Summer Palace @ The Regent Singapore

This was lunch one Sunday afternoon with KopiKosongGirl and LadyDi recently. LadyDi treated KopiKosongGirl to a birthday lunch. Both ladies were interested in Dim Sum lunch, and made a reservation. I had to privilege to join the ladies too!

We had the Chef Liu's Tasting Menu 5 (for Lunch).
It's $38++ per person, with a minimum of 2 persons having it.

There were 5 items in the tasting menu.

1) Chef' Dim Sum Selection

The ladies with the recommendation from the service staff chose 3 items from the Dim Sum Menu.
But we ordered an extra Dim Sum because we saw the menu and got quite tempted.



We had the Steamed Pumpkin Dumpling as an extra order.
The Dim Sum here were all so delicate. We loved this Pumpkin Dumpling. The savoury and yet a little sweet taste of the pumpkin makes it quite charming. The skin's also thin and you can see the translucency of it from the photo above.



The Steamed Chives Dumpling in Teochew Style.
Look at the presentation of these 3 Dim Sum's that part of the tasting set. It's like a western high tea style 'pretty'. There were succulent prawns in it and the chives were wrapped inside and also part of the soft delicate dumpling skin.



The Steamed Prawn Dumpling with Bird's Nest
How could the ladies resist not ordering this? It's Bird's Nest dumpling! The crunchy prawn dumpling topped with Bird's Nest.

The ladies claimed it's good for their complexion! Eating and getting beautiful at the same time!




Barbecue Pork Buns with Pine Nuts.
Oh, this reminded us a bit of Tim Ho Wan's Polo Bun, but bigger and with more filling too. I love the top part where there is the crumbly pastry. The barbecue pork filling had pine nuts too! I don't mind mind having a couple more of this!


2) Double Boiled Shark's Fin Bone Cartilege Soup with Fish Maw and Bamboo Piths.



For those who believe that shark's cartilage soup has health benefits, these soup was really delicious. The broth has been boiled for hours till it's thick and you can see the high viscosity in the broth.

Anti-shark people, maybe ask for a change or choose another tasting menu.



Generous amount of fish maw and bamboo piths in the soup. This was lovely!



3) Homemade Beancurd with Fish Fillet, Bean Gluten and Vegetables



This was an interesting dish. At a glance, you think the brownish stuff  is all the same. It's 3 ingredients prepared to look the same! There's bean curd at the bottom, fried fish fillet in the middle and bean gluten on top!

The 3 of us like how it was made to blend nicely together. They managed to make all 3 ingredients look almost the same. When you bit it, it has 3 different kind of texture.


4) Steamed Glutinous Rice with Crabmeat



This glutinous rice with crab meat was really good. Served in a mini bamboo dim sum steamer, the rice came steaming hot. To me, it was a joy picking up the rice with a chopstick, enjoying the grains of sticky rice and crabs meat with other ingredients too.

Why do I eat picking grains? To waste time! LOL. When guys join in the ladies, all we need to do is eat, let the ladies talk and gossip. Don't you think they are incredible? Jumping from topic to topic, some that are so far apart and they can make a link to it. I salute them.


5) Combination of Desserts



The dessert was a rather 'yellow/orange' dessert. Mango sago and an cute little egg tart served on a square of yellow egg crepe.

It was a very delightful lunch. It can be quite filling too!

Summer Palace @ The Regent Singapore 1 Cuscaden Road Singapore 249715 T:+65 6733 8888

Jade Garden @ Chevrons Club

The Chevrons. Other than chalets and "eMart" that most people associate it with, do you know there's a nice elegant Chinese Restaurant called Jade Garden located on the 3rd floor?

Jade Garden's opened by a brother and sister team, Chris and Jenny Eng. Jenny has 20 over years of experience in managing restaurant operations and Chris Eng also with 21 years of kitchen experience is the Executive Chef. Together they have come together to come out with a nice team serving good food with good service.



