Raw Kitchen Bar @ Bukit Timah Fire Station

The old Bukit Timah Fire station has been revamped. It has bars and schools. It's a nice quiet place for a restaurant.. away from the traffic jam and the crowd.

Around 2 months back, we tried out the raw kitchen bar. The drawback was that it was non-aircon and mosquitoes. Not good for those pampered patrons. But yet it gives a nice warmth feeling of like we are dining at our friend's house or courtyard.

The service was kinda slow but the people were quite friendly. Our friends were quite disappointed with the limited wine list and also, most of the wine on the menu were out of stock. We were having a fun/wierd time figuring the menu. It was right aligned. We always have to turn it up and down around twice before we get it the right side up. Quite comical

We ordered nearly everything on the list and shared among like around 10 of us. It was like a food tasting session. The food was generally good but I cant remember which are must tries. You can get the reviews from hungrygowhere (http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/raw_kitchen_bar/). I can only rem vividly the fried cheese cake! Similar to fried ice cream. The fried cheese cake has the ultimate Ooze factor!

No harm giving the place a try.


The courtyard decorated with lanterns.



We ordered some appetisers while waiting for the rest to come.


Fried calamari..


Raw salad. Sashimi salad. I kinda like this


Fried wanton skin and some mango thing. Nt bad.

Did not take the main dishes as the lighting was kinda bad. No pt taking blurry pics. Tats why I cant rem wat I ate. :p!

Ala carte buffet @ Peony Jade

Went to peony jade for the first time last month! Heard raves of its food and that its quite popular for wedding. Went there with my colleagues for ala-carte dinner buffet to celebrate a colleague's birthday. They were having some promotion that month where for every 10 persons, 2 dines for free! We only managed 9! Wat a waste! But we still went ahead.

It's similar to the buffet offered by tung luk restuarant at hotel Paramount except there's no salmon sashimi. There are a few signature dishes that you can only order once. Usually its the more exp and popular dishes such as shark's fins, prawns and chilli crab.

We were at the peony jade @ clark quay (http://www.quaysidedining.com/pj/promotions.html). The restaurant has a very quiet and classy ambience. Some of us felt that we were kinda spoiling the ambience of the place because we wearing jeans and being rowdy. Hehe! It's rather small but it looks perfect as a small wedding event venue! One colleague who attended a wedding there before mentioned the food during the wedding banquet was great! So pple getting married can consider here.. on budget yet love great food..this place can be just as classy as hotel. Hoho!

There were hits and misses for the buffet.


love the way they used the pebble as chopstick holder.I had a small pebble! Their appetiser was this candied walnut thing. Quite interesting.


Shark's fin! I got a big piece of fin!


Drunken prawns! Generally fresh! except 1 or 2 not so good prawns.


Fried scallops. Intesting but not THAt special


Prawn and fruit salad! like normal cold dish. not bad!


The chilli crab... was quite fail...BUT...


Yummy mantous! haha!



This dish was the main highlight of that night! Smoked duck! My first time trying! My gawd! Taste like ham! I love it! Cannot forget the taste! And i only had 2 piece. It was under the 1-time order list!! Boo Hoo!


salt and pepper silver fish. we were like mainly eating batter


mini abalone.. so cute! 1 spoon can hold like 10 of them!


kurobuta (Black Pig!) ribs in sweet and sour sauce! Awesome but can only order once too! boo hoo!


jelly fish and top shell! shredded jackfruit gives it a refreshing twist.


fried vietnamese spring rolls


Soon Hock!


crab claw.. nothing special..


Pork Belly with Garlic! How can anyone go wrong with this combination? Yumz!


this dish which i was so looking forward fail badly!!! The prawns were not crisy and the sauce was not there! The roe does not seem to go well.


Black pepper beef!


interesting sourish steamfish but can be kinda spicy. must be chilli padi!


3 cups chicken! Pretty good but abit too salty!




Coffee ribs.. I felt the coffee taste too strong.


Kung Pao Ostrich. Dun feel kung pao to me.


Claypot toufu.


simple veggie to balance the endless meaty dishes


Roast duck. Good! Cripsy skin. juicy meat. abit fatty. hehe!


sugarcane chicken. Bleahz!


Fried noodles. Some found it oily. Some found it tasty. I dun rem.

Phew! Finally done! I think we almst ordered all the dishes on the list manz! haha!

Dessert time...


sea coconut..


Vanilla ice cream..


fresh cut fruits..

An expensive dinner it was...*heartache* I think if have a chance, should go for its buffet lunch then it will be worth it. Same menu but at a much cheaper price!

Crystal Jade's Steamboat buffet!

