Thai Gold Food at Sunshine Plaza

Yes, we are back at Sunshine plaza for our round TWO of poster printing. This time round, we decided to check out the Thai food instead. It was a tough decision between the Aroy Dee Thai Cafe and Thai Gold Food as we had no idea where the overwhelming fragrance of thai food came from. Upon judging the number of customers and going online to have some quick review, Thai Gold Food was chosen.

As we stepped into the shop, I knew that we had chosen the correct place. Things to look out for in a thai restaurant run by true Thai people: Buddha statues, photos of the Thai royal family, Thai flag, containers and cups to serve plain water and of course, you can try ordering in Thai or ask if they are Thais :) I love Thailand woohoo! Pictures were taken by a humble iPhone :)

.Khaay ciaw muu saap. $6.

Loves this dish. Fragrant egg with fish sauce and pork. I had this dish almost every other day whenever i am in Thailand. Somehow, khaay ciaws in Singapore is always incomparable to those in Thailand despite the fact that all the ingredients are the same. We blame it on the difference in the eggs. 

.Phat Thai. $4.

This is one reasonablly priced and delicious phat thai in Singapore! The serving was quite big and it contained a generous amount of ingredients too :) I particularly liked the Thai style of adding your own peanut, sugar and chilli powder onto your own phat thai.

.Olive fried rice. $4. 

Another yummy dish that my friend enjoyed :)

.MY POSTER. Priceless.

Ok. it's only S$12, but I spent countless number of hours trying to rearrange all the data and pictures on this 36 by 40 inch poster, the statistics part was a constant headache. But nevertheless, it's completed and the presentation is over :) If any of you wish to find out more about this native spider called Nephilengys malabarensis, you can go google it or go to http://nephilengysmalabarensis.wikispaces.com/ (my taxonomy assignment).

In a nutshell, the spider that I am working out self-emasculate (i.e. castrates it's own reproductive organ) to prevent sexual cannibalism by the female and it is very quite interesting :D woohoo! 

Never mind for those who are not interested in spiders or life sciences, back to the food. This place definitely has a better service than Ah Loy Thai at Shaw Towers and I think the food is better given that they are cooked and served by real Thais, I honestly have no idea what nationality the people in Ah Loy Thai are and I seriously despise their lousy attitude and service. Glad that I found a better place other than my favourite Nakhon Kitchen :)

91 Bencoolen Street, Sunshine Plaza

#01-14 Singapore 189652

Telephone: 6883 1575

Victor's Kitchen at Sunshine Plaza

Sunshine Plaza, the place where many FYP students from NUS get their last minute poster printed with good quality and good prices :) Apparently, this place is reputated with loads of good food too! On the first occasion here, we headed to Victor's Kitchen upon recommendation from my friend's lab mate while waiting for our posters to be printed out. The exterior of the shop had quite a fair amount of publicity materials on it and when we stepped into the shop, the first thing we saw was this paper with "Custard buns - MUST TRY!!!!"

The auntie handed us two pieces of paper and a pen, and we started our dimsum frenzy soon after...

.Summer iced milk tea. 

It's quite innovative of them to ice the milk tea with a bowl of ice outside the drink! In this way, the drink remains undiluted while it remains cold and refreshing.

.Char siew cheong fun. $3.50.

The skin was too thick for my liking and I still think that prawn and cheong fun would be a much better combination. This dish was palatable though :)

.Golden egg yolk lava bun. $4.

This "MUST TRY" turned out to be a little disappointing for the three of us. The lava was no doubt, golden, flowy and fragrant, but the amount of butter or oil added into that concoction is unbelievable. If you really want to try, order ONE "long" first, you may be quite sick of the overly oily custard after the first one. And just a side note, this is priced equally as the one in Royal China. I would rather go for the Royal China ones...

.Tasty queen sized siewmai. $4.

More of a normal sized siewmai than queen sized, but a "long" of siewmai never fails to complete a meal of dimsum :)

.Victor's king prawn dumpling. $4.50.

Just another tiny comparison, the one at Royal China merely thirty-cents more than Victor's Kitchen but the quality is soooo much better. To give this har-kow some credit, the prawns were indeed fresh.

