Charlie's Corner

I will always remember my first time here - it was after the first exam of the first semester of the first year of uni. On a total whim, we decided to come half-way across the island to check out this place... Ok ok, so it was just an elaborate excuse not to study :)

Back then, years and years ago, this place stood out because of its quirkiness. They were known for their hotdogs and huge range of beers and ciders... they had kids-sized little tables and chairs... and they would shine a torchlight in your face to let you know your order was ready.

Recently, on a total whim again, my friends and I decided to come here for dinner...

And it's totally changed! No more kiddy tables and chairs - now proper seating! No more torch in your face - now proper service! And the place just seemed a lot more well-lit than I remembered... It just seems very sanitised now, doesn't have the hole in the wall, rustic ambience that it used to have...

But was the food as good? Frankly, I had no impression of the food that I had back then, but as a whole, the food here is still not bad and at very reasonable prices.

Recently saw an episode of Oprah where they featured a GQ article on "20 Burgers You Must Eat Before You Die" and I've been craving burgers since then... so I had the Bacon Cheeseburger which was pretty good for $6.90 (I think). In the picture it looks like there isn't a patty in that burger but trust me, there was :)


The Fish & Chips had a huge piece of fish with hardly enough space on the plate for the fries!







The Spicy Wings were strangely un-spicy... and bizarre that it should be served in a disposable bowl.


I guess I wouldn't mind coming back here again... IF I was in the mood to drive... and I happened to be in the mood that day - we headed to Chomp Chomp for dessert after dinner :)

Charlie's Corner
Blk 2 Changi Village Road #01-08
Changi Village Market & Hawker Centre
Opening Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-2.30pm 6-11pm, Closed on Sundays

Krispy Kreme!

I'm absolutely krazy about Krispy Kremes! :)

Once made a friend lug it all the way back from Sydney... Hand-carried a dozen myself from San Francisco last year... For that matter, I ate them every chance I got when I was in the US - fresh out the fryer, it's like eating air... absolutely yummy!

And my sister just came back from London yesterday with a dozen!! It's a good thing I got her to check if they could be hand-carried before she bought them - coz it turns out due to the recent security measures, you can't hand-carry them!! She saw people having to throw away boxes and boxes of Krispy Kremes... What a waste!

So she only bought a dozen Glazed ones and stuffed them in her luggage... that's why they look like this -

Erm, the half is because I could not help myself and ate half before I remembered to take the photo :) Also I don't have a microwave so can't heat it up for the 2 seconds that's recommended... so just took it out of the fridge, thawed it out for about 20 mins...

And finished it in about 2 seconds :P

Anyone who's going to HK, Korea, Sydney, London or US - go try Krispy Kremes! And while you're there, buy a dozen back for me!

Graze

Finally made it to Graze! Read on Chubby Hubby's blog that Graze had a Breakfast/Brunch menu, and that did it for me - nothing I like more than having breakfast food for lunch...

Of course I had to order The Cast Iron Pan $18+++. Is your mouth watering already? :) With sausages, bacon, egg, tomato, mushrooms, potatoes and baked beans, it had everything I liked! It was yummy, but then it's kinda hard to go wrong with this kind of food... Don't be fooled by the picture, the iron pan is really not that big, but it is enough food for one person.


Also ordered the Waffles with Nutella Ice-cream $13+++... how do you say 'no' to Nutella ice-cream??? A perfect waffle, lots of strawberries and a scoop of delicious Nutella ice-cream... Was kinda bizzare eating savoury food and dessert at the same time but I just could not bear to see the ice-cream melt! Maybe I should have told the waiter to serve it later...


Thinking it wasn't enough food, we also ordered the Omelette $16+++. As if we didn't already have enough meat, we had as toppings sausages, bacon, mushrooms and tomatos. The omelette was baked rather than fried and was much lighter than I expected... and as you can see, it's spilling with toppings, just the way I like my omelettes!

Pretty nice place to chill out and while away a Sunday afternoon... and I'm definitely coming back to try their adorable cupcakes.

Graze Restaurant
4 Rochester Park
S139215
Tel : 6775 9000
www.graze.sg

Zion Riverside Food Centre

Every once in a while, I just have to go to a hawker centre and have all my favourite local food :) I love going to this hawker centre as it's near town and has pretty good food... I'm still avoiding Newton Circus with a vengence and with the on-going IMF meetings, I'm trying to avoid the Suntec area so Gluttons Bay was not an option...

There is a really famous Char Kway Teow stall at this hawker centre and it's really easy to spot coz it's the one with a queue. Tried it, didn't like it and don't see what all the fuss is about. The last time I was here, I really wanted to have Char Kway Teow so ended up ordering from another stall... and it was really good!


