What.Qiqi.Ate.: September 2012

Friday, 21 September 2012

Next Stop: Phnom Penh

After our long trip in Thailand travelling from Phuket to Chumphon to Hua Hin to Bangkok to Chiangmai to Chiangrai to Myanmar borders and back to Chiangmai, we are finally officially in the next country, Cambodia! We didn't really stay there for long, just two days, we made it to squeeze all our activities in. For those who are interested to know what places you can go in Phnom penh, basically its the S21 killing field, Tuol Sleng genocide museum, grand royal palace, we did some river cruise with beer aboard as well, oh! and rummage the russian market for cheap branded goods that are worthy to buy. Lucky for us, we had someone that our friend knew to bring us around and help us. He brought us to the first restaurant.

Honestly, I don't even know where we went and the name of the restaurant, the name of the food or the price of the food. Just enjoy the visual pleasures of the food :)

The first restaurant that we were brought to was this Chinese restaurant. The uncle was afraid that we are unable to accept the unfamiliar tastes of Cambodian local food. After hearing how he actually described it, we figured out that we should play safe and just have Cambodian chinese food. The food in this restaurant that we ate at was good! Business is really good there and you see loads of Cambodian chinese there as well. Something random that I noticed about Cambodia, most of the cars there are Lexus, apparently Cambodians seem to love this brand a lot (and there are quite a lot of rich people there in the city too).

.Braised pork belly.

Totally fragrant and meltssssss in your mouth.

.Crab in vermicelli.

.Boiled black chicken in coconut.

.Bitter gourd egg.

.Steamed grouper.

.Teppan marinated beef.

This dish is another rare find. It is quite seldom that you find such wonderfully marinated and tender beef.

Second restaurant

We had our lunch on the second day here. Nothing special about this restaurant, just a display of what kind of food you can find in Phnom penh.

.Sweet and sour pork ribs.

.Bitter gourd with egg.

.Stir-fried broccoli with sliced pork.

.Fried rice.

Journey of the land of smiles and good food part IV: Bangkok Cakes!

My FAVOURITE food session in Bangkok for this trip! And guess what, all these are found in one shopping mall, Siam Paragon :)

.Sweet Avenue.

When you see this sign, you can be sure that you will be reaching your sugar rush destination soon~

.Coffee beans by Dao.

The dessert section of my meal.

.Green tea crepe cake and chocolate sauce. 140 Baht.

.New york cheesecake with red cherry. 140 Baht.

.Baby boom strawberry cake. 140 Baht.

.Coffee meringue cake. 110 Baht.

This is AWESOME.

.Banoffi pie in a cup. 110 Baht.

.White chocolate cheesecake. 120 Baht.

.Our spread of cakes.

.Milk Crepe Cake.

From After You Dessert Cafe, located on the ground floor of Siam Paragon. This is like the western version of "kueh lapis". With tens and hundreds of layers of crepes and cream in between, this dessert is another satisfying treat.

.Chocolate Lava.

Just a tip, don't buy this as a takeaway if you don't have an oven or microwave in your hotel room, just simply have it there in the cafe. I think it will taste much better than trying to use water bath from the electric kettle to heat it up~

.A french based dessert cafe.

Pretty cakes at cheap(er) prices. Also located at the ground floor of Siam Paragon.

.Another pretty cake but, I forgot what it is called. This is pretty yummy too. Not excessively sweet with a tinge of fruity sour-sweetness. A wonderful christmas colour combination with macaron decoration~.

.Douceur Noisette. 135 Baht.

This is kinda like the ones you can find in Bakerzin, multi-layered with different texture and tastes in different layers. It's elegant at first sight but when you start eating it, it is hard to eat it elegantly (well, at least not for me).

.Menu of some of the cakes.

But its not exhaustive, I took all the pictures of the cakes on display instead :)

.Douceur Noisette. 135 Baht.

.Choco Banana Tart. 115 Baht.

