Some photos from Morton's

This is a belated dinner treat that is a long time in coming and has finally been realised. :) Morton's of Chicago has so far, not disappointed. From the warm bustling ambience to the perceptive spontaneity in service, this place makes the effort to justify what one pays for eating here. Sure the prices here are hefty, but it would also be otherwise difficult to find a place that does steak better.

This is the first time I am having them crab cakes. And I have to say that it was certainly $35 good. The same goes for the excellent lobster bisque which I admit to being slightly skeptical towards before the actual tasting. It was a rich and warm creamy lobster diffusion on taste with a hint of brandy just on the edge and really, it's probably the best or at least one of the best around.

the evil onion loaf

jumbo lump crab cake

lobster bisque

boneless prime rib

bone in ribeye

grilled asparagus in balsamic glaze

chocolate cake

to be continued...maybe....perhaps.....someday....possibly

Highlander Bar, Clark Quay

Decided to check out this place after seeing it reviewed in a couple of blogs. Highlander Bar ( #01-11, The Foundry) is located near the central junction of Clark Quay just beside Pump Room. This would be the first and probably for a long time, the only Scottish themed place. There isn't any others around that I know of. The outdoor seats of this bar/restaurant makes use of rather eye catching cross sectional tree trunk table tops which while was interesting to scrutinize, didn't really function that effectively as a table.

Highlander serves their Scottish ales/larger from the tab and a small selection of other bottled beers. The bulk of the drinks menu contains the wide variety of whiskeys which can be had here and prices are pretty expensive. A bottle of Baileys here cost $210. We opted for an all entree dinner which features more outlandish/highlandish sounding items.


haggis - This stuff is surprisingly quite addictive. Haggis is suppose to be a traditional Scottish dish that is made up of minced innards of sheep mixed with onion, oatmeal, spices, salt and stock. So the result is a pudding of sorts that has a texture akin to minced meat and tastes a lot like pate. It comes with a cream based sauce and accompanying scoops of mashed carrots (although it says turnips on the menu) and potatoes. This is probably the most interesting item in the starters section of the menu and if not anything else, this would be worth a try. The ingredients is probably not too far off from what sausages are made of anyways.


grampian stovies - which is essentially pan fried herbed beef with potato and onion cake. The taste is mostly bland with mashed potatoes (real mashed potatos) being the most recognizable ingredient and small bits of beef. And that's pretty much all there is about the grampian stovies. It's really fairly unremarkable.


scotch eggs - I've never tried scotched egg before. For $10 you get 2 hard boiled eggs encased in minced beef, breaded and deep fried. Chris thinks that this would make an excellent all in one option for breakfast. The carbs, meat and egg, all in one package. I don't disagree and as a hot snack, is great with drinks.


tattie scones - the menu describe these as potato patties. It actually tasted like tapioca cakes you can get at pasar malams. Albeit one that is not sweet. Another unremarkable dish which is saved solely by the soft cheese dip on the side.


smoked kipper toasties - this makes another excellent bar snack and comes simply as you would imagine it. Fragrant and crispy cheese toasted with flavor of some fish. I couldn't actually get the texture of fish meat in there, but the flavors were definitely. Salty and goes well with drinks.

A randaom ayam penyet from Chong Pang

This chicken doesn't look quite smashed to me, but it probably has been. I was actually thinking of splintered bones beneath the flesh, but apparently, all the smashing did was to break the meat (tenderised?!) and made them easily removable from the bones.

In all, apart from being "smashed" before served, this is pretty much tastes like the regular fried chicken from most Muslim chicken rice stores. The only difference was the chilli sauce which does spruce flavors by quite a bit. The chilli was really not bad. This store at Swee Sian Yuen Eating House located at Chong Pang central states to be a branch of the original that hails from Changi Village where the ayam penet rose to fame as a dish. I wonder how it stacks here versus the original. For Malay fried chicken rice, this is decent stuff. Otherwise, it just reeks of g-i-m-m-i-c-k.

