Prego

It's been a while since I ate here but I always have fond memories of the warm, fresh bread and the tangy tomato dip. Had a voucher to use for the restaurants at the Fairmont so decided to come here for dinner one evening.

The bread and dip was as good as I remembered, so dinner was off to a good start. Starter was a salad spinach that I forgot to take a picture of... oops :P

For main courses, we ordered Parpadelle Gorgonzola and Spinach Lasagne.

The Parpadelle Gorgonzola $25.00+++ was just plain weird -


I kinda forgot what gorgonzola tasted like and had a rude reminder when I took my first taste of the pasta - it had a pungent smell and tasted really bitter. And if you can tell from the picture, the pasta was cooked with sundried tomato and kai lan. Interesting combination but thrown together, it didn't taste all that great. I think gorgonzola just does not make for a good pasta sauce. Maybe it takes an acquired taste to appreciate this, but for sure I'm not that person.

Also ordered the Spinach Lasagne -


And when this arrived, I remarked "Wow, it really looks like meat lasagne!". I took a bite and guess what? It WAS meat lasagne!

We had asked when we were ordering if the dishes we ordered were vegetarian and were reassured that they were, so we were quite shocked when they served us a meat lasagne. They later served us the Spinach Lasagne $25+++...


which was just ok. The waiter was apologetic about serving us the wrong dish... but what was strange was that we saw a guy at the next table being served the wrong dish when he ordered the spinach lasagne too!

This place has some serious service issues that they need to iron out for sure, getting two orders wrong in less than an hour. And for the prices you're paying, the food is incredibly mediocre, bordering on bad. Now I remember why I haven't been back in a while, and will definitely not be back anytime soon. There is surely better Italian food in Singapore.


Prego
80 Bras Basah Road
1F Fairmont Singapore
Tel: 6431 6156

Beach Road Prawn Mee Eating House

I'm a big prawn mee fan, I like it in every form : dry, soup and fried... so I was quite eager to try out this well-known prawn mee place.

I had the Dry Prawn Mee with Pork Ribs $5 -


The normal Dry Prawn Mee is $4, you pay an extra $1 for the Pork Ribs. The Prawn Mee itself has two whole prawns which were cut in half so it can be easily deshelled. The soup had lots of flavour, and the pork ribs were tender and meaty. Whoever thought of serving pork ribs with prawn mee is a genius :D

There is also a Ngoh Hiang stall here -


It was just ok. I love the crispy prawn crackers and had quite a bit of it :)

Be prepared to contend with the difficult parking situation if you plan to come here - parking is along the main road outside the stall... and there is normally a wait for food too. Try it but go only when you're not starving and can afford to wait a bit :D


Beach Road Prawn Mee Eating House
370 East Coast Road
Singapore 428981
Tel : 63457196

Red House Seafood Restaurant (East Coast)

Yet another place we went to during S's last trip back. We actually wanted to check out the Jackson Centre Kopitiam, but found out when we got there that the whole place was closed! So we ended up here instead...

Was quite odd coz we saw at least two Caucasians having a seafood feast on their own, not sure if they were tourists or locals. And when I say feast, I mean FEAST - we saw them order like five dishes EACH :O

Which made our two dishes seem really sad, but how much can two tiny girls like us eat? :D

Can't remember how much the Sri Lankan King Crab in Red House Chilli Stew cost, I think it was about $35++ per kg?


Fresh, meaty crab... sauce was pretty mediocre though, not as spicy as I would like it. Despite the elaborate name, it's really just chilli crab.

What we both loved was the Sambal Kang Kong -


The hae bee hiam (dried prawn sambal) used to fry this was really good! The sambal was tasty and super spicy. Yums.

Service was pretty good, they changed plates relatively fast without being intrusive. Not cheap but then all the restaurants here are around the same price range. Good place to bring out of town guests.


Red House Seafood Restaurant (East Coast)
1204 East Coast Parkway
#01-05 East Coast Seafood Centre
Tel: 6442 3112
http://www.redhouseseafood.com/Default.aspx

Swiss Baeckerei

I heard about this place when they were featured on a food show on Ch 5 - they were supposed to have a really good lemon tart. And I love anything sour, so I came here to check it out a while back... and they didn't have the lemon tart!

When I had coffee here recently, I was so pleased to see that they had the Lemon Tart! I ordered it of course -


And it really was good as the presenter on the show raved about! Sour but not overpoweringly so... a hot cup of tea was the perfect drink to have with it.

Another pastry that I'm a total sucker for is Chocolate Eclair so I ordered one too -


Yums! I make it a point never to have a whole eclair by myself though, just seems way to sinful :)

Lots of good pastry here, go try!


Swiss Baeckerei
97 Frankel Avenue
Frankel Estate
Tel: 6441 8766

Yum Cha Restaurant

The last time that S was back (erm, yah, it was quite a while ago :P), she had a dim sum craving and I couldn't think of anywhere good to suggest so we ended up trying this place.

Our first impression of the restaurant was not a good one - at the relatively early hour, there weren't that many people there, but the people who were there were mostly tourists. Hmm, not a good sign :S

We ordered some of the usual suspects : Prawn Dumpling (Har Gow) $4++ :


Century Egg and Lean Meat Porridge $2.50++ :


BBQ Pork Rice Flour Roll (Char Siew Chee Cheong Fun)$3++:


and Sesame BBQ Pork Pastry (Char Siew So): $2.50++


I find the pricing here very inconsistent - the har gow at $4 for seems a bit much, but char siew so at $2.50 for 3 is pretty reasonable. We thought $2.50 was really cheap for a bowl of porridge, until it arrived - it turned out to be a tiny bowl! The size of a small rice bowl! No wonder it only cost $2.50...

As for the taste, it was generally mediocre. The har gow was not too bad, with pretty fresh prawns. Char siew so was quite good, porridge was normal and chee cheong fun tasted like it had been sitting there for a while (i.e. a bit tough).

We also ordered some more interesting dishes : Sesame Prawn and Mango Roll $3.50++ -


and Steamed Carrot Cake with Dried Scallop $3.50++ -


Well, at least the menu *said* there was dried scallops... from the picture, you can tell there were barely any. But it was kinda refreshing having steamed carrot cake instead of the unhealthy fried type - not too bad actually. Prawn mango roll is a pretty recently invented dim sum dish which is now pretty much a staple in dim sum restaurants - the one here was not too bad.

Pretty big pictorial menu with some interesting dishes (steamed fish otah dumplings! steamed mini goose liver xiao long bao!)... well, interesting sounding but I'm not sure if I'll try them coz I'm pretty traditional when it comes to dim sum :D

The service here was quite slow and it wasn't easy to get the wait staff's attention despite the fact that the place was not that crowded. But service was amazingly fast when we asked for the bill using this device on the table -


Probably won't come back here again - food is not that great and not that cheap, and service is pretty crappy. Bao Today is a much option I reckon...


Yum Cha Restaurant
20 Trengganu Street
#02-01
Tel: 6372 1717
www.yumcha.com.sg