It's not the usual dull Chinese restaurant, Jade Garden joins the club of classy elegant Chiense restaurants. Looks like a place to have business lunches or a cosy family meal. As the restaurant is in the main clubhouse building with a ball room next door, the ceilings here are high and feels airy and welcoming.

They have a no pork and no lard policy here.

Momo and I were here together with Camemberu, hosted by FoodNews, the PR company for Jade Garden. Here's what we ate and what we thought about it:



Deep-Fried Yam Stuffed with Minced Chicken ($3.80 for 3 pieces)
We are used to have the this dish with minced pork, but the minced chicken version was quite good too! I did not know it was not pork until later when I was told.

Fluffy, crispy and light on the outside, and the yam-my sticky and moist texture of the yam with minced chicken filling inside. Can you imagine the crispy sound as you bite into it?




Siew Mai ($4.20 for 4 pieces)

These Siew Mai were also made without pork! The Siew Mais seems to have more prawn bits with some chicken meat. It had the chewy/QQ feel to it, when I like.




Chef Special Combination Platter ($12/pax)
If you like stylist and modern plating of Chinese food, Chef Chris does it beautifully.
This combination platter served was so beautiful. 

One look and we thought that the strip on the plate was balsamic vinegar, but no. It's something more oriental. It's Teriyaki sauce!




The Chilled Crab Salad was the centre of attraction.
It's a refreshing dish to start your meal here. Inside the tomato cavity was chilled crab with some very light dressing. If you like tomatoes, eat it up like I did. If not, I guess you could leave it.




Drunken Chicken.
Momo thinks it's not strong enough for her. She likes her drunken chicken drunken stupor. (I think I married an alcoholic!)

You know 'white chicken' in Singapore has many styles, some have HK hint, some Malaysia hint and some Singapore hint to it. This one taste more Malaysian. (Very hard to describe lah, I think you all know what I mean).

The ginger and scallion sauce and a single wolfberry was used as a garnish. There was jelly fish below too.



Wasabi prawns.
Nicely fried crispy prawns coated with wasabi mayo with a few black sesame seeds.
The mango cubes below gives it a nice slight sweetish and sour taste. Nice combi.




The next dish, a soup was served in this huge big UFO like platter. It was the Braised Shark's Fin with Crabmeat & Dried Scallop in Pumpkin Soup ($18/pax; $45 [small], $68 [medium], $90 [large]) The centre is rather deep, so you get quite a bit of it.



If you do take Sharks Fin, this dish will be interesting to you. Instead of gooey starch that's the usual method of preparation, Chef Chris serves it in a light pumpkin soup! It has the gooey feel, but not as starchy. This east meets west rendition comes out rather well.

I like the pumpkin soup! I wonder for anti-shark people, they can prepare it without the shark for you to try! It's lovely!




Braised Sliced Abalone, Dried Scallop and Vegetables in Tan Jia Sauce ($18/pax)
This dish was interesting too. Abalone that's braised just nice and topped with Tan Jia Sauce. What sauce, I imagine you asking in your head?

Tan Jia is supposedly invented in the time of the ancient emperors. It uses the essence of duck, old hens and dried scallops as its base. Interesting eh?




Cod Fish Baked with Miso and Sauteed Edamame ($14/pax)
We really liked the cod fish baked with miso as it was really soft and tasty. It crumbles into soft sections as you cut through it with your knife. It's cod fish well prepared!

When the food was served, I thought the red thing was minced tuna.
No, it's watermelon that had a hollow cavity, filled with mayo.




Fresh Crab Claw with Japanese Somen ($12/pax)
If you want to wow your guests, order this dish for everyone. It was really tasty and Momo still thinks about this dish and says we should go back and try this again.

It's steamed egg white with ginger, a nice succulent crab claw with silky smooth somen (thin noodles made from wheat flour). The base of the plate is steamed egg that's a similar to chawanmushi but softer. The noodles are nice and the broth that covers it was so addictive.

It no one's around, I would have picked the bowl and poured all the broth into my spoon and not waste a bit of it!