Crystal Jade has buffet? Crystal Jade has steamboat? Crystal Jade has steamboat buffet? Haha! Did you have the same thoughts as me? These were the questions in my mind when my husband told me he was going for a steamboat buffet at crystal Jade! I am sort of a fan of crystal Jade! I love their porridge.. I love their xiao long baos! It is 1 of those places that when I have craving..I can go there and have a meal by myself! (sounds abit sad right? but hard not to satisfy craving AND hard to make pple go sin with me jus because I have craving)

Anyway, this steamboat buffet thing is like kind of special. It only starts at 8.30pm and last until 1am. Wat special timing! Late dinner. And so far, I only know it is available at Holland V's La Mian Xiao Long Bao Outlet. It cost 19.80++ for weekdays.. for weekends, add an extra $2. And wats the best thing of its steamboat buffet? Free flow of xiao long baos!!!! Haha! Yum Yum! They also have free flow of drinks such as tea and barley inclusive in the buffet. Sounds like a good deal to me!


So I decided it was a perfect pigout place to meetup with my steamboat loving friends! These gals love going for mala hot pot! We haven go out for ages! Bugis was the usual place to go to satisfy mala hot pot cravings,


Ticking orders.


Our soup base.

The drawbacks to the crystal jade's steamboat is the lack of variety.. it does not have the usuals i love when I go for steamboat. Those that were lacking were fish glue, cockles, meatballs and quail eggs. And for prawns lovers, they will be sad to know that each person is only entitled to 100g of prawns. But I must say, their prawns are extremely fresh! sort of makes up for the lack of prawns! Quanlity vs quality!

Our complain that night was the power for the electric stove kept tripping.. ard 3-4 times. Not good for hungry pple waiting for food to be cooked. :p!


Crazily stuffing our pot with food once power is back!




The sliced beef was pretty good and fatty.. but it came so hard frozen! sad! Their la mian was good but made us full pretty fast! The xiao long bao's standard was maintained even if there were huge orders for them! They also have those sauce corner where u can make yr own sauce like those steamboat joint. I love the sauce i made! I majorly pour/threw everything that was there. Ha! Turns out great!

Overall, I feel its still worth to go there, esp if you are a huge crystal's jade xiao long bao fan!


Xiao Long Baos! We had 5 'Long's of this!!!!!


Me happy with xiao long bao!

Purple Onde Onde!!

It has been ages since I blogged! It has been even longer since I made anything with my own hands! I will like to treat it as I have been really tied up with things than say that I am actually really lazy!!

There are several posts to be updated but I am more excited to update about my onde onde! Mainly because its purplely pretty! and it is the first time that I attempted nyonya kueh! Woo Hoo!

Had a strong desire to make onde onde ever since I came back from Malacca last week! We went to this house/shop call Baba Charlie that is popular for their nyonya kuehs and onde onde was one of their specialities. Apparently it is a must-go for singapore tourists! We saw like 3 big buses of tourists outside the super ulu house/shop. Anyway, they were making onde onde on the spot. They were boiling the onde onde like "tang yuan" and when it floats, jus toss it to the plate of shredded coconut and its ready! Seems so easy! I started searching recipe onlines and found this (http://thebakerwhocooks.blogspot.com/2007/05/purple-onde-onde.html)! Purple onde onde made from japanese sweet potato! O so pretty! Made me more detemined to get them!


kuehs kuehs @ Baba Charlie! Look at all the colours and variety!


Baba Charlie's famous onde onde.. notice they put white sesame seed?


Mama helped me buy the ingredients from the market. I used the recipe from thebakerwhocooks. I kinda modify the recipe abit. She did not mentioned that the shredded coconut needs steaming but I went ahead to steam it. Steaming the shredded coconut makes it last long and IMO, make it taste better, of cos cannot forget to mix some salt in it! (Been watching too much nyonya cooking programmes) My mum and I also decided to steam everything that needs steaming together the with pandan leaves to get the nice aroma. So we steam our sweet potato with pandan leaves, steam our shredded coconut with pandan leaves and boiled the onde onde in a pot of water with pandan leaves too! haha!


Japanese sweet potato!


Glutinous rice flour!


Preparing the sweet potato to be steamed!


The gula melaka I bought from Malacca for my mama! And I used it.. :P!


Steaming the potatos seems to bring out the colour even more!


O so pretty!


Kneading the dough was the hardest part! Dunno why I always have to use alot more water than the stated amount in the recipe! But the sweet potato was really dry and plus the flour.. 2 Tbsp of water isnt enough. After getting the dough, my husband feels i did not knead evenly enuff and helped to knead further..

Soon, it was like a factory line production in my mother's kitchen. My husband and I was making the onde onde balls (Stuff the gula melaka inside the dough and roll them into balls) and throwing them in the pot of boiling water. My mother was responsible of scooping up the cooked onde onde (the glutinous rice balls will float to the surface) and then throw them in the plate of shredded coconut. With the help of my 2 kitchen helpers (hehe!), we did everything pretty fast!


Looks good enough to sell! 3 for $2?

But how did our end product turn out to be? The skin was chewy BUT.. too thick. It also has no ooze factor! But the taste is good! So the recipe is perfect! but we need to build up on our ball rolling skill! Thinner skin! and more gula melaka! But it was overall a good effort!! Tiring Fun! But a nice way of bonding! :p!