.Mixed Fruit Tart. 110 Baht.

.Feulle d' Automne. 120 Baht.

.Bagatelle. 140 Baht.

.Concerto. 130 Baht.

.Lemon Tart. 85 Baht.

.Opera. 120 Baht.

.Venus. 135 Baht.

.Millefeuille. 95 Baht.

.Massal. 130 Baht.

.Costa Rica. 140 Baht.

.Schuss Aux Fruit. 130 Baht.

.Volute. 140 Baht.

.Vanilla Panacotta. 140 Baht.

.Entrance of the shop.

.Takeaway from Lenotre.

Journey of the land of smiles and good food part IV: Bangkok

Back to my one of my favourite places on Earth: where the sun shines bright, where you squeeze through small alleys to look for cheap buys, where you spend a whole day and shop till you drop in a single shopping mall, where you race through the busy streets on a tuktuk, where you enjoy your Thai food too! But this trip was a little special, to respect the untouched new clothes and shoes that has been in my closet since my last trip to Bangkok, I have decided not to skip most of the shopping and focus on touring around, massage and of course, food.

First stop was the chicken rice that my Thai driver recommended. It's in a shop on the stretch of road next to the Platinum mall and opposite of the Paladium mall. There are two stalls over there, one seems to be more popular than the other though.

.Chicken rice and innards.

This is from the stall that is more popular, if i don't remember wrongly, there are pictures of the owner and the stall hung somewhere in the stall. There are quite a few differences between the Singapore and Thai chicken rice, the obvious one would be the chicken. There is no soya sauce or sesame oil or anything on the chicken, it's just normal chicken. Secondly, the dipping sauce, no chicken rice chilli, no cut chilli nor dark soy sauce, its a Thai version of sweet sauce instead. Next is the rice, if you are looking for uber fragrant chicken rice like those in Singapore, I'm sorry but you can't get those here. Typical Singaporeans will very much prefer those chicken rice that you get in Singapore.

.The other chicken rice stall not far from the one above.

.Menu of the other chicken rice stall.

.They do serve satays too.

.Chicken more finely cut and juicier than the first stall.

.What we ordered.

Personally, I feel that this stall tastes better than that of the first stall, the chicken is not as dry and tasteless and the rice is much more fragrant. But somehow, this stall seems to be less pops than that stall. Not bad :)

.Once upon a time.

Located in 32 Soi Petchaburi 17 in Pratunam area, this restaurant is a little ooloo... It's like in some dark alley and when we went there, it was just the two of us in the whole restaurant. The ambience was quite unique but a little too dark for taking nice pictures. The pricing of the food was a little ex for a typical meal in Bangkok with simple fares at rates of 30-50 Baht but it's perfectly reasonable and in fact even a little cheaper as compared to the Thai food in Singapore.

.Interior of the restaurant.

.Tamarind duck. 257.50 Baht.

.Kai ho bai toey. Pandan chicken with sweet dipping. 176 Baht.

.Pandan chicken opened up.

.Stir-fried morning glory. 96 Baht.

.Fried hard-boiled egg. 147 Baht.

I think they call this daaw luuk kheey, it means son-in-law's egg. It is super yummy with the sweet and sour sauce. You gotta try this when you have the chance to! Just a side note, the rice is unlimited at 29.95 Baht per person.

.Samurai burger.

Yes yes, it's MacDonalds. For those pork lovers out there, this samurai burger is something that you can't find in Singapore~ PORK! Frankly speaking, it's just another burger.

.Coffee beans by Dao.

AThai-western fusion restaurant located in Siam Paragon. We do have this in Singapore as well, it is in Wisma Atria. Their main courses were not bad... but their desserts were.... AWESOME :) Desserts are in another post specially for desserts though!

.Grilled chicken salad with spicy italian vinagrette. 290 Baht.

.Phat thai.

.I forgot what pasta this was.

.Chicken parmesan and salad. 320 Baht.