Noodle House Ken, Orchard Plaza

I first stumbled upon this place along the side of the Orchard Plaza building a few years back, and noticing that most of the people eating here were Japanese, I thought it would be a good idea to check out their ramen. The natural and logical conclusion that one would arrive at would be that the food here is probably close or as close as it can get without being in Japan itself. The setup does look promising as a Japanese noodle place. Subsequently, I recall having revisited this place a couple of other times and this time round, I realised that I have never really looked at the name of the place till today. And this is the Noodle House Ken (Orchard Plaza, 150 Orchard Road #01-17/18) that I hear people recommending and talking about very often. Talk about being oblivious to my surroundings.

char siew ramen

My last visit to this place was quite some time back, so I really do not remember much about the ramen. This gives me a clean slate in getting re-acquainted with the food here. My first thoughts are, I recall it being better. Memory can be a fickle mistress. Tastes and expectations do evolve. Certainly, I'm not complaining about the ramen here. At about $12 a bowl, it's a fair price for decent ramen which can be described "q". For additional $2, I got the top up options of a stewed egg with some miscellaneous bits of vegetables. It's rather expensive for an egg, but it was good. I only wished that more of these better Japanese ramen places used the straight chewy noodles that Ajisen does.

Brotzeit, Vivo City

I didn't really know what to expect of Brotzeit German Bier Bar and Restaurant (#01-149-151) which was opened towards the end of October 2006 in Vivo City. There hasn't been much that is noteable about German cuisine beyond the pork knuckle and larger variety of sausage offerings (which I'm sure is but a scratch on the surface compared to what's available in Germany). So I came here not expecting very much with the exception of good beer

First impression of the place is that service was very spotty and almost, dare I say, atrocious. I would think that having been around for almost half of a year, little issues of running a restaurant would have been more or less have been ironed out. Reservations was poorly handled and I'm still not quite sure if it is allowed for the outdoor seats. There seemed to be disagreement between different staff about this matter. To top it off, I was hit by a really sad attempt at jest from the serving staff about getting me to share a table that has already been occupied by 3 ladies. I didn't think it was funny at all. Not a tiny bit. I've never been a proponent of numbered ratings for anything because quantifiability is subjective and three dimensional, but here's a 3 out of 10 for service.

The redeeming quality of Brotzeit is probably the food and drinks. The variety is comparatively, larger than Paulaners which actually does not have that much for one to choose from. The portions which are being served are local sized, and I didn't expect anything better anyway. Speaking of which, Brotzeit does serve Paulaners brews so I don't know if there's a relation between the two.

The pork knucles get a fragrant crispy skin and meat that wasn't excessively fatty which works for me. Apart from the beers and sausages is the fladen which are the German pizzas. I don't really know what about the pizzas here that makes them German apart from the sausage toppings. I'm quite sure I can find similar pizzas elsewhere. It tasted quite like the regular thing making them pretty boring in comparison with what Magma offered in the way of cream cheese instead of the regular tomato base on the crust.


I could be back again based of the selection of the menu. The draw of this place is that apart from the food, there are a variety of drink offerings (read as beer) that comes from the tap and bottle. The service needs some work and is otherwise, not bad for a hangout after work.

Bab Noodle, Millenia Walk

I'm not really sure how to tag Bab Noodles. It does pseudo Japanese & Korean food and also locally flavored food (like sambal kang kong?!) and fusions. For what their name's worth, it's strange that half the available offerings comes defaulted with rice and for a change of that rice to noodles, would require you to top up $2 more.

Nothing in particular looks really outstanding here, so I landed myself a tori kaarage & stewed beef in BAB's Special sauce set ($11.90).

"Special" is a word like "authentic". Overused. And probably for no good reason at that. So it's regular fried & dry chicken with some cold hard stewed beef in a sauce that tasted bland. Food felt barely warm. There's nothing Japanese about this set. With the exception of the chilli powder condiment at the table.


An unexpected glimmer of hope in the food here was actually a new item on their menu call Spicy Crayfish Ramen. The taste of it was actually not too bad. The little magic in this particular item is in the sauce and despite it being a little on the thin side, it's really quite tasty. Now if they could get better crayfish and learn to do ramen the proper way, this could just be a local hit. Do not quote me on this.

Hogga hogga!

