Marrakesh - Moroccan Lounge & Bar, Clark Quay

This was a nice looking place which I've passed by on a couple of occasions but have never stepped into until now. Marrakesh is run by the management that owns the Harry's Bars and it is located right beside The Tent at Clark Quay. I was quite impressed with how the interior was decorated. Some effort had apparently been made for that Middle Eastern feel bar. I thought it was nice alternative spot to chill. They even had music in this place (some form of Indian-ish/middle eastern modern ambient/chillout) which was also not intrusive.


What I liked about Marrakesh were the cloistered corners which the establishment seemed to be filled with. Although it wasn't a lot of space, it might be comfortable room for 5-6 persons cloaked in semi-privacy.

That's pretty much where the beauty of this place ended. The food and drinks were a general gamut of grills, breads and vegetable stuff which you can expect from Middle Eastern themed places. Having eaten at Banoo, I can attest at the better quality and variety at the latter. Most of the food here looked like more elaborate bar snacks which I guess was the point. Being able to smoke in this place meant that it's probably a bar license they've gotten, not a restaurant.

This mixed grill platter I had at $28 came as they described with beef kebab, shish taouk, shish kebab, lamb kebab with dolma, hummus and Arabic salad. What arrived was an array of grilled and spiced meat on sticks drenched in some tomato based gravy. I'm fairly sure there's coriander in there somewhere, but in this instance, it was faint enough for me to disregard. The portions weren't large, so a platter feeds one hungry person. Their mojito was quite disappointing. While the drink was good with the lime and mint, it had barely any detectable trace of rum. Serving drinks with excessive crushed ice and not enough alcohol is unfortunately lousy but common bar practice around.

If you're not really looking for great food it's a good place to chill and hang with friends.

Dinner @ Home @ 6 p.m.

Boon Tong Kee Little Gourmet, River Valley Road

what's "ong kee little goup"?

Interesting name for a shop that's famed for chicken rice. I happened onto this shop while searching for some past midnight grub. The prices didn't look cheap. However I had thought that the quality ought to be quite good based on branding. We hoped. Having eaten at Boon Tong Kee at Bt Timah only once before, I wasn't sure of how this place would work out. The previous experience was quite good so I had little reason to expect otherwise. I guess even franchised brand outlets must possess a certain level of quality to thrive.



If I had compare, it was a tough fight between My Rice and BTK. Both stores were quite on par in terms of flavour. While neither matches Ming Kee in terms of price, the former two accounted for their worth with more tender chicken meat and what I thought to be a zestier chilli sauce. The poached vegetables in oyster sauce here had fresh crunchy texture and was topped with fried shallots and some meat floss.

Indulgz Bistro, 9 Tan Quee Lan Street

Dinner with Junie. This is one of those places where the aftermath of dinner makes me feel that I could definitely have had better elsewhere. Yeah, I've said it. While didn't stink big time, there was a lot that left more to be desired. In short, unsatisfying. While I'm not here to put down new restaurants on purpose, I am definitely in a position (which I prefer) to really call things the way they are. Tan Quee Lan Street while isn't really remote, isn't really pedestrian neither and with the culinary standards and little publicity, doesn't look to have a healthy life in the business. We started dinner with a White Gazpacho and a Potato & Garlic soup.

White Gazpacho

Potato & Garlic soup

The gazpacho is a Spanish cold soup. It had a raw taste of finely grated vegetables and garlic. The soup tasted also to me like blended vegetable juice.I'm not sure what to make out of this here but it lacks a certain something that might have made it special which I can't put my finger to. Potato & Garlic soup came with a tinge of rawness. That rawness seems to come from the potatoes. However with the garlic and cream, the soup itself turned out decent. If I had to make a comparison, Aerin's soups are probably better value for money in both quality and quantity.

The Deep fried Camembert cheese with Berry compote ($9.90) is apparently a specialty of Indulgz. I like cheese so I don't really have much complains about this except that it's a specialty that really involves minimal skill. of frying some triangles of breaded cheese. Camembert cheese as I discovered from an often maligned source is usually eaten uncooked as heat kills the subtleties in the flavor and texture. What gives with them being deep fried? The compote while tasting as described isn't special at all. I'm guessing that it's just cooked berries and the concoction is rather watery. For cheese lovers, this might be worth a try. Another house specialty which I personally think is constitutes a sad joke is the chicken bites with tangy sauce. Another specialty that doesn't require much culinary skill to create. The chicken doesn't look uniformly fried on the surface and really, KFC popcorn chickens taste better and probably cost less. The tangy sauce tastes atypical of sauces provided in cze char stores for fried meats. It's probably the same kind of sauce that you get when you order thai chickens from some non thai eateries. And the sauce comes with coriander.

Tangy Raspberry Salad ($7.80)

Had a Tangy Raspberry Salad to share. The salad includes mesclun in raspberry vinaigrette, an egg sliced into quarters, a few token raspberries, tomatoes and some sprinkling of sunflower seeds. I suspect about the purported raspberry vinaigrette that was used in the salad because it tasted flat of just raspberries. Definitely not something I would recommend. The house specialty mains which we got were the butterfish steak and chef's crispy pasta with chicken mushroom cream sauce. Neither of which I thought was really special in any way.

Butterfish steak ($19.80)

Crispy pasta with chicken mushroom sauce ($14.00)

I'm not really a fish person with the exception the cold water ones. The butterfish tastes like a promfet with more bite and while wasn't bad, tasted very ordinary.The taste of the fish is actually bland, salvaged by the mango salsa which doesn't taste like anything else except mango. We did get a generous portion of the fish which makes me a bit suspicious based on what I've seen in the cost to food ratio. On the side, there is a nice side of truffled mashed potatoes which comes with the strange rawness that is present in the potato soup and gazpacho. The crispy pasta looks gimmicky like cze char noodles. Angelhair pasta was used instead. The taste and texture of the crispy pasta is something imaginable from appearances. Like crispy noodles from cze char stalls in cream sauce and small strips of chicken and mushroom instead of gravy. Wow, what a surprise huh? With cream sauce which reminds me of Pasta Mania.

The panna cotta, textured like bean curd (tao huay) and comes with a milky vanilla flavor which I rather liked. Apart from that, it doesn't really feel like panna cotta to me. Brownie was simply lousy stuff. The chocolate flavor insufficiently rich and it arrived lukewarm instead of hot. It's really just a dense chocolate cake with plain vanilla ice cream. Avoid it. We didn't think well enough of it to finish it.

Egg and Corned Beef bun from Crystal Jade Macau

Crystal Jade Macau is located at the basement of Bugis Junction just next door to a Four Leaves bakery. This is the sole outlet of Crystal Jade that purports to have food that is common or popular in Macau/Hong Kong like pork chop buns. This above is the egg and corned beef bun which while a decent sandwich, didn't really have much corned beef. Which is my main beef with it.


So wedged between a crispy buttered and toasted bun are fried eggs with bits of corned beef, tomatoes and some lettuce. There's not enough meat in there for me to order it again unfortunately. I really expected more decent amount of that corned beef.

Avocado chicken @ Basil Alcove

Lunch with Gweezer today at Basil Alcove. We got the $8.80 option which included a pretty decent cream of mushroom, avocado chicken for the main and an iced peach tea. An accompanying avocado puree balanced with pomegranate seeds accompanied slightly spicy grilled chicken. There's no fat nor skin in the meat. Despite having eaten here on several occasions, I'm still impressed at the quality and presentation for the prices this place charges.