Combination Dessert Platter ($12)
Before we were served this, we saw a table ordering it. We then saw other tables asking the serving staff what the name of the dish? Before you know it, we saw the few tables around us all having it!

You can share if you want, but we know everyone has a hidden stomach somewhere that can fill in desserts. Order one each if your budget allows.



In the 3 shotglass: Mango Pudding, Cold Lemongrass Jelly with Sherbet and Pumpkin Sago with Vanilla Ice Cream. Mixture of sweets with sourish hints.

We tasted the ala carte items above. If you want something planned out for you, set lunches are available from $38++/pax for 6 courses. An Executive Set Lunch for 4 pax is available at $88++ for 6 courses.



Jade Garden
48 Boon Lay Way
The Chevrons
#03-06
Singapore 609961

Tel: + 65 6862 4931

Goldleaf New Taiwan Porridge @ Thomson Plaza

There are now so many online deals that allows you to buy coupons and eat at a discounted rate. Some places that's offering the discount are places that you have not been for a very long time. The wife has been buying coupons of places her parents used to go and we pass it to her parents. We recently got them 2 coupons for this porridge place that they used to go until it became quite expensive to go.

My new in laws have been telling me stories about the wife. They told me Momo used to like to come here when she was a little girl and named her favourite dishes. (The dishes are no longer sold! haha) They said in those time, it was considered a treat to eat out, plus all related stories comes rolling out. They tell you everything, no holds barred!

Since the dad-in-law is Baba, he sometimes speaks his Baba Malay that only the mother-in-law and I understands. The wife is a half nyonya but she does not understand even the most simple peranakan malay! It was all so fun, until Momo and I get back to our own home! Oops.




The Goldleaf that they used to go was at Neil Road. That place does not exist anymore.
The now more modern branch that we visited was at Thomson Plaza.





Diners get the option of free flow of porridge or rice.
We all had porridge and all of us had 2 bowls of it each.




Our favourite dish of the night. It's a very little bowl of cold bloody fresh cockles that was so so delicious!

I know many people would not even touch it. If you like cockles order this here. The best thing is that you don't need to open the shells to dig it out!





The cockles was served with this dipping sauce that's salty and spicy.
The cockles with this sauce was quite addictive that we wanted to order another portion of it!




The beansprouts stir fried with salted fish.

We thought this was quite nice too. The fragrance from the salted fish was so hypnotizing. You can smell it as it approaches your table. Eat in moderation lah. Salted fish is not really good for health. ;-)




The "Mei Cai Kou Rou". (Braised pork belly with preserved mustard greens)
The 4 of us did not really like it. It has the smell of other innards, but it's not in this dish.
The innards were probably braised together with the pork belly, which gave it a rather strong smell.

Giving it a facebook 'unlike' or a google+ 'minus 1'.




The fried egg omelet was OK only. Nothing really special.
You get the I can do it better at home kind of feeling. ;-)




I forgot the name of this dish. It's the small fish, yet it looks more like giant ikan bilis that's deep fried till crispy and covered with black sauce.

We all loved this. It's the kind of fish that goes with porridge. You will nibble it non stop!




The San Bei Ji here was quite good. Taste was not overly marinated till it's too salty.
A crowd pleaser. If the portions were a bit bigger, it would be better. ;-)


It's a pricey place for porridge. It was around $70 plus for the meal. With the coupons that we purchased, the total was around $50 plus. We particularly like the fresh cold cockles.


Goldleaf New Taiwan Porridge
301 Upper Thomson Road,
#01-112 Thomson Plaza,
Singapore 574408

Hours: 10 am - 10 pm
Tel:  6459 9180

Paradise Dynasty @ ION Orchard

Momo and I bought some online discount coupons for the Paradise Dynasty XLB few months ago and Momo reminded me that they were expiring. We thought we better use them soon! We could only use them on a weekday so we took an afternoon leave one day last week to have lunch and then run some errands.

These coupon sites always tempt you to buy and buy! I have forgotten to use some previously and they expired!



