat become insignificant.  This is simply because the customers are here to taste the crispy wanton skin.

The entire plate of wanton noodles doesn’t taste that bad.  The noodles are springy.  On the whole, it’s much better than the wanton noodles sold in most food courts (and also the type of lunch I’m eating on most days).  However, I just feel that the food from this stall has been way over-hyped. 

Royce
Suntec City Mall, #01-142;
Ngee Ann City, Takashimaya Department Store, B2

Ratings: 7.0/10

Initially, I was hoping to get some Godiva chocolates as presents when I was at Takashimaya, but the expensive price tag of $25 for a box containing only six truffles scared the miser part of me off, thus I walked over to the Royce counter next to it instead. 

In the end, instead of getting presents for other people, I got some presents for myself instead.

Nama Chocolates, $12.80 for a box

Royce chocolates are made in Hokkaido, Japan.  The impeccability and perfectionist nature of the Japanese can be exemplified even in their chocolates.  Each box of chocolate is wrapped in three layers of packaging, including a packet of dry ice to ensure that the chocolates can be kept unrefrigerated for up to five hours.  Inside the box, there is a tiny plastic fork to spear the pieces of chocolates so that your hands won’t be dirtied by the cocoa powder that has been dusted on each piece of the chocolates.  Such attentive details made these chocolates the perfect gift.

On first bite, a thick and smooth taste of dark chocolate with lingering sweetness and a slight taste of alcohol diffuse throughout your mouth.  They are so irresistable that I would have devour the entire box of them at one go if I hadn’t exercised some self-control.  However, the damage was done.  Two rows of these fine chocolates were gone pretty quickly.

The next time I visit Royce, I will definitely get their chocolate covered potato chips.  As for the Godiva chocolates, I guess they have to wait…’til I’m feeling a bit richer.
 

Some lessons that I have learnt after working in the Central Business District (CBD) for a month: