Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger

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

This is the first time I am having them crab cakes and it's something you've got to eat to know how $35 good it is. The same goes for the excellent lobster bisque which I admit to being slightly skeptical towards before the actual tasting. It is a rich and warm creamy lobster diffusion on the tongue with a hint of brandy that hangs just on the edge and really, it's probably the best or at least one of the best around. You'll have to try it to know how it's really like.

Decided to check out this place with Chris after seeing it reviewed in a couple of other blogs. Highlander Bar ( #01-11, The Foundry) is located near the central junction in the middle of Clark Quay just beside Pump Room and across from The Clinic. This would be the first and probably for a long time, the only Scottish themed place since there isn't any others around that I know of. The open air seats of this bar/restaurant makes use of rather eye catching cross sectional tree trunk cuts which while was different looking from others tables in the vicinity, doesn't really function that effectively as a table. So if you're eating in the open air, remember to check if you have enough space for your plates.

Highlander serves scottish ales/larger from the tab and a very 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 approximately 3 times above retail. A bottle of Baileys here cost $210. The mains from the menu are relatively common of western meals so 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 of coarse grain 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 if there's no aversion to innards. It's ingredients is probably not too far off from some sausages 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 in the cake with small bits of beef in the mix. And that's pretty much all there is about the grampian stovies. It's really fairly unremarkable a dish.


scotch eggs - I've never had scotched egg before and this is probably going to be something I like and will try elsewhere when available. 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 taste like tapioca cakes you see commonly available at pasar malams without the sweetness. 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 very noticeable flavor of fish. I didn't actually taste any fish texture in there, but the flavor was definitely undeniable. Saltish and goes well with drinks.

This chicken doesn't look quite smashed to me, but it probably has been. We're probably looking at hand held wooden mallets instead of sledge hammers anyways. 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 battered before served, this is pretty much tastes like the regular fried chicken from most Muslim chicken rice stores. The only noteable difference was the chilly sauce which does spruce up the overall flavor of the chicken. The chilli, though not of exceptional excellence 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. If you like Muslim fried chicken rice, this is decent stuff. If not, at $3.50, I smell a leakage and it reeks somewhat of g-i-m-m-i-c-k.

I first stumbled upon this place along the side of the Orchard Plaza building facing Cuppage Plaza a few years back, and seeing that most of the people eating here were Japanese, I thought it would be a good place to check out their ramen. I mean, 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. And the setup of the interior 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. Talk about being oblivious to my surroundings.

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 in common terms as "q". For additional $2, you get a top up options of a stewed egg with some miscellaneous bits of vegetables. It's rather expensive for an egg, but it is good. What you also do get is a broth that doesn't have MSG and that's certain a plus point when we're talking about food that's available locally. I only wished that more of these better Japanese ramen places used the straight chewy noodles that Ajisen does.

German food is something that to me lacks finesse, so I don't look for complexity and any delicacy involved in their taste. All I actually look for is heartiness and taste. To that form, 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 tad of a tiny bit of options compared to what's available in Germany). So I came here not expecting very much with the exception of better drinks.

The first impression of the place is that service is very spotty and certain aspects leans towards 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. For one thing, reservations was poorly handled and I'm still not quite sure if it is allowed for the open air seats. There seems to be disagreement between different staff about this matter. Getting the seats that has been reserved has been delegated to someone who doesn't seem to really want to listen to you and is more interested in enquiring about if you were interested in reservation or not rather than listening to the fact that reservation has already been made and we were here to get our seats. 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. Here, the variety is what I would consider pretty decent in comparison with Paulaners which actually does not have that much for one to choose from after a couple of visits. 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 food here is a decent deal and pork knuckles (served with pickles, sauerkraut and little potatoes) is only done one way. It comes Paulaner sized so if you need to know for an order to share, it's just good for a hungry man with a decent to big appetite. You get a fragrant crispy skin and meat that is not overly fatty which works for me. So this is something that I wouldn't mind having again. Noticeable on the menu 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 apart from the shape it comes in. It's quite normal in taste (I mean it is not too bad, just isn't exceptional) which makes them not truly noteworthy in comparison with what Magma offers in the way of cream cheese instead of the regular tomato puree/sauce on the base of the crust.


I could be back again based of the selection of the menu. The pull 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.

The first thing about this place is, I'm not really sure how to describe and classify Bab Noodles in an accurate manner. It does pseudo Japanese & Korean food along with local dishs (like sambal kang kong?!) and fusions. Fusion is risky. There are good ones but it's so damned easy to mix and ....well, mash. So in essential Bab Noodle looks like a place that doesn't have quite an identity of it's own in terms of cuisine representation and the mixture of their cooking styles doesn't carve itself into any specific niches. For a name like this, I find it strange that half the available offerings comes defaulted with rice and for a change of that rice to noodles, it would cost $2 more. I think you get where I'm headed with all this blabber.