Australian salmon served with roasted tomato and lemon cream. 420 Baht.

.Baked pita ham and mozarella. 320 Baht.

.Mini pork taco. 220 Baht.

.Tom yam kung. 250 Baht for a pot.

.Madam Saranair.

This restaurant is part of another restaurant known as Big Mama located at Sukhumvit 21 near our massage place (Health Spa, Sukhumvit).

.Entrance of Big Mama.

.Interior.

Oh! Something interesting about this restaurant was that they were quite artsy fatsy. Note the pictures hung around the restaurant, they were painted by the chef of there! Also, patrons are provided with crayons to doodle on the piece of paper on your table. I had fun doodling while waiting for the food.

.Lemon mint. 60 Baht.

.Lemon soda. 70 Baht.

.Mango salad. 95 Baht.

.Deep fried cheese balls.

.Phat thai kung. 130 Baht.

.Pineapple fried rice. 220 Baht.

.Khaay ciaw muu saap. Minced pork omelette.

.Tom yum kung. 220 Baht.

.Stir-fried broccoli with shrimps. 120 Baht.

.Green curry with chicken. 180 Baht.

Railway Market

.Khaaw khaa muu. Braised pork leg rice.

.Kway teow naam. Kway teow soup.

.Khaaw niaw maa muang. Mango sticky rice.

Amphawa Floating Market

.Food stalls on floating on the river.

You order and they will cook on the boat, then someone will have it served to you!

.Menu of the floating stall.

The prices are quite reasonable and they have quite a variety of food there too.

.BBQ squid.

.Kung op wun sen. Prawn vermicelli.

Yao Walak (Chinatown)

.Shark fins.

This was taken in a restaurant in Chinatown as our friends wanted to try out and have a little splurge on that day. And so we went to the shop that one of our friends recommended. Upon reaching the place you can see fins and more fins on display in shelves and around the shop. Poor sharks... As someone who took conservation biology, I don't really support shark killing for the sake of it's fins, its just cartilage... If, it is served on dinner tables, I will still eat it though. But I will strictly not order any shark fins.

.Shark fin in a pot.

Not ordered by me.

.Har kau. 35 Baht.

While waiting for my bird's nest and my friends' shark fins, we were hungry and ordered some dimsum. Bad option. Really.

.Siew mai. 35 Baht.

No point commenting.

.Bird's nest. 500 Baht.

Sighs, can't believe I paid money for this... It is like super diluted unlike those that I have at home, maybe I should not do such comparisons but... perhaps I should not have expected much nor even order at all.

.Chestnut GAO LAT.

THIS, is the iconic thing in Thailand Chinatown. For those people who has watched the movie "Billionaire" on story of the young boss of Tao Kae Noi seaweed, you will find this familiar~ Anyway, just something that you wanna take note of, the chestnuts from this stall is more expensive as compared to the stalls in the alley (we bought from this stall and realised that afterwards). Since you can try the chestnuts, you may want to try out both the chestnuts from here and from those in the alleys then decide which ones you wanna get.

.This are the prices of chestnuts in the alleys.

.Hong Kong Wanton Noodles.

The duck is so-so and the wantons are so much better tasting~ You should get a wanton noodle from this stall if you ever pass by here again. And take note, their bottled lemongrass drink is uber sweet, you may want to think twice about ordering that if you don't like sweet stuffs.

.Hong Kong Noodle Stall.

I was actually trying to take a picture of the shop but the guy posed, oh wells.

Phat Phong

.Entrance of sip.
While looking for the (infamous) pingpong show in Phat Phong, we settled down here for our dinner. Initially we weren't expecting much as we just wanted a cheap meal and when we went in to the restaurant, we were "banished" to the end of the restaurant in a separate room where the aircon was not even switched on. But when the food was served, we had our pleasant surprise. Not only do the food look uber presentable, the food was yummy too~ Best part was, it was quite cheap. hehe.