This not so hidden gem of a food court located near the Napier Road entrance of the Botanic Gardens reminded me of King Albert Park. It was actually quite a pleasant spot in the spacious outdoors from the serenity during the week evenings. I heard that it gets really crowded in the weekends and holidays. Food courts generally are boring pretty boring with a similar configurations everywhere since they are monopolised (mostly) by the food court conglomerates that inject little variables into individual outlets. There are exceptions though. Like the Food Republic at Wisma. The generally feel to them is that they are costly and do not have much that's good to eat. Once in a while, exceptions happen.
The stalls in Taman Serasi Food Garden (1 Cluny Road) are named after the food which they sell, so it's pretty easy to figure out what's what from the huge labels overhead at the stall fronts. There's the usual nasi padang, fish soup, chinese mixed rice, roasted meats, dessert and drink stall. The drink stall has Erdinger. Wow. A unique vendor here that doesn't go by the regular labels is Yummy Crab. Yummy Crab does a variety of food items with crab ( e.g. noodles & rice). And they whip up a mean fried rice with crab meat!
Besides the regular diced barbequed pork (larger chunks here!), egg and shrimps (larger shrimps too!), there's a generous amount of crab meat with the roe in their fried rice. It's not cheap though. This portion which I suppose feeds one hungry big eater or two smaller ones goes for $18.
For a week night, the crowd was sparse. I was told that it does get horrendously long during the weekends and crab noodles (which seem to be a trend these days) are also one of their specialty. I don't like do deal with shells and bones normally so this fried rice worked for me.
There was also a roasted meat stall which had excellent char siew. There's also the usual roast pork belly and duck which were pretty pedestrian though they came in rather generous portions.
We found a combo murtabak which was available at the Indian food store. I was told that this used to be a stall back in the old hawker centre (gone a long time ago) with leaky roofs during the rain which I fondly remember for the Roti John and teh tarik.
What made the combo murtabak was the use of variety in the fillings instead of a single meat option. We had one with shredded chicken and ground mutton. There was also sliced fresh green chilli which gave the prata more kick. I certainly appreciated that. There seemed to be a crab murtabak on menu as well and I'm speculating is that it's might have something to do with Yummy Crab.
Marmalade Pantry (Palai Renaissance, B1-08/11, Orchard Road) is a spiffy tai tai canteen secluded in the basement of a building laden with branded boutiques. I learnt of the ultimate beef burger and came here to try it. I had soup too. Service here on Saturday was pretty bad and the entire place looks pretty understaffed with only half the seats filled
I thought their burger might have been better without the mayo but I'm not complaining. This was a serious heavyweight beef burger with a firm and thick patty accompanied by slices of gherkins. Made holding the burger together a tad slippery. Juice were dripping out of the patties as I ate. Quite impressive. The thick looking buns were also much softer than they looked and it was actually not bad. Though a bit pricey at $19.