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

Does the word "special" ring any bells yet to you? If not, your alarm systems need to be re-tuned. "special" is a word like "authentic". Whored to the extreme. That fact cannot be better reinforced me especially after Kitchen Confidential. So it's regular fried & dry chicken with some cold hard stewed beef in a sauce that tasted bland in flavor, and really...is it even fresh? It felt barely pre-heated. To me there's nothing Japanese about this set. With the exception of the chilli powder condiment at the table. On another note, I must really learn how to sabotage my own photo taking because some of you are probably thinking to yourselves that it doesn't look all that bad. Lol.


An unexpected glimmer of hope in the food in Bab Noodle is actually a new item on their menu call Spicy Crayfish Ramen. In the context of local flavoring, it is actually not 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 decent. Now if they could get better crayfish and learn to do ramen the Japanese way, this could just be a local hit. Do not quote me on this.

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.

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 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 personally seen people buy them by the bagloads. Strange pairings indeed.

The crowd at this place is healthy. By that, I mean that you'll probably 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. And it's quite visible that most of the patrons come here for the pretty good chicken rice. I've lunched here on a few occasions and even though the coffeshop serves sze char, I've never been interested enough to try them. The chicken rice here is good. The chilli and the dark soy sauce makes it better on the rice. That's not to say that the rice itself isn't up to standards in the first place. The condiments aren't too bad at all.



One of the attributes of the chicken rice here is that the rice looks a tad more yellowish than the usual. The flavor while isn't the best of chicken rice I've had has enough of the expected taste, but comes in a tad heavy more than fluffy. That's probaby because of the oil in the rice. That said, it's just one of the variables you get in chicken rice. Some are lighter tasting than the others, some oilier and it's ultimately a matter of preference. It's not really a call at which is better at this point. Coming at $3.50 a plate, it looks to be slighly pricier than many others that usually range between $2.50 to $3.00 in the regular coffeeshops. What you may not realise is that you get non flattened chicken meat and the portions are anything but stingy. The roasted chicken breast that you see is a large piece of chopped chicken breast, even larger in mere surface area than many other neighbourhood stores that practice flattening of the meat servings. So, along with the fact that the chicken rice here is pretty good, it isn't really all that pricey.


The unfortunate item in this place is the pork chop that this place does like Chin Chin. The pork chop here is something I would recommend to avoid. Unless you have a thing for very unremarkable tasting and oily breaded meat that looks overfried, the small portion of $6 seems overly costly for something that isn't exception in any means. Being a Hainanese coffeeshop, I would think that this is something that might have been a signature dish of sorts. That is not true of 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 has better pork chop.

Paulaners Bräuhaus at Millenia Walk, does an executive lunch at $18++ that comes with a appetizer (from a list of selections) a main (also list of selections) and a drink. If you top up the cost of the lunch with 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 if you enjoy their beers that cost about $11 normally at that volume. 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 on the first floor where the bar is, so the note is that there are actually 2 different types of set lunches that are being offered by the place. Being me, I picked the top up option of course. With the beer.

Not being in the mood for their salad offerings, which actually consist of most of the selection of the appetizers, I ventured into their Bavarian Cheese Soup with sliced Bratwurst and fresh Majoram.


It is really nothing special and quite different from what I expected out of something that is called cheese soup. That is also not to say that the taste is bad. This onion filled soup is reasonably decent and arrives warm making it quite ideal on a rainy day. The gripe with the soup is the cheese which comes in melted shreds within the soup. They could've done better with more of the cheese since it is a cheese soup and stinging on something like bratwurst doesn't really make it into anyone's good books. Apart from these, there isn't much to complain about the soup which I've already mention is pretty decent. I think having bread on the table 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 are made and 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 macaroni and cheese. It's unfortunate that none of the cheese was browned in the melting, but I suppose it probably wasn't the intention of how it was to be done. This is one of the uncommon encounters that I have with ham steak so I just had to order this just for that reason. The last time I did was at Colbar last year. That being said, the ham of both places are of different standards and cut. Here you get met where you can still make out the sinews and is noticeably less salted whereas the one in Colbar tasted much more like the standard ham with less texture on the meat and more salt. This one is not too bad on the overall with a rather thin and lacking in flavor onion sauce, and I'm pretty sure it ain't German portions I'm looking at.

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.

After a meticulously planned breakout of Lincoln Burrows and himself from Fox River Penitentiary and eluding authorities on a nationwide manhunt, Michael Scofield ends up modeling for Gap. Lol. I took this at Vivocity.