This $3 plate of Char Kway Teow is from Stall No. 20 Riverside Good Food Chay Kway Teow. It's got what the Cantonese call "wok hei" - the smoky taste that comes from cooking from a wok... It's not too dry and has lots of cockles and beansprouts. And unlike the more famous stall here, you don't even need to queue for your food - just order and sit and wait to be served :)


Another of my favourites from this hawker centre is the White Carrot Cake from Stall No. 26 Lau Goh Teochew Chye Thow Kway $3. The guy here is partially deaf so you have to order by pointing at the picture of the type of carrot you want. The last few times I had it, I really liked it... but today it didn't taste very good. I think it was because it was a weekday evening, the carrot cake wasn't selling as fast as he thought it would, and the carrot cake had been sitting in the wok for a while before he fried it up for me. Well, everyone is entitled to an off-day right? But definitely worth trying though...

The Rojak stall here is also quite famous - Stall No. 21 Clementi Brothers Rojak $3. It was pretty good too but I would have liked more pineapples... or maybe I was just slow and other people ate it all up :)


And to balance off all the terribly unhealthy food, we ordered a bowl of Fish Soup from the stall across from the Carrot Cake stall. Fish Soup is one of my favourite healthy foods... well, actually it's only healthy if you don't drink up all the soup - lots of sodium in it!


Damn, now I have a craving for unhealthy hawker food ;)


Zion Riverside Food Centre
Zion Road / Zion Close
(Opposite Great World City)

My Wishlist

I've added "My Wishlist" to the side bar. This is a list of places I want to try and things I want to eat. If there's a particular place you wanna check out with me, or have suggestions of places to try, please leave a comment, email or sms me.

The list will be constantly updated... let the food hunt begin! :)

Project Shop Cafe @ Paragon

I love chocolate - nine times out of ten, I'll pick something chocolate-y for dessert... but the Banana Mango Crumble here is definitely one of favourite non-chocolate desserts. Realised I haven't been here for quite a while so made a trip here just for the Banana Mango Crumble with Ice Cream ($10.90++).


This is real comfort food - a gooey mess of banana and mango, crumbly topping with a huge scoop of vanilla ice-cream... Heaven! Silly me, I should have taken a photo to show what it looks like inside... Next time :) It takes 15 mins to bake so order it early or be prepared to wait.


The other thing that I must have when I'm here is the Wasabi Crisps ($7.50++) - wasabi-flavoured potato chips with wasabi-flavoured mayonnaise. I finished the mayo they provided pretty quickly... asked for more mayo and was given a much bigger serving so I didn't have to scrimp on the dip. Love the kick of the wasabi...

Hmm, should come back here again soon... haven't eaten here in a long while...

Project Shop Cafe @ Paragon
290 Orchard Road
#03-41/44
Paragon Shopping Centre
S238859
Tel : 6735 6765

Roland Restaurant

This restaurant claims to be the founders of Chilli Crab... It's located in the multi-storey car park next to Parkway Parade - I would never have guessed there was a restaurant here! Roland (the son of the original owner) put a caricature of his face on the company logo... and he's actually works at the restaurant. We were there on a weekday evening and he was busy going from table to table talking to customers.

We ordered a lot of food... to be honest, I felt a little sick later that night from over-eating... but apparently I was not the only one :)


Started with You Char Kuay - kinda weird that we had to ask for mayo, isn't it normal to serve this with mayo?? But it tasted pretty good - crispy and lots of filling.



One dish that this restaurant is famous for is the Black Sauce Prawns. It was a very simple dish but quite delicious. *Someone* ate up lots of the sauce with the Fried Mantou :)



We also had the Tofu with Baby Kai Lan and Gingko Nuts - an attempt at having a balanced diet? :)





The best thing about eating out in a big group? You get to order Peking Duck!! It's not the most photogenic food, is it?...


And of course, we had to have Chilli Crab and Pepper Crab... with lots of Fried Mantou! Out of the three times I had Chilli Crab recently, I liked this one the best. The level of chilliness was just nice and best of all, there was lots of egg and crab roe in the sauce - I probably ate one too many mantou here :)



I didn't really like the Pepper Crab here - it was the sweet peppery-type of Pepper Crab and I much prefer the peppery peppery-type :)




We also had the Beef Kuay Teow, very similar to the famous Beef Kuay Teow at Geylang. Huge pieces with tender beef with lots of sauce. Not bad!




And believe it or not, we had dessert... I had the Tang Yuan in Red Bean Soup but it was nothing fantastic. The Guilin Gao apparently wasn't too good so best to avoid the desserts here.

All in all a good meal! Definitely worth coming back especially for the Chilli Crab... but after crabs three times in one month, probably best for my health to avoid it for a while :D

Roland Restaurant
89 Marine Parade Central
#06-750
S440089
Tel : 6440 8205
www.rolandrestaurant.com.sg

Morton's, The Steakhouse

I didn't really eat here - a friend threw a surprise birthday for his girlfriend (oops I meant fiancee :) at Morton's recently and we had drinks and finger food at the bar area of the restaurant.

The filet mignon sandwiches which I raved about in a previous post were still amazingly yummy... but what I must really rave about is the fantastic crabcakes!!