The colourful Xiao Long Baos of Paradise Dynasty! Using the 'groupon voucher' it is $7.90.

Momo and another two friend had them a week ago (also using coupons! haha) and told me it was not really memorable. I find them OK, but only if you eat them a certain way! I realise I can taste the different flavours if I bite the top of the XLB and suck the juice out first. It's very subtle.

I followed the instructions on which flavour to eat first as well. If I come back again, I would go for certain flavours only. I would only go for Ginseng, Crab Roe and Szechuan. I will give the rest a miss. ;-)




Poached chicken in Spicy Chilli Sauce. $7.80

Both Momo and I like this dish more than the XLB! It's served really cold and it is also really spicy! We have always loved this dish and orders it at different places. The ones here are quite good!




We ordered a fried La Mian with black fungus to nibble as well. $10.

We like this too. It had the 'wok hei' smell and it almost reminded us of char kway teow. Momo said if only they had cockles inside, it would be perfect!




We also had the La Mian soup with deep fried pork ribs. $11.80
The noodles are nice, but the broth is a bit salty. We improvised by draining the noodles and mixed it with the spicy chili sauce from the chicken instead. We liked it! So spicy and so tasty!




The pork ribs were served on a separate plate. As the broth has been designed to be salty, they did not make the deep fried ribs so salty to go with it. Since we ate the noodles with chilli, we enjoyed munching the deep fried ribs on its own.

Yet to try the other dishes, but we liked the spicy chicken and fried la mian.


Paradise Dynasty
2 Orchard Turn
#04-12A ION Orchard
Singapore 238801

Tel: 6509 9118

Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square: SPRING JuChunYuan

This post is part of the Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square organised by Omy.Sg that quite a few bloggers and I indulged in a food marathon on 9 July 2011.

You can read more about Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square at http://blog.omy.sg/let-the-feast-begin  Visit the site too if you want to win youself a $50 voucher.

Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square Stop 2: 
SPRING JuChunYuan



You might not have not heard of SPRING JuChunYuan, but I am sure you have heard of the dish "Buddha Jumps Over The Wall" / "Fo Tiao Qiang" 佛跳墙.

The folks at JuChunYuan at Fuzhou, China were the ones who created this dish. If you have ever wondered how it got that name, it's the words from a poem composed on the fly by a top scholar when he had a whiff of the dish long ago!

SPRING JuChunYuan is located at the former Chui Eng Free School that was established in 1854. It's one of the first Chinese free schools that provided free education to the poor.




I like the deco of this restaurant. Fine dining for exquisite Chinese food.
Hint: If your bosses at work wants to treat you and your team, suggest this place! (Especially if your project has helped the company earned quite a bit!)




We were served floral tea that comprised of Chrysanthemum, Rose and Lavender.
It smelled really good! But when I drank it, I thought the lavender was probably a bit overpowering. But it was good.




Tada! The 'Fo Tiao Qiang' from the restaurant that invented it!

If you are wondering, it costs $1288 and if you want to order this for a special occasion here, remember to order it 1 day in advance.




I know many people in Singapore are lone-diners. If you want to try it and you are alone, no worries! Order the individual portion. It costs $98 a pop, and you do not need to pre-order it.

Of course, people who come in groups can order the individual portions to share. It's gentler on your pockets!



Want to know how may portions have been consumed since it was opened?
This was taken last Saturday, 9 July 2011. 13,288 portions!




No, the whole group of bloggers did not get an individual portion each.
It's very rich and filling and we had 8 places to eat. So the kind folks at SPRING JuChunYuan offered us a sampling size that was still quite generous!



Fo Tiao Qiang consists of 8 main ingredients that we can clearly see in the soup and other ingredients that are 'trade secrets' that's part of the broth.

The 8 main ingredients are Shark's Fin, Abalone, Scallop, Sea Cucumber, Fish Maw, Cuttlefish, Pork Tendon and Flower Mushroom.



We got to chat with the chef and he told us, they steam the soup in both Hwa Tiao and Shao Xing wines.  I can't remember which one, but one of the wine that they used were 8 years old.