.Scallop, sausage carrot cake (with XO sauce + $0.50). $4.

This was the best dish out of EVERYTHING. It came as a surprise to us as we were expected the carrot cake to be fried. The cake was fragrant and it came with a spicy condiment that my friend totally loved. 

.Wala wala porridge & Nemo's porridge. $3.50 each.

I never knew that 艇仔粥 was called "wala wala porridge" haha! And nemo's porridge had century egg and fish slices in it. This two had quite a fair amount of contents in it and it helped to fill our tummy :)

.Mango sago pomelo dessert. $4.

This dessert confirmed another thing, the aunties there prefers guys than girls :l Anyway, this dessert was ok, not very fascinating other than the fact that there was really a lot of mango in there. The pomelo was not sweet enough for me to fully enjoy it. 

.Interior of the shop.

Peeps that went for poster printing and dimsum!: Terence, Amanda, Rayson and I 

Victor's Kitchen

91 Bencoolen Street, Sunshine Plaza

#01-49, Singapore 189652

Telephone: 98381761

Six11 dimsum gathering at Royal China, Raffles Hotel

Overwhelmed with all the crazy FYP poster, thesis, projects, presentations, essay and whatnots, I decided that I shall self-declare a short break and have a random class outing with the six11peeps. Six11, a.k.a. 6/11, is my primary six class and it has been my favourite class since then. Most of us are still in contact and a group of us are particularly close. Loves my class :)

Coming back to the food, an immense craving for dimsum got me searching on the web for good dimsum places in Singapore and I got led to this restaurant without much hestitation - it was in town, seems atas, very good food reviews, reasonably priced and the main attraction: they have good salted egg custard buns there!

.Royal China at Raffles Hotel.

.Steamed minced pork dumpling with wolfberry. $4.80. 

The idea of an addition of a wolfberry is new and it gives that tinge of refreshing sweet taste when combined with the minced meat. 

.Royal China Specialty Pork Bun. $4.80.

This is only available on Sundays and PH. The glazed yellow surface of the bun looks tempting at first sight but perhaps it was already cold when I finally got to eat it, it tasted a little average. If you are gonna order this, eat while its warm!

.Interior of the bun with its charsiew.

.Steamed glutinous rice in lotus leaf. $4.80.  

This dish bursts with the fragrance of the chicken and the lotus leaf.

.Steamed prawn dumpling. $4.80.

Arguably one of the best that I have tasted honestly. The translucent skin of the har kau inconspicuously reveals the fresh prawns wrapped in it. The skin was of the right consistency and thickness while the prawns were sweet with freshness. Yums!

 .Salted egg yolk and mango custard bun. $4.00.

The main character of my dimsum visit to Royal China.

.Interior of the custard bun.

The bright yellow contents ooze out of the bun as soon as you open the bun up. Overflowing with the fragrance of  salted egg yolk, the mango (though not very distinct) adds a tinge of sweetness to the already flavourful bun. Custard buns never fails to get me indulging in them.

.Royal China Special Cheong Fun. $4.80.

Worth it for three huge rolls of cheongfun. Basically the "special" part was just that they combined three types of cheongfun: prawn, scallop and charsiew. Nevertheless prawn cheongfun was still the best out of the three. We ordered another two plates of prawn cheongfun after that.

.Baked egg custard tartlet. $3.60.

Considering that you can buy a normal sized egg tart with $1.20, this price of this little tart seems a little steep with its average standard.

.Pan-fried bean curd skin roll with minced prawn. $4.80.

The thin and crispy beancurd skin was a good choice of wrapping for the sweet prawn with the shreds of vegetables that combine synergistically to give it that flavourful bite. The portion is small but the taste makes it worth a try.

.Steamed prawn and chives dumpling. $4.00.

This dimsum was all eaten before I could lay my chopsticks on it. I guess it should be quite tasty? :)

.Steamed layered cake with salted egg yolk. $4.00.

Honestly, I still prefer my custard bun. The original fragrance of the salted egg yolk was not brought out to its optimum and the texture of the cake was just average in my opinion.