Yeah, I stayed of this place for a bit and now am back again. I really don't have much to say about the prime ribs at Hog's Breath that I've not already said before. In comparison to my previous visit which was a disappointment, the prime rib seemed to have gotten back to their regular standards. Though I must comment that medium rare seems to have gotten a bit more cooked and dryer than before. Still I like this enough to make this place a meat fix. It's definitely not Lawry's or Mortons, but it's good enough. And good enough that out of all my visits here, I've never actually ordered anything else in the main course. At least I think so.

YY Ka Fei Dian, Beach Road

I think this place is called YY Ka Fei Dian. At least that's what it says on the signboard of the place. It's another one of the Hainanese chicken rice coffeeshops ($3.50 a plate here) located at the junction where Purvis Street meets Beach Road which makes it a minute's walk away from Yet Con and Chin Chin Eating House. There is this one thing that sets it apart from other chicken rice stalls in the vicinity. I was also told that they sell really good donuts and I've seen people buy them by the bagloads. Strange pairings indeed.

The crowd at this place is healthy. One does have to stand around and wait for occupied tables to clear up if you don't have the habit of getting to your lunch place early or at least on time. I've lunched here on a few occasions and even though this coffee shop serves cze char, I've never been interested enough to try them. The chicken rice here is pretty good. The chilli and the dark soy sauce helps with the rice and that's not to say that the rice itself isn't good in the first place. The condiments aren't too bad at all.



The chicken rice here is that the rice looks a tad more yellowish than the usual. It was a more heavy than fluffy. At $3.50 a plate, it was also a little costlier than the usual ranges between $2.50 to $3.00 in the most coffee shops. Then again, one gets non flattened chicken meat and the portions are anything but stingy.


Unfortunately the pork chop was really unremarkable and here is something I would recommend to avoid. Unless you have a thing for very oily breaded meat that's overfried. The small portion at $6 seems too much to pay for. I was thinking that since this was a Hainanese coffeeshop, I would think pork chops are something that might have been a signature of sorts. That was just not true of that here. If you're looking for Hainanese chicken rice and pork chop together in the same place in this vicinity, stick to Chin Chin which does a better pork chop.

Lunch @ Paulaners

Paulaners Bräuhaus at Millenia Walk, does an executive lunch at $18++ that comes with a appetizer, a main course and a drink. At an optional top up of another $8, you get 2 mugs of 0.3l of their beer instead of the regular soft drink, choice between the dark and light which makes it really a good deal since it costs about $11 normally. Being located so close to where I work, I think I'll be definitely tempted to drop by for lunch again. This lunch from the restaurant (on the 2nd floor) is different from the other speedy lunch that is offered down at the bar. Being me, I picked the top up option of with the beer.

To avoid the boring salads, I picked the Bavarian Cheese Soup with sliced Bratwurst and fresh Majoram.


It was altogether nothing special and quite different from what I expected out of something that is called cheese soup. It was more like onion soup with is the cheese which comes in melted shreds within. They could've done better with more of the cheese since it was suppose to be a cheese soup? Skimping on the bratwurst was just pathetic as well. I also think that having bread would have made it a lot better. Are you guys from Paulaners reading this?


That's the grilled Gammon ham steak with onion sauce and cheese spätzle. Spätzles which I've had for the first time during my previous visit here, are German pasta that look like some misshapen lumps. Cheese spätzles here of course simply implies that there is melted cheese over them which essentially make them taste like mac and cheese. Sadly, none of the cheese was browned in the melting. This is one of the rare encounters that I have with ham steak so I just had to order it. The last time I did was at Colbar last year. It was definitely better here, being less salty. It was not too bad on the overall but it did come with an onion sauce that was really on the bland side and I'm pretty sure it ain't German portions I'm looking at for the food. So much for $18 here.

Awesome maw-some at myyyy.....McDonalds!

Nope, this is not the Big Mac indeed! This is ze quadruple cheese burger, special order without pickles and ketchup that ruins (IMO) the beefy cheesy flavor which cheeseburgers should just taste like. And no, it's not on the menu. One can simply order 2 double cheese burgers and request for all the meat to be in one bread and there you go, $4 worth of gut satisfaction that'll put a smile on your face ten mile wide.