Laduree

Siew Mai bought me a nice box of Laduree macarons and got my sister's good friend to hand carry it back from London for me! They survived well despite the rough flight, thank goodness. Tasted fresh and yummy, and I felt quite loved and pampered :) I like small sweet gestures- hopefully siew mai does stuff like this more often after his exams heheh. no pressure!

He got me chocolate, coffee, pistachio and salted caramel macarons. 6 of each! salted caramel has been all the rage recently in sg, and rightly so. the contrast btwn the sweetness of the caramel and the saltiness of the butter made biting into each macaron sheer bliss. i have to say, though, that chocolate was by far my favourite flavour (i believe the same goes for siew mai)- told u i'm partal to chocolate! :P

IMO, Laduree beats canele and bakerzin handsdown. You get what you pay for, i guess. I've heard good reviews for TWG macarons though...will give it a try soon since their shop at Repub Plaza is so near my office! :)

Meza Mediterranean Tapas Lounge & Bar

Cheesy Bread Balls:)))

Chorizo ibérico (cured paprika sausage)

Mozzarella with jamon Serrano (baby mozzarella wrapped with jamon serrano)

Grilled rib eye steak, harissa and chips

Crema catalana (Catalan burnt cream)

Sorbete de limon con cava (lemon sorbet, cava)

Cheesecake

We had a dinner at Meza Mediterranean Tapas Lounge & Bar a while back and I managed to dig up some old pictures of it. The food was above average but I guess the best part of this restaurant would be the ambience. Average price per person would be about £40-£50 per head.

As described by London Online's Restaurant Reviews:
"A favoured bar for the creative and sexy media types of Soho, Meza Mediterranean Tapas Lounge & Bar offers intimate dining and drinking in a relaxed but funky surrounding. The interior is seductive yet informal, hosting both drinks and dining parties alike. Comfy sofas are popular for cocktails and canapés with friends, whilst the menu boasts cured meats sourced directly from Spain, fresh focaccia from Italy and hummus from Greece. With a DJ from 9pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, the funky music continues until the early morning whilst the bar continues to serve a wealth of traditional and bespoke cocktails alike."

PAUL UK London

PAUL UK London

Chocolate Macaroons - very, very average. The size of it is slightly larger than that of Laduree, but the quality pales in comparison. At £2.75, I would say these macaroons are pricey given its sub-standard quality.

Chocolate Tart - Nothing fantastic as well. Very average, and after a few bites of it, I kinda got sick of it.

Moelleux Chocolat - Traditional French soft, dark chocolate cake, this was another miss.

Coffee and Chocolate Eclairs - These two were the worse of the lot. To say the least, I really didn't like them at all. The creamy filling inside the eclairs were sour. I'm not sure if they're meant to be sour, but they sure as hell didn't taste good.

After doing some work in school, I headed to a PAUL confectionery at South Kensington to sample some of their pastries since it's supposedly quite popular in the UK. Sadly though, I was greatly disappointed. The prices of their pastries are almost similar to that of Laduree, but yet their quality is nowhere as good. The total bill amounted to £18.50, not a huge sum, but money well wasted I would say.

Although i generally prefer savoury foods to sweet stuff, i'm extremely partial to chocolate. Brownies, chocolate tarts, truffles, chocolate macarons, Krispy Kreme's Chocolate Dreamcake.. heaven!

This is an entire brownie tray from The Brownie Factory, located at the basement of Takashimaya Shopping Centre. While it wasnt as moist and dense as the one from Borough Market, it tasted pretty good once i warmed it up and drizzled some chocolate fudge over it. That being said, I probably wouldnt buy one for myself anytime soon (this was a gift).

Dimsum lunch at Peach Garden (OCBC Centre)

Peach Garden is one of my grandma's favourite Chinese restaurants, cuz of the consistently superb food and service. Their jumbo prawns in wasabi mayo sauce with fresh mango is really delish, and my dad loves their siew yoke and roast duck. Come to think of it, should have brought Siew Yoke there when he was back.