One of the most annoying things about eating crabs is that it's so much work getting to the meat - ok, so I'm just plain lazy :P Crabcakes are the the best way to get around having to work so hard for your food :)

And the ones here are the best I've ever had! The crabcakes here are made up of chunks of crab meat as compared to most other places where they use crab meat that's so minced that you can barely tell it's crab. They were so good I could not stop eating them!

I wonder how much they cost at the restaurant itself...


Morton's, The Steakhouse
The Oriental Singapore
5 Raffles Avenue
Tel : 6338 0066

Samar Cafe

I'm always on the lookout for places that serve kebabs and hummus - finally came here after having talked about coming here for AGES already...

The decor is nice, stepping into the place makes you feel like you've landed in the middle of an Arabian Nights story. Lots of proper table seating available downstairs, a more chill-out atmosphere upstairs with seating on the floor. The outdoor area upstairs has some carpets and looks really great to chill out at but I was going to eat and a table was definitely necessary.

Just when you think my photo-taking is improving, here come some really bad photos... Maybe the fan was blowing really hard or something, but I just could NOT take a good photo here. Ended up with a whole bunch of really blurry photos... Sorry about the strain on your eyes, guys ;)

Of course I had to order the Bread Basket $4+ and for the dips we had Hummus and Babaganoush (Eggplant) $2+. The pita bread was too hard - should have been popped into the oven for a few minutes at least... and the Babaganoush was much tastier than the Hummus. Don't you just love the word babaganoush? :D

And of course I have to try the kebabs here so we ordered the Kofta Kebab $7+ ... the meat was pretty dry - think it might have been overcooked or something? But the salad was really good, we ate it all up :)

The Chicken Wings $5.50+ look kinda spicy in the pictures right? But they were not spicy at all! They were a bit tasteless actually, so it has to be eaten with the chilli sauce...

And wash it all down with a refreshing glass of Lime Ice Granitas $5.50+ - perfect in hot weather!

If I come back here, it'll be just to have drinks and to chill out... It's open 24 hours - for people who want to smoke sheeshas at 3am in the morning maybe? But they don't serve alcohol here.

Oh, and take note : they have recently started charging a "membership fee" of $1+ per person if you sit upstairs. Didn't even realise it till I looked at the bill the next day... called them to ask and apparently this was recently implemented. I don't really mind paying, but the staff should have at least mentioned it when we were heading upstairs.

Samar Cafe
60 Kandahar Street
Tel : 6398 0530

Causeway Bay Cafe

Noticed this place on my way to Mario Kitchen a few weeks ago... and then I saw a mention of it in 8days as being opened by the owners of Thye Hong (my fav Hokkien Mee stall at Gluttons Bay and Food Republic)... and was going to be in the Bugis area for some shopping... so decided to check out this place.

One of my must-eat dishes when I'm in Hong Kong is Beef Brisket Noodles. I always go back to this dodgy, alley-way stall in Mongkok for the yummiest Beef Brisket Noodles and Wanton Mee. What I love about Hong Kong-style noodles is the tougher, springier(?) texture... so I was quite disappointed when the noodles in the Beef Brisket Noodles ($6.50) at this place was so over-cooked that it became really soft. The beef was tender enough though, and the soup just barely decent...

I didn't taste the Seafood Baked Rice ($8) but seeing how the person eating it didn't have any comments I'll assume it's nothing to scream about either...

The Deep Fried Squid ($8) was ok but I thought the portion of squid was a bit small for that price... and they tried to disguise the small portion with potato wedges!



So my conclusion is, most of the places along Liang Seah Street are mostly Uni students hang-outs - i.e. places that sell cheap food of low quality. Hmm, will likely avoid eating around this area except for the tong shui places... Still craving for some good cha chan tang food though...

Causeway Bay Cafe
32 Liang Seah St
Tel : 6338 4148

333 Bak Kut Teh

Ok, so I've already posted about this place when I first started this blog... but there weren't any pictures for that first post! I went there again recently, and now that I'm in the (bad :) habit of taking photos of my food, I took photos this time - so I thought it deserved another post :)


I had a bowl of Bak Kut Teh, Preserved Vegetables and You Char Kuay. Needless to say, I had my bowl of soup topped up twice... for free! YAY!

While looking at the menu, I noticed that there was 肉骨 (pork ribs) and 排骨 (spare ribs). What I had was 肉骨 Bak Kut Teh $4.50 which had huge chunks of meat with the bone attached, as opposed to the 排骨 Bak Kut Teh $6 which has a long rib bone and very little meat attached. It totally does not make sense to me why less meat should cost more...

I prefer this to the more famous Founders Bak Kut Teh - the level of pepperiness (not sure if there's such a word!) is just nice compared to the Founders Bak Kut Teh which is close to being unbearingly peppery... and there's never a queue here :)

333 Bak Kut Teh
325 Balestier Road
S329754