.Steamed chicken claws in spicy sauce. $3.60.

I am not a fan of spicy food, didn't get to taste this dish. Looks good though.

.Deep fried prawn dumplings served with mayonaise. $4.80.

The only thing exceptionally good about this dimsum was the freshness of the prawns, fried food kind of taste the same to me altogether.

.Freshly roasted suckling pig. $14.

This dish was small and yet critical to the overall high rating of our trip to this restaurant. We were almost done with our meal when the waitress came over to our table asking if we would like to have this as an additional dish. All of us were fine with it and yes, we all loved it. The sound of the biting of the suckling pig skin resonated in your mouth with every bite and the sweet and sour taste of the dipping sauce was to perfection. We cleared the dish in less than 5 minutes.

.Complimentary small gift from the restaurant. 

.The six11 peeps who came: (from left) Jelvin, Edwin, Wen Hui, Jian Zhi, Rachel, me, Yi Lang.

The bill came up to approximately $18 per pax with all of us filled but not overly stuffed. We enjoyed the ambience and the hearteningly prompt service. If you intend to visit the place, it's recommended that you make a reservation before hand as this restaurant is quite popular, especially for their dimsum.

03-09 Raffles Hotel Arcade, Raffles Hotel
1 Beach Road, Singapore 189673
Tel: 6338 3363

Another visit to Ardent's, Flor's and Bonheur Patisserie

First of all, a HUGE happy birthday to Ai wen! 

Yup, I am back at Ardent's again as one of my darlings wanted to try out the place. This time round, the cafe was quite empty with only less than half its capacity filled. But nonetheless, we still made a reservation just in case. 

 .Menu @ Ardent's.

 .Ardent's Big Breakfast. $22.

This time round we ordered smoked salmon, sauteed mushroom, poached eggs, snail sausage and ROSTI! The poached egg tasted quite ok with the addition of the hollandaise sauce but I kinda felt that it seems like a lazy way to poach an egg. The other components of the big breakfast were good :) A little small serving to be shared with two peeps if you guys are looking for a fulfilling brunch though.

 .Smoked duck and mushroom pasta. $22.

Honestly a little pricey for a smoked duck pasta with button mushroom pasta. But I was glad that the dish turned out to be better than just edible :) I was expecting the smoked duck to be more fragrant though.

As usual, Flor's patisserie is definitely the default dessert place that you have to visit when you are on Neil road or Duxton Hill :) So off we went for our little treat after the satisfying brunch for another round of confectionary pamper.

.Mont Blanc. $6.50.

Another irresistible treat from Flor's. A classic dessert with special genoise sponge and chantilly cream, topped with whole and chopped sweetened Japanese and delicate strands of French chestnut cream, combined as a symphony of perfect texture. 

.Napoleon. $6.50.

A Flor's Patisserie classic. The Flor's rendition of tradition napoleon is modified with a twist with its signature puff pastry which gives the cake a crunchy texture in contrast with the soft sponge cake. 

 

.Bonheur Patisserie.

Just down the road, less than 10 minutes walk away from Flor's lies another patisserie :) This place was closed for a macaron cooking class the other time I visited this place. Thank goodness it was open today (but there was an ongoing cooking class in it though).

.Strawberry Balsamic. $7.50.

Bonheur's signature cake. A slightly sour and fruity top layer followed by a green pistacio sponge cake layer, a creamy strawberry layer, egg-custard vanilla layer, pistachio layer, home-made strawberry jam layer and ending with a layer of sponge cake. The overall combination was quite alright but honestly we weren't that fascinated by the cakes in Bonheur, probably cos we already had 2 awesome cakes before this and the presentation of the cake was pale in comparison with the Japanese cakes. $7.50 is a little pricey for a small slice of cake but it's justified by the effort to create this layered cake.

Ending off with a group shot of the three of us in Ardent's!

Ardent's Cafe Bar
80 Neil Road Singapore
Tel:  6325 7077

Flor Patisserie

#01-01, 2 Duxton Hill Singapore
Tel: 6223 8628

Bonheur Patisserie

70 Duxton Road Singapore

Tel: +65 6221 1148