Anyway, this was a team lunch to welcome the newcomer to our team. We basically first ordered everything on the dimsum menu to try, then ordered seconds of whatever we liked. Which means that we ended up with lots of food and very happy bellies. I'll just mention the dishes that stood out:

The good- the har gau, siew mai, char siew pau, fried beancurd roll with prawns and congee were all well executed. I'm a har gau fiend (i can eat 2 baskets of har gau on my own), but had to control myself since I was lunching with colleagues :( wish i could have had the entire basket of hargau to myself!) The char siew sou also deserves special mention for being flaky and crumbly without being messy to eat, and the not too sweet filling went down well with me. Nowhere near Wah Lok's standard though- i think their char siew sou is pretty much unsurpassable in Sg :)

The bad- The filling in the custard pau with salted egg yolk was abit too runny and salty for my liking, and I would have preferred whole prawns in the prawn cheong fun rather than small pieces of chopped up prawns held together to resemble a whole prawn. Also, I found their egg tarts a little too sweet and artificial tasting.

As i'm not very fond of pork, I didnt try the xiao long bao or guo tie. However, feedback fr my colleagues on these 2 dishes was good.

The bill for a table of 9 came up to about S$22 each. Pretty reaonable, considering we were all stuffed. Service was good- tea was consistently refilled, plates were changed and staff did not mix our orders up. A plus would be the nice views fr the 33rd floor of OCBC Centre :)

Desserts at Adam Road Food Centre

Teck Kee Desserts at Adam Road Food Centre is my fav stall for local desserts, esp the cheng tng and tau suan! So i dragged my friends down after dinner at Newton Circus FC..

Their cheng tng is really famous cuz the tong shui is not too sweet, and you can really taste the outcome of hours of boiling the dried longans, red dates, winter melon strips and lotus seeds. Like Siew Mai, I can never get enough of gingko nuts, so each time i order cheng tng I'll add an extra portion of gingko nuts (at a dollar more). I think Teck Gee's cheng tng is the only one that can rival the famous cheng tng from Zion Road Food Centre.

The tau suan here is one of the best around simply because it isnt too starchy or watery, its not too sweet or too bland, and the you tiao pieces always taste fresh and not stale. At $1.20, its very reasonably priced too!

Ice kachang with only gula melaka- my parents eat their ice kachang this way and its a habit i've gotten used to. The not-too-sweet gula melaka (brown sugar sauce) topped with cream corn tastes really good...and for me, the best part abt eating ice kachang is digging for 'treasures' beneath the mountain of ice! I love the red beans and chin chow bits... :) i remember causing Siew Mai's red bean ice to collapse once at a HK Cafe cuz i was happily digging for the hidden 'treasures' below...oops.

Newton Hawker Centre

this is one of my favourite white carrot cakes around- Heng's carrot cake. The kueh is home made so its soft and tasty, and they are extremely generous with the egg and shrimps. Another good white carrot cake worthy of mention would be Chey Sua at Toa PAyoh Lorong 1, while the stalls at Red Hill market and Ghim Moh serve up the best black carrot cakes imo. Lots of garlic, black sauce and cai por and neng.



from all the accolades and newspaper cuttings, the hokkien mee from this stall seems pretty promising doesnt it?




unfortunately, the hokkien mee was way below par. the stock lacked the umami taste, and the noodles were a little too al dente for my liking. apologies for the lousy shot- my friend decided to sneak a bite just as i was taking the picture.





yum! we had 2 such plates...2 with chilli and 2 without. as much as i enjoy having chilli with my food, for some reason i eat my popiahs without. guess i dont want the chilli to interfere with the taste of my fav sweet savoury sauce.


queueing for the famous Bee Heng hokkien popiah took me 10mins. but it was well worth it!



sambal sotong! one of my must-order dishes when eating bbq seafood at hawker centres. not too bad but the best are still the ones at bedok85 and east coast park food centre i think.



pretty meaty grilled sambal stingray, with spicy yet sweet sambal. not bad!


sorry i didnt get a chance to take pics of the kangkong, chicken wings, satay and sugar cane drinks before they were snapped up. but they were all just passable- nothing to write home about.

This was where we sat at the first time we visited newton together- right outside the 24hr bak chor mee stall. I took a pic of it for memories' sake as I was queueing for the popiah. We had come from watching (another) movie, and wanted a heathy supper for once. It feels like such a long time ago, but it actually isnt. His skin was peeling after a day at the beach...hmm happy memories from the past.