The soup was thick and we were told you will get a sticky feeling in your mouth after having it. It's sticky, but quite pleasant. Nice aftertaste too! (I am not sure about you!)

You get quite filled up! Chunks of good stuff in the soup, decadence! Yes, truly decadence!




We also got to taste their Xing Hwa Bee Hoon.

I am half Heng Hwa, so I adore this Xing Hwa (Heng Hwa) Bee Hoon! A look at it and I 'am chio' (smiled to myself secretly). It's the same super fine bee hoon that mum and my aunt use to fry the Bee Hoon!

A chat with some fellow bloggers, some love it and carbo avoiders don't like it.
I guess you must be either Heng Hwa, partially Heng Hwa or a bee hoon lover to enjoy this!



A chat with the manager and he told us, the chef use chopsticks to fry these delicate and fine bee hoon!
Quick, swift and strong hands were needed to fry this dish. It does not taste oily at all, and it's because of their cooking style.





It taste rather good on itself! But, if you want to add a twist to the bee hoon, add some of their red vinegar, garlic concoction to it. (The chef won't reveal what other things inside, except there's some sugar added as well haha.) It makes the noodles even tastier and you would want to have more.
Note: Taste a bit of it first to see if you like it before mixing all in! Everyone has different taste buds! ;-)



SPRING JuChunYuan
130 Amoy Street
#01-01 Far East Square
Singapore 049959

Tel: 6536 2655


Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square: Stop 1, Stop 2, Stop 3, Stop 4, Stop 5, Stop 6, Stop 7, Stop 8

Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square: Zhou's Kitchen

This post is part of the Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square organised by Omy.Sg that quite a few bloggers and I indulged in a food marathon on 9 July 2011.

You can read more about Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square at http://blog.omy.sg/let-the-feast-begin  Visit the site too if you want to win youself a $50 voucher.

Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square Stop 1: 
Zhou's Kitchen



Many of you I am sure are no stranger to Zhou's Kitchen. It's Tung Lok Group's casual chinese dining outlets.

I have visited their branch at Anchorpoint, Square 2 and Jurong Point. This was my first visit to their Far East Square branch. I just found out that this branch has been around since December 2007! With this visit, it seems I have visited all their branches in Singapore.

For the gastromania feast, we will try a dish or two from each restaurant. For this stop at Zhou's Kitchen, we are trying one of their signature dish - Zhou's Kitchen Braised Pork Shank (周庄元蹄) $24.



I have tried this dish a few times, but have not blogged about it. (Getting lazy over the years!)
I thought the Pork Shank here looked bigger than the ones I had in other branches. Maybe I should visit the other branches again.



Note: The dish is definitely not for everyone.

Order this only if you love some fats in your meat and you love soft and gelatinous texture of pork skin. It's what this dish is about.  Bone-in to me also means flavour in!

The braised meat was certainly flavourful. I am glad it was not too soft, so there's some texture in the meat. It might also mean the animal we ate was not a lazy one, but have exercised that's why the meat has texture.

The pickled radish pieces were a little spicy and it complimented the meat. (and the skin and fats if you eat them. yumz!)




We were served two kinds of man tou to eat with the Pork Shanks.
These steamed ones are for the health conscious.



For those who love crispy skin on their man tous, go ahead, have the fried ones.




Don't worry if you think it's scary to be served a chunk of meat. There's always someone to help portion it out. I guess they picked a guy's who is more photogenic and skillful to portion the meat for us! I remember it's usually 'aunties' who do it for us at the Anchorpoint branch where we usually visit.




If you are eating with your family, go ahead, pick up the femur bone and lick it!

Zhou's Kitchen @ Far East Square
9-13 Amoy Street
#01-01
Singapore 049949

Tel: 6877 1123
Web: www.zhouskitchen.com


Gastromania Feast @ Far East Square: Stop 1, Stop 2, Stop 3, Stop 4, Stop 5, Stop 6, Stop 